BY JESSICA SHEN
Getting to know your characters:
Arguably the most important component of your story are your characters. You may have a riveting plot and beautifully written story, but if your characters are unlikeable, unrelatable, or worse, one-dimensional, your audience just won’t care.
One mistake many beginning writers make is using a character solely for the purpose of moving the plot forward. Yes, in the grand scheme of things, your characters propel the story—but they do it for their own reasons, not for yours. For example, Johnny can’t go to the store because you, the author, need him to be there when the zombie apocalypse hits. Johnny goes to the store because his son has been coughing all night and there’s no more Robitussin in the house. My point is, you have to treat your characters like they are real people, with their own hopes, dreams, and motivations.
Perform a quick search for character development exercises on Google and you’ll see that the Internet is rife with them. I find that they are mostly split between two different types of exercises. The first is the survey. This is typically a series of questions asking “surface” level questions—how old is your character, what is his favorite food, how may siblings does he have—that type of thing. These exercises are a great way to introduce yourself to your character, like an icebreaker at a party.
The second type of exercise will help you dive deeper into the character’s soul, if you will. These exercises tend to ask more difficult questions. You may learn from the survey that your character’s greatest fear is to be alone, but these questions will help you find out why. Exploring these answers will give your character depth and roundness.
Here are some questions I think will be particularly helpful at getting you to think critically about your characters:
1. Consider the limitations of your character’s loyalty to the people they care about. Describe one situation in which they could be moved to betray these people.
2. Write a scene in which a character does something while alone in a setting that is extremely significant to that character. Have the character doing something (dishes, laundry, filing taxes, playing a computer game, building a bird house) and make sure that YOU are aware that the character has a problem or issue to work out, but do NOT tell your reader what that is.
3. Your character’s arch-enemy is in grave peril and the only person around who can save him is your character. Does he let his enemy die or save his life?
4. The following exercise is much longer and potentially more difficult, but very interesting and helpful if you’re still trying to get a grasp of who your character is as a person (each section could be relatively short):
- Write a character sketch strictly as narrative description, telling your reader who the character is without having the character do or say anything.
- Revise the above to deliver the character to the reader strictly through the character’s actions.
- Revise the above to deliver the character strictly through the character’s speech to another character.
- Revise the above to deliver the character strictly through the words/actions of another character (the conversation at the water fountain about the boss).
You may not be able to answer these questions right away, but the point is to get yourself thinking of and treating your characters like they are real people. Your ability to do that will come through in your writing, and they will become real to your audience, too.
Jessica Shen lives, works, writes, and edits from her laptop in northern California. Her latest project, Mr. Gunn and Dr. Bohemia by Pete Ford, was released in October, 2013. Her next project, Kingdom City by Benjamin Ireland, is slated for release in February 2014.