Early in July, M.K.B. wrote, ….Sometimes I feel some of my characters don’t have enough volume and they don’t feel as real to me as some of my other characters. I was trying to formulate a system to create characters. Do you have any suggestions?<\/i><\/p>\n
And Lexi asked a related question: I know everything about my characters; there are reasons for the jobs I chose for them and backstories that explain their personalities. I just don\u2019t know how much or how to tell my reader. How do you pack in as much information as possible without sounding stilted, and how much is too much?<\/i> <\/p>\n
In Writing Magic<\/i> I offer a character questionnaire that is a kind of character-development system. (I just looked at it and was embarrassed to discover that, although I asked about appearance, I didn\u2019t specifically mention apparel, a sad omission.) If you answer most of the questions, your character will be quite rounded – in the questionnaire. How to get all that information into your story, and whether you need to, are other matters.<\/p>\n
There are real-life people, people I\u2019ll bet you\u2019ve known almost always who still surprise you. An elderly friend of mine, let\u2019s call her Betty, pampered from childhood on, who doesn\u2019t cope well with ordinary vicissitudes, has been battling cancer for the last five years, and about the cancer she is uncomplaining. I would never have guessed. If she were a character I would have had to give her cancer to find out.<\/p>\n
And yet we size people up in two seconds. Someone – let\u2019s call her Hetty – called in to a talk radio show I was listening to recently, and I disliked her by the time she\u2019d spoken three sentences. Her hearty voice (too hearty, in my opinion) seemed to my warped ears to proclaim, Look how delightful I am.<\/i> I didn\u2019t even see her! I don\u2019t know if she kicks her cat or volunteers at a nursing home, and even if I learned she does volunteer and is unfailingly kind to animals, I\u2019d have to recite her virtues in my mind over and over to get past that voice.<\/p>\n
So let\u2019s make me and Hetty minor characters in a story. Hetty\u2019s overbearing voice and overconfidence establish her, at least partially. My dislike of a boaster sets me up too – let\u2019s change my name to Bonnie for this post. The reader, Lenny, who knows nothing more about these two, feels that he\u2019s encountered two complicated people. He hasn’t read much about them, but the little suggests that more is there.<\/p>\n
If they\u2019re minor characters, that\u2019s all we need. In fact, it may be too much. It\u2019s too much if Lenny is distracted, if he wishes the story would veer off and have Hetty and Bonnie meet in person and develop their relationship. Sometimes all you need is a long, trailing scarf or an interesting name. And sometimes characters aren\u2019t important enough even to warrant a name; male or female and old or young may be sufficient. We don\u2019t want to burden Lenny\u2019s brain with characters he doesn\u2019t have to remember.<\/p>\n
Or Hetty and Bonnie may be fine with the amount of detail provided. Lenny appreciates how we populate our stories with intriguing oddballs.<\/p>\n
What reveals character? <\/p>\n
Hetty has an unpleasant voice, so voice helps define a character. Along with voice, there\u2019s dialogue. What does Hetty say and how does she say it? Does she interrupt people? Does she disagree with whatever is said to her, or does she always agree? How\u2019s her enunciation? Her grammar? And many other speech possibilities.<\/p>\n
Bonnie\u2019s thoughts show her to be a tad prickly or sound sensitive; thoughts bring character to light. Of course we have access to the thoughts of POV characters only – unless we\u2019re writing in third-person omniscient.<\/p>\n
Lenny may be a writer as well as a reader. If he becomes a character, and if his writing enters the narrative, then it will help reveal him. Introducing a character’s writing, a diary, for example, is a way to slip in the thoughts of non-POV characters.<\/p>\n
What else?<\/p>\n
Those aspects of appearance that a person can control, which covers a lot of territory. Bonnie, for instance, is short (I am). Does she wear three-inch heels or flats? Does her erect bearing suggest a taller person? Lenny sports a goatee and chooses to wear glasses rather than contact lenses.<\/p>\n
Clothing. One could write about this forever. Not only clothing itself, but also about clothing in a setting. Does Hetty wear a suit to the company picnic?<\/p>\n
The setting that a character controls, Lenny\u2019s house, his room if he\u2019s too young to have a house (forget the goatee in this case). What\u2019s his taste? Is he neat or sloppy?<\/p>\n
These seemingly little things, Hetty\u2019s bedroom with the martial arts posters, the free weights in the corner, the biography of Helen Keller on the desk, or Lenny\u2019s goatee or Betty\u2019s weighty painted beads around her neck and the four bracelets on each arm, suggest developed, deep characters.<\/p>\n
Actions, which may be more important than anything else, define character. Hetty listens and calls in to a talk show. Bonnie just listens. Betty calls her son and complains, but never about the cancer. Lenny reads.<\/p>\n
Everything is subject to interpretation. Does Hetty listen and call in out of loneliness? She lives alone and likes to hear voices on the radio. Then she gets so caught up she has to respond. Or does she call for some other reason? Does Lenny have a goatee and glasses because he wants to appear professorial? Or is the goatee hiding a weak chin, and he wears glasses because contact lenses seem vain to him? Or a thousand other reasons. If Lenny moves from reader to important character, we may learn what his motivations are. We learn motivation from further action, possibly from his explanations in dialogue, from his thoughts if he\u2019s a POV character.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not sure about backstory. If the backstory doesn\u2019t move to the front story, I think it\u2019s more for the writer to know than for the reader. Backstory will influence a character’s actions, but Lenny doesn\u2019t have to know that Hetty\u2019s father locked her in the cellar when he was in a bad mood – unless the father or the cellar or something directly related comes into the story.<\/p>\n
Coming into the story is the key to what character development to put in and what to leave out. If you need it for the plot, then include it. If you don\u2019t and the information makes the story drag, leave it out. If you don\u2019t need it but it\u2019s fascinating in its own right and Lenny doesn\u2019t get bored, it\u2019s up to you and the kind of story you\u2019re writing. You can\u2019t please everybody. Lenny may like an embellished story but his brother Lonny may prefer his fiction stripped down to action action action.<\/p>\n
Only one prompt today:<\/p>\n
Betty, Bonnie, Hetty, and Lenny, strangers to one another, all attend a reading by the famous teenage fantasist Tammy Millhart. At the end she announces that before the event she hid a talisman, an ebony ball, somewhere in the local amusement park. She chooses three teams, one of one of them comprising our characters, to look for the ball. Whichever team finds it will be given a far more serious mission; the entire population of a mid-size city will be at risk. Write our quartet\u2019s search while developing each one as a complex personality. Do all of them want their search to succeed? Tammy can be an important character too if you like. She can attach herself to your team or wander from team to team. Is she helping or getting in the way?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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