Novelist's Desk Forum Creating Characters

I tried to figure out an example of a novel without characters and I failed. Every decent plot I can think of needs someone to carry it out. Some writers go so far as to come up with interesting characters, then start writing about them to see what will happen.

So, if you're stuck with having characters in your book, you might as well make them good. But what is the difference between some vapid and uninteresting Sue and a compelling character that can carry the weight of your plot?

Let's look at some interesting characters and see if we can figure out what makes them good.

 

Elizabeth Lyon (my latest favorite writing guru) has an excellent take on that.  I can't quote her directly, but the gist of it is that a compelling character:

• has one or more meaningful character flaws (hot tempered, gullible, whatever)
• has one or more "universal needs" (e.g. belonging, acceptance, love, etc)
• has one or more significant goals within the story which pit the character against his/her flaws in an attempt to reach the goal.
• action towards the goals is motivated by the character's universal needs.

Basically, the character struggles to do something meaningful and worthwhile.  Sometimes, the character is his/her own obstacle, because his/her character flaws get in the way of making progress.  And the driving motivation for why the character bothers to reach for the goal is to satisfy the goals.

She lays it all out much better, of course, in her book Manuscript Makeover.  So just go read that.  :-)  But I gather that the trick is to make all these elements work together.  Make it believable that Jane Smith would decide it was her job to make sure that taxicabs all have GPS locators on them because of her universal need to feel safe, even though she must struggle against her own lack of self confidence to do it.  Or whatever.

    I've never read any books on how to create a character or create a plot or create a situation I just used common sense. What people want to see in a character are one of three things: intrigue, personality or the simplest of things, coolness. Why complicate things by analyzing every aspect and every angle when just one or all of these traits are what 'the average reader' are looking for. Not to rain on any ones parade but the fact about it is, there are fewer advanced readers then average. 

   When an average reader reads a book they want excitement or suspense or mystery, anything to keep them reading but an advanced reader scrutinizes everything, "Oh well this character must be on this psychological level, OH, and this character must have been born here to act in this way!".

    My main point is; complicated characters are awesome, you can say, "The characters compelling, intriguing, has personality, is angry, is mysterious, is psychologically superior." and you can go on and on about what your character is when three things really make a character dynamic with one of the three traits I specified above.

   Most of us are not writing for the 'best writer award', we're writing a story and making it interesting with the simple things, easily understandable things, not utter and complete intricacies.

   One of the most important things to remember about creating a character is, the character reveals himself to you. I think they call it character development or whatever, I'm not big on terms.

    If you still have troubles creating a character look toyour surroundings and put the personalties of your family into the character.

    Also take a moment and think, you need a basic structure for your character, make one up. Think about it.

    My opinions.

I also write my characters instinctively rather than by using explicit methodologies. The interesting thing is that occasionally, a reader that knows more about such things than I do will comment on some psychological or literary aspect of my characters. (It's kind of fun to have someone talk about your work like it was something presented to a freshman literary class. ) The conclusion I come to is that there are multiple paths to the same result. Some writers benifit from one approach while others go a different way.

I think writing books tend towards the analitical approach, since that is, by its nature, easier to describe.

 

I think a lot of books today are issue driven rather than character driven, and I don't get it. If I fall for a character, I'm going to finish the book because I care what happens to that person. Its why I finishes writing Knot of Intent and why I'm getting that nervous feeling about Wings of War. I care about my characters and want to go back and finish their story.

To address what Patrick said: your right. Most readers are of average intelligence. Hell, most writers are. I'm no genius. But when writing, I don't worry about my readers intelligence or lack of it. I tell the story the characters are telling, and try not ot worry about the pyschological and social issues my characters are having. But to create a well rounded character, it is good to have that. Readers may not be genius level, but I think everyone is tired of flat boring perfection.

Come on, perfection is boring. I don't think I could spin a story out for 60k words if I had a perfect character.

Just my thoughts...you can read a bit about my characters on my profile, my novel Wings of War

N~

"I tell the story the characters are telling, and try not to worry about the pyschological and social issues my characters are having".

Have you met 'Gabriel Jacobi' of Patrick Gerlits' novel Crimson Dust? This is a character you cannot deem unworthy by just his pyschological & social issues and who is fueled by such.
What I stated previously means that the character can be identified as being human in all his/her characteristics: emotionally, physically, mentally, etc.

I, myself, struggle with character development, even sometimes getting 'carried away' with unecessary 'Life Stories', but I just go along with what makes them interesting regardless of their social and psychological issues.

Patrick sez:

"Not to rain on any ones parade but the fact about it is, there are fewer advanced readers then [sic] average."

I'm sorry, but that sounds to me like nothing more than a rationalization for being a lazy writer.  "most of my readers have room temperature IQs so really I can get away with giving them room temperature work."

Rather than starting out with a contemptuous attitude towards your audience from the get-go, would it be better to assume that your readers are actually smarter than a bag of hammers and do your damndest to give them a serious piece of writing?  Wouldn't it be better to build some intentional depth and dimensionality into your characters for the benefit of the smart readers, and to surpass the expectations of the rest?

The more depth, the more layers you can put into yor work, the better it will be.  Thinking "I don't need to put X into my novel because readers are too dumb to appreciate it anyway" is an inherently losing attitude, IMHO.

One of the things we need to think about with our characters is their goals. I think looking into characters' goals is not only a great way to make them more real, but it provides a way for the story to move along. Even such seemingly aimless characters as Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye drives the story along by his desires. He is looking for his place in a world. Throw in a world that doesn't make sense, a world that as Salinger says, "Hopelessly impaled him," and bingo, you have a story.

I'm getting ready for NaNoWriMo and I'm thinking about the goals and motivations of my characters. My hero is mentally ill, so his motivations can be a little irational at times. Of course, having constantly shifting goals is not much more interesting than no goals at all. I am narrowing him to three - At the begining his goal is to find out why he is loosing his magic powers. In the middle he needs to escape the cops who think he is murdering people. In the end he has to come to terms with his delusions to reveal the real murderer.

 

Well I haven't read this entire forum but I understand the gist of it.

 

When it comes to my characters, I don't really start out with a lot. I almost always, when starting a story/novel, begin with an idea or a title. (Yes, a title. Often I come up with a really great sounding book title and run with it, beginning a story that could apply to it well.)

 

As the story progresses, so do(es) the character(s). One of my favorite WIP books of mine, Spoken Like a True Loser, I began with the title. Then I came up with a basic, but lacking, plot. It's about a teenage girl who moves to a new high school her senior year. Okay, great. Those are the basics. Now what? After that I had to think. Well, I know what has happened to the girl. I know her name. I know her family. I know what might happen to her, what will happen to her... what she has experienced. But who is she?

 

So as I said before, as the story progresses, so does her life. I know more about her now, who she is, what she's like, how she reacts to things.

I have a teacher who sponsors the Creative Writing Club I created at my high school. He's an awesome sponsor because he is accomplished in the writing business. He's written one popular book, is working on his second, has a ton of poetry and short stories that have been published various places, and he often writes editorials for our city newspaper. He has a lot of great advice for us aspiring writers, but two things stuck out to me most: 1.)You are basically God to your characters. If you wish, you can bend them to your will. 2.) But though you are the "overall Creator and Ruler," your characters have minds and wills of their own. If you try to make them do what they don't want to and what doesn't apply to the life they are meant to live out in the story, then your writing sounds wrong, twisted, distorted! It sounds artificial and shallow.

 

That's my opinion on the matter.

I'm  a firm believer in the idea that there are as many good ways to write a book as there are writers. Don't let anyone tell you you need a more planned, organized approach to putting a novel together. That being said, here's a story about the development of Washed Ashore.

When I started, I had two ideas. One was that it was a story about people isolated on an island. The other was that there would be horses in the story. Not much to go on, but if Amanda can start with just a title, anything is possible :-). I dove in and wrote the first scene. That was fun, but I still didn't have any idea what was going to happen. The chapter was weak, but I couldn't put my finger on the problem. One afternoon, my friend Frank asked me, "So what does Jason do for a living?" I answered that it didn't matter, that wasn't what my story was about. Frank just looked at me like I was a stupid kid that will never learn (He is 18 years older than me and often gets overly paternal).

So, I'm all pissed off and I start making stuff up just to get Frank off my back. He's a PR guy for a disaster management company. He has a girlfriend that he doesn't deserve. He likes movies. On DVD. He can quote them for hours. He is in his forties. And so on. Within an hour I knew everything there was to know about Jason. The next day, I wrote like crazy. Everything made perfect sense.

The next time I saw Frank, he was acting all smug when he asked how my book was going. It made me mad, but I admitted he was right and I promised to figure out my characters from the begining net time. Frank smacked me on the head and told me I missed the point. What he wanted me to do was to know as many ways to write as possible, so that when I get stuck I have something to try.