O.C. Writers

By Andrea Lewis // 

The variety of characters that actors get to play is what keeps them acting. Readers keep reading because either they relate to the characters that they read about, or fall in love with them. Characters offer readers infinite opportunities to experience feelings, actions, changes.

Kaytie Norman at https://earlybirdbooks.com/famous-book-characters writes that “One of the best parts about reading is meeting a whole host of new characters, and feeling like you know them inside and out. But when we really love a literary character, the end of the book feels like the end of a friendship—and we want more!”

Think of your favorite characters from your readings and then think of why you like them, what you like about them. Then, as a thoughtful writer that you are, will want to create your own memorable characters that will inhabit the minds and lives of your readers through the journey of their reading your book(s).

What a small word, create, for the Sisyphean task of building a character. That is not to say that creating characters is in vain, but that once you are finished with writing one story and start a new one, the process of creating new characters starts from scratch, or, from the bottom of the hill and follows them to the top, or the end of the book/story. Unless you are working on a series of novels that feature the same characters.

Sisyphean, also, because the act of creation is not straight and easy. However, for writers, there is also satisfaction in the opportunity to wear a variety of hats: detective, psychologist/psychiatrist, cohabitating with their creations till the end of the story.

Chelle Stein at https://thinkwritten.com/character-development/ defines character development as “The process in creating a persona in a story and the changes this persona goes through during the course of the story.”

The number of characters depends on the story – generally, there can be one or two main characters and a “handful of supporting characters.”

There is a plenitude of sources online and in libraries on character development. This article combines ideas from the editors at Reedsy and Think Written, as well as from writers like Anne Lamott and Salman Rushdie, and also from Writing Fiction, A Guide to Narrative Craft by Janet Burroway and Elizabeth-Stuckey French.

I have structured the findings into three major steps in the journey of developing characters:

Step 1 – establishing the characters that will populate a story and their roles in it

Step 2 – getting to know these characters

Step 3 – the writing process, that will reflect the preparation work done in Steps 1 and 2.

 

Step 1 – “Identify your characters and the roles they play in the overall storyline.” According to Chelle Stein at Think Written, this is essential, because you need to know:

• The main or central character(s) to the story – “no main character = no story”
• The supporting character(s) – the people who add dynamics to the story; they work to complement the main character
  • Note: not all characters are human, they can be any animate beings, common especially in children’s literature
  • Caution when establishing roles: many of the roles will be archetypes (e.g. siblings, parents, stepparents, detectives, etc), yet they should not become stereotypes (e.g. step-mothers in fairy tales are most commonly depicted as evil, narcissistic, jealous persons); the fix is to attribute some behaviors or motivations that are NOT the stereotypes (e.g. make the step-mother kind, overbearingly loving towards the reluctant stepchild).

 

Step 2 – “Get to know your characters, inside-out.” All sources consulted for this article unanimously decree this step as absolutely necessary, because it will result in your character’s profile.

The process relies greatly on self-interview, as the unanimous opinion of the resources above emphasize that writers need to ask themselves sets of questions on all aspects of the character. In his Masterclass, Salman Rushdie urges writers to “be” with their characters: “when your characters come to life, you are with these people; you are in conversation with them, and they want you to tell their story.” He advises authors to keep character notes, building a character biography to support the “getting to know” process.

The answers to these sets of questions will lead to attributes that the editors at Reedsy https://blog.reedsy.com/character-profile/ separate in three layers of a character profile within the context of the story:

1. The Outer Layer – mostly appearance:
   • Who the character is: name, age, place of birth, current location, nationality, education, occupation, income;
   • Physical appearance: eye color, hair color, hair style, build, distinctive features (tattoos, scars, birthmarks) preferred outfit, glasses if any, staple accessories (e.g. cane, pipe, necklace, etc.), type of grooming (disheveled, smart, put together, untidy but clean), tics and mannerisms, health, way they walk;
   • Speech and communication: speed and style of speech, accent, posture, gestures, eye contact, curse words if any, catchphrases, speech impediments, smile, laughter.
2. The Flesh – the backstory: characters, like all of us, are the product of their environment, therefore, we need to look at what made them the persons they are today:
   • Their past: hometown, childhood, education, organizations and schools, memories (earliest, saddest, happiest, clearest), criminal record, major turning points in life. Rushdie suggests that writers should consider knowing: “what has damaged [the characters] in their lives,” (“like a broken heart from a love affair”);
   • Their family: everything about the character’s parents, siblings, children, extended family, especially the relationship with the character;
   • External relationships: closest friends, enemies, significant friends, how they are perceived by others, social media.
3. The Core – the psychology: who the character is deep down, the “heart” of the character. In “Bird by Bird,” Anne Lamott advises authors to “find out as much as possible about the interior life of the people you are working with.”
   • Psychology: what they do on rainy days, street smart or book smart, optimist or pessimist, introvert or extrovert, secrets, strengths, fears, and, as Lamott suggests: “what they carry in their pockets” or “who they voted for the last time”
   • Present and future:
     • Their goal in the story or, as Rushdie puts it: “everybody has something in their life that pushes them one direction or another, even if it is the desire to take care of their family.”
     • Events in the story and how the character will be changed by them

Chelle Stein at Think Written highlights the importance of research and fact-checking in the process of knowing your characters. Research – of “anything that you do not have direct experience with” and fact-check – to “make sure that you have accurate information.”

Building a character and his/her purpose in the story is the preparation stage that will help you build your story. In most cases however, you will not dump your notes into the story, or as the editors at Reedsy put it, “you will never use all of the notes you make on a character.”

 

Step 3 – The writing process will reflect the preparation work done in Steps 1 and 2. This is when, as Salman Rushdie advises, “you will put the notes aside and just write, because you already have it within you.”

You will start combining the elements that you have established about your characters, and, as Anne Lammott advises, after learning everything about the characters, you should “let there be something at stake, and let the chips fall where they may.”

In Writing Fiction, A Guide to Narrative Craft, Janet Burrows and Elizabeth Stuckey-French talk about direct and indirect methods of character presentation. The following is directly based on Writing Fiction, with additions from the other sources mentioned in this article.

The direct methods will show the complexity of the character’s layers throughout the story:

• Appearance – the outer layer of the character (features, shape, style, clothing and objects) reflects his/her internal values (political, religious, social, intellectual) and they may influence the character’s journey.
• Action – the significant characters of a fiction must be both capable of causing an action and be changed by an action, because in its essence, a story records a process of change.
• Dialogue – expresses the character’s entire persona, most importantly his/her thoughts. It makes the character credible and, according to Lamott, reveals more about the character than any descriptive paragraph would.
• Thought – the character’s thoughts can be shown in three ways:
  • In summary (e.g. He hated the way she ate.)
  • As indirect thought (Why did she hold her fork straight up like that?)

• Directly, as if we are overhearing the character’s own mind (e.g. My God, she’s going to drop the yolk!)

The three ways can be combined and alternated in the same paragraph to achieve immediacy and pace.

The indirect methods will present the character either through the author’s interpretation or through the interpretation of another character.

1. Through the author’s interpretation – what the author “tells” about the character’s background, motives, values, virtues.
2. Through another character’s interpretation – an opinion expressed in speech, action or thought. This process will provide a characterization of the observing character, as well.

The character’s development in the story, will show through:

1. Conflict – may result from someone or something getting between the character and his/her purpose.
2. Purpose – moves the story forward (remember Rushdie’s note on the goals of the character?).
3. Credibility – Writing Fiction emphasizes the importance of “characters to have their own individuality and act, speak, and think in accordance to their background and what they are,” a certain degree of typicality: e.g. “the schoolboy will be different than the Harvard professor” in speech, manner, appearance and everything else.
4. Complexity – characters need to be capable of change, the essence of development. Lammott in “Bird by Bird” talks about having to “let bad things happen to some of the characters you love, or you won’t have much of a story.” Those bad things will prompt change into the character, thus leading to their complexity.
5. Reinventing character – where can a writer find his/her characters?

Lamott invites authors to “look within your heart, at the different facets of your personality. You may find aspects of a conman, an orphan, a nurse […] Go into each of these people and try to capture how each one feels, thinks, talks, survives.” For Rushdie, characters are made of “bits and pieces glued together by [the writer’s] imagination, […] taken from people you know or real persons whom you don’t know directly.”

The authors of Writing Fiction advise not to simply “copy” a person, rather:

• if the character is based on the writer or someone directly known by the writer, the model must be altered in some external way: change the color of the hair, weight, gender or the setting.
• if the character results from observation only, the writer should find an internal area to have in common with the character

No matter how much work is behind creating strong characters, it is worth going through the process – stories are remembered for strong characters. The preparation steps are some of the most important in this journey – quite like in a DIY painting project in your house: if the preparation is done properly, your painting process will be faster and easier. The more you know about your characters, and the better structured they are, the easier to write about them. Although, somewhat like in a marriage, you will still learn about them as you write. After all, Lammott cautions that “you won’t know your characters until weeks or months after you’ve started working with them.”

In “Creating Unforgettable Characters: A Practical Guide to Character Development,” author and screenwriting consultant Linda Seger, quoted by Reedsy https://blog.reedsy.com/character-profile/, compares “the depth of a character to an iceberg. The audience will only see a fraction (maybe 10%) of all that the writer knows about their character. But the remaining 90% is what makes the characters feel well-drawn, flawed, and real – as though they could live outside of the book itself.” In this, Seger resonates with Rushdie who advises that “you want to feel that the characters have a life of themselves, with their own thoughts and feelings, […] they should not feel like your puppets, but [rather] independent.”

 

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ANDREA LEWIS lives and writes in Huntington Beach. She was born in Romania and moved to the United States at the age of 34, after meeting and marrying her husband. She writes memoir and personal essays, with a recent attempt at freeform poetry. Her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times.