Approaching Character Writing

KrubixCube · June 2012

I just figured I would throw this question into the ether since the methods of this vary so much from person to person but when you're writing characters how do you go about defining their traits? Do you come up with the overall situation and think "what characters need to be here to create x or y conflict" or do you come up with the character traits first, do you do the classic thing of writing out a whole fact sheet on them? What's your method?

I like writing characters, but I definitely need work at it. I've got my own way of doing it but it's always good to hear what other people do as well.

Harrier · June 2012

My usual method has been to devise situations and fit my characters to them. However, I've been told this makes my characters difficult to connect with, and not fully developed.

I'll be following this thread quite closely, since this is an area where I also need some work.

tapeslinger · June 2012

Character development is a highly individual method...

I think the most important part of building character is to show rather than to tell; this is especially important in the early parts of the story. Don't tell the reader your hero is heroic; you have to give them something to do where their heroic qualities come to light. We are all an aggregate of our decisions and actions and of the things that have happened to us-- it shouldn't be any different for your characters. (same with villains!)

I think Jack Bickham said it best when he said, "Don't write about wimps." A wimp in this instance isn't just a weak person, it's a person who has no motivation nor response to conflict -- a real limp noodle. It is possible to invert or subvert it, but by and large, readers respond to characters who take charge and face conflict head-on.

Characters also need to make decisions and take actions that make sense within their characterization. Those things are part of how the reader gets to know your characters and if your characters don't do things that are in some way logical or believable, they're going to lose interest fast.

I... um. have kind of a lot of opinions about characterization. I might dig up some of my writing.com newsletters on it if you are interested. For novels, I am also a big proponent of knowing the backstory for as many of your major characters as possible, it's surprising how helpful it can be to know your characters before they're important to you, if that makes sense....

chiasaur11 · June 2012

Well, one thing you want? Characters should have voice. I know, obvious, but it's a common problem even with good writers to have everyone talk the same, or, worse, everyone talks the same but some have irritating vocal quirks. Might be worth doing some exercises like Christopher Bird's Gettysburg Address bit to get things down.

Kamar · June 2012

I figured out recently that one way to make sure your characters are all well-developed (and, not coincidentally, keep your plot very consistent) is to write personal outlines for each driving character in a book. Like, an outline for them as if they were the protagonist of a first-person novel.

As an addendum, major characters should be driving events--people have a really bad habit of making their viewpoint characters reactive to their antagonists instead of having them pursue their own goals. That's part of what can cause the 'villain is more interesting' problem. Give characters goals and have them act to bring those goals about--personal goals and larger goals, which occasionally or frequently come into conflict and cause characters to make decisions (and thus evolve as characters).

liquiddark · June 2012

I have a fairly extensive background in theatre, so I'm a big believer in approaching writing characters as a combination of acting and directing exercises.

"Acting", in the sense I'm using it, means creating an internal representation of the character. You do that by understanding where the character has been, what they're trying to do, and what pressures they're under. Sometimes a scene seems to be about one thing but it's about something completely else for the character. That informs how other characters behave around them, particularly once you figure out their own internal state. If your foil knows your protagonist has just lost her spouse, they may react very differently to that person's angry diatribe than if they think they're being bawled out for no reason.

"Directing", on the other hand, means paying attention to the flow and execution of actions within the story. Where an action takes place, how it is performed, the pace at which a scene plays out, and the context in which that action exists are all part of direction. An actor takes those cues and uses them to find the reality they're about to inhabit. Think of Han's cantina gunfight versus Indy's. Very similar characters, same actor, same director, but there are some things about those settings that alter the scene dramatically.

As a writer, you have to do a bit of both - know your world well enough to establish the reality of the scene, know your characters well enough to be able to make their choices - and then you sometimes have to cheat a bit and go against type to hit a particular narrative "mark". Everyone does it once in a while; that's where performing (the other half of acting) and staging (the other half of directing) come into play. The trick is to be able to hide it away, or, sometimes, use it to bring something new to a character. If you're willing to let it, this can breathe life into a struggling story. I know some writers say they just start with characters and a situation, writing stories as a sort of a mental laboratory experiment.

For characters that are really meant to live and breathe, I'm not sure there's a better way to get there. But it's a lot of work, and it can be very hard to do by yourself. This is where you get into stealing bits of people around you, which gets into people-watching, which is one of the habits shared by anyone who needs to get inside a written character's head.

Desiderii · June 2012

I agree with a lot of what tapeslinger said!

Creating characters really needs a personalized method, but I can tell you how I do it.

When I'm writing characters, especially for novels, I prefer to develop them organically. Whether I have a main character or a minor character, I give them a seed or a theme, and then I run with it. That said, I always have at least a minor background, a baseline personality, and a general sense of how they look before I start writing someone important. I throw conflict at them and force them to respond, then I take copious notes. Even though I don't usually start out with a very robust character outline for a novel character, I end up with one in my attempts to keep my details consistent.

This short list of things has always worked for me and given me characters that I've gotten a lot of positive feedback on.

1) A character must always have a goal, either long term or short term. Kamar says everything I'd say here.

2) VERY similar to the goals mentioned by Kamar, the character must have opinions and be willing to act on them. The more opinions a character has, the more they will come in conflict with others with not-quite-the-same opinions. It doesn't even have to be 'I like the world not on fire' vs. 'burn everything' of the hero and villain, but something as simple as 'You need to bandage that up' vs. 'No time, people to save!' for two people on the same team. How the characters deal with negotiating around those opinions will tell you about their relationship, their personality, their values, their priorities, and what sort of ways other people will describe them.

3) Relationships are hugely important. I'm not talking about romantic relationships, either, but siblings, parents, parental-stand-ins, best friends, heterosexual life partners, congenial rivals, take-for-granted assistants, dead lovers, old flames, and long-distance idols. Every possible permutation from living within each other's skin to sharing a glance between strangers is part of the character and should reflect what sort of person you want them to be. Is your character someone who considers everyone a friend until proven otherwise, or someone who has trouble looking people in the eye when she shakes their hand.

4) There is no such thing as a throwaway detail, they are all hooks for further development if they ever become relevant. I've found that 2d characters are the ones that fill out the character quirk shopping lists: Knits, collects stamps, makes friends easily. This is similar to tapeslinger's 'show don't tell' advice. No detail is too small to be important to the story you want to tell, so make sure the details are part of the character and not stapled to their stat sheet and forgotten.

5) The biggest thing for me: I treat my characters as if their history matters to them. People usually have a reason for what they say, do, and what they don't say and do. If you write character like I write character, you'll constantly be asking yourself 'why' and 'why not' even for something as minor as "Would my character say 'yup' or 'precisely' in response to that question?"

My so-called 'organic' style of writing works best with a rolling rewrite style, because sometimes in responding to a situation the character will reveal something about themselves that requires a retroactive continuity fix, so I have to go back and do that. This type of organic fiddling with character can sort of work for a don't-stop-until-the-first-draft-is-finished style, but that's not a style I'm very good at.

That got very long, but I hope it helps to see how other people write character.

Quoth · June 2012

I've written a lot about this, as tapeslinger has, but I boil it down to want, need and flaw. The truncated version of my character-making essay is here.

Your character needs three things: a WANT, a NEED, and a FLAW. What your character wants is his goal. It is the thing he is trying to accomplish that moves the plot forward. His flaw is the part of him that keeps getting in the way of his achieving that goal. It is the thing that affects his actions and choices and causes him to screw up. His need is complicated; at least partly, he needs to overcome his flaw if he’s ever going to attain his goal. Sometimes he needs to realize that his want is not really worth having, or that what he wanted isn’t what he really needs. So a need can also be a sort of shadow goal, or real goal, however you want to look at it.

In the beginning of your story, you set up the want, the goal, and the character starts working toward it. Like I said, he’s got a flaw that keeps screwing him up. He’s too proud to accept help. He’s too stubborn to admit when he’s wrong. He’s too timid to go after the girl. Whatever it is, his flaw influences his decisions negatively and makes his situation worse somehow.

There's certainly way more to it than that, but if you have those three things, then you're going to be well positioned to have a good character that drives the story instead of lacking agency. That is a super important point that tapeslinger brought up: do NOT have a wet noodle protagonist, or your reader is likely to get very frustrated, very quickly. Having agency means that the character makes choices and acts on them, instead of just reacting and having things happen to him.

liquiddark · June 2012

Re: boiling down characters, I recently spent some time in a comic creators' workshop that was half writing, half art. It was very interesting to see the correspondence between the two. There's a great deal to be said in an approach based on layering your story the way an artist layers from coarse shapes to fine ones. For characters, this starts with those boiled down aspects @Quoth mentioned.

The instructor for the workshop started from a different point, however - he started with a basic lead character who is set up as "the most ____-ey ____ in the ____" then layered on a definition of "hero" as a person who is skilled, brave, and kind, vs an antihero (2/3), an everyman (1/3) or a misanthrope (0/3). He treated goals and obstacles as part of the narrative structure (which was also dealt with in a layered approach). The approach is very formula-centric, but I was still interested to see it in action. Unfortunately I didn't get to finish the workshop, but at least I got a new tool to keep in the toolbox.

Quoth · June 2012

In a sense, goals and obstacles ARE part of the narrative, but I think it's important to ground them in character. People make a lot out of whether a narrative is plot or character driven, and tolerance for putting greater weight on one or the other varies. Generally, though, it's more satisfying when character drives plot because of the agency issue I raised above. Maybe it's a Western thing, but I think it may have to do with our desire to control our own destinies, such that when it feels like plot is just happening to a character, it's not as enjoyable and can feel forced and unrealistic.

Oghulk · June 2012

My biggest issue right now is defining character flaws.

Like how should those be defined? Should they be able to molded down to one concrete adjective like a sims 3 trait, or would placing them in a sentence and making them complicated/sophisticated also work?

Quoth · June 2012

The key to a good flaw isn't so much boiling it down or making it highly specific. What you want is to ensure that you apply it to your character's decision-making process in a way that is consistent. However you describe or define it is up to you and primarily for your benefit in outlining and writing.

Quoth · June 2012

That said, you do want your readers to be able to pick up on the flaw so that your character's actions are, if not predictable, then at least believable. The flaw also usually controls the character arc in that your protagonist probably won't succeed until the flaw is overcome.

Kamar · June 2012

I'll add that a character flaw doesn't have to be something that's a clear personality flaw--it just has to be a trait that causes the character pain and has to be overcome or overcome the character (arguably what makes heroes heroes and villains villains, respectively).

edit:I wrote respectably instead of respectively. Whoops.

ElJeffe · June 2012

My general method is to come up with very vague characters, more empty templates than people, and then just write and let them grow organically. It means that in the first draft they're going to mostly be pretty weak, but as the plot unfolds I get a good sense of what sort of character traits help reinforce the plot and themes of the work. On doing a read-through, I can figure out what traits work and what don't, and also see how the Want/Need/Flaw dynamic plays into things.

One upside of this is that I don't get tied up early on in characterizations and traits that I might wind up throwing out anyway, so I'm free to just maintain momentum. This applies to most aspects of my writing, actually - if I get stuck on anything, I just say Fuck It and throw in something placeholder, even if it's terribad, and worry about it on the next draft.

Oghulk · June 2012

ElJeffe wrote: »

My general method is to come up with very vague characters, more empty templates than people, and then just write and let them grow organically. It means that in the first draft they're going to mostly be pretty weak, but as the plot unfolds I get a good sense of what sort of character traits help reinforce the plot and themes of the work. On doing a read-through, I can figure out what traits work and what don't, and also see how the Want/Need/Flaw dynamic plays into things.

One upside of this is that I don't get tied up early on in characterizations and traits that I might wind up throwing out anyway, so I'm free to just maintain momentum. This applies to most aspects of my writing, actually - if I get stuck on anything, I just say Fuck It and throw in something placeholder, even if it's terribad, and worry about it on the next draft.

With the novel I'm writing this is how I'm preferring to go about it as compared to coming up with characterizations for all the characters. I'd rather let the plot unfold and see where it takes the characters rather than focus on it so much so early in the writing process.

Quoth · June 2012

No shame in that at all. Everyone writes differently. The tools are available to you during revision as well, and can sometimes even be more useful then. Editing can be a long and laborious and painful process, so having ways to focus attention is good.

Tisiphone · June 2012

Kamar wrote: »

I'll add that a character flaw doesn't have to be something that's a clear personality flaw--it just has to be a trait that causes the character pain and has to be overcome or overcome the character (arguably what makes heroes heroes and villains villains, respectably).

This is good advice, but I would also add that sometimes a character's flaw is something that could also be their strength if it wasn't in such exaggerated amounts.

The most immediate example of this I have (and forgive me for using a television show as an example) is the show Supernatural. The exaggerated sense of protection that the older brother Dean feels for his younger brother Sam (during seasons 1 and 2), causes conflict in the form of their contrasting personalities, but it also immediately builds empathy for the character. And so, Dean's constant headlong rushes into danger to save his brother are sometimes very predictable plot points in each episode, but he's so empathetic and likable, that his flaw and his strength are different sides of the same coin, which is his ability to sacrifice the self. A flaw can easily be an exaggerated TRAIT the character has in excess.

KrubixCube · June 2012

Well that's how the Greeks did it. Those big excessive heroic traits could be flaws as well. This is all good stuff though, I enjoy that Gettysburg Address thing though, I might have to give that a shot.

Currently, if I'm kind of trying to get a character's voice I have about 7-8 situations, all non-specific to a given story, and see how the characters would react. Like, they bump into an old friend on the street, they see someone getting mugged etc. But yeah, good stuff people, definitely given me some things to think about

Quoth · June 2012

Watch out for the noble flaw, though... There's a slippery slope to Mary Sue there. "Her flaw is that she's too likable!"

It's like in a job interview, when they ask about your biggest flaw, and you say something like, "I'm too much of a perfectionist." Come on, we know that's not a real flaw, get over yourself.

It certainly can work, you just have to be very careful.

Oghulk · June 2012

Quoth wrote: »

No shame in that at all. Everyone writes differently. The tools are available to you during revision as well, and can sometimes even be more useful then. Editing can be a long and laborious and painful process, so having ways to focus attention is good.

I will say the hardest thing with writing this novel is not going back to edit and change things

I'm trying to get through the rough draft first before I actually edit and change things to make them better, but its pretty difficult to do.

Crimson King · June 2012

creating characters is way too intuitive for me to be able to summarize it neatly

i tend to come up with a couple of key details and let a personality naturally form around them

like, there's a comic i'm doing with a friend at the moment. we wanted to write about a thief-type like catwoman or lupin. we wanted her to be very physically capable so we could plan out action scenes, and we wanted to her to communicate her personality through movement, more than dialogue, so as to take advantage of the medium.

i came up with the idea that she'd have a history as a ballerina. this explains why she's so physically fit while distinguishing her visually from the sexy-thief cliche, and it indicates that she'd move in a very particular way which my artist will have fun trying to capture. also there's something fucked-up and creepy about the undertones of ballet - see black swan - which i felt would give me a wealth of material to work with.

so what are the parallels between thief and ballerina? i figured she'd be a perfectionist, liable to castigate herself over even insignificant details. crime in comics is often thought of as a kind of performance and so i figured that performance would obsess her. every heist for her is a work of art, and every step has to be deliberate. but i don't want her to be too depressingly serious, so i want her to have a sense of humor - albeit a very black one - that manifests itself at surprising times.

and there's a whole backstory and a bunch of stuff that arose naturally from that but i don't want to go on. the point is, you need only a few key details before the rest of the character starts to fall into place.

i've never really bought into these methods where you fill out a character checklist and write up a detailed backstory. i think this is one of those things where less is more. each to their own, though.

Harrier · June 2012

Crimson King's post raises an issue I've struggled with: how many different facets does everyone give a character at once? I've been accused of having characters that are too one-note, and looking back there's truth in the complaint. I tend to think in archetypes, ideals, which hinders the believability of the character because nobody is all one thing, or even all two things. There are many competing influences on a character in any given situation, and those need to be reflected in the differing choices the character makes. At least that's my new perspective.

Harry Dresden · June 2012

It varies. With a project I know the premise of the more details I have about the world and genre the easier it is to create protagonists. It's antagonists I need to know the story first then slowly flesh them out. I'm constantly updating profiles so characters are evolved from their original state. World building effects characters, too. If a series has a plot device that logically effects said character they will be updated to fit into that world properly.

Typically I begin with equipment, weapons and skillset (though sometimes I start with basics with a character's persona). I spend a lot of time fleshing out specifics with how it works, their level in skills (even how high they rank against other characters). That said, I stick to basics with their weaknesses and strengths. I even write down other fictional characters that are similar to them like say Batman or Judge Dredd.

tapeslinger · June 2012

I think the check list type of character building is tedious and often leads to annoying character incongruities that make readers crazy, but for novel length characters who have to grow on the pages, back story can be a useful implement (provided you don't end up chasing your tail with copious quantities of it the way I end up doing... ha)

The important part of well developed multi faceted characters is making the facets of the character consistent. It's also important not to have characters who do or know too much. Internal consistency keeps them believable.

As an example of what I mean by consistency, think about it like a cause and effect scenario. The reasons why a character acts the way he acts will build upon themselves. I would recommend to resist the temptation to create characters who become a catch-all for whatever traits your story might require. (for example, a few months ago I was ranting about a friend's self published novel where she had a main hero character who is an ex-Marine cop who also is the leader of a biker gang and the owner of a home style restaurant. Any one of those characters might have an interesting story to tell, but all rolled together, they don't work as one character. The internal consistency of this character was very low, and the story suffered as a result because nothing this character did was plausible to me as a reader.)

Crimson King · June 2012

Harrier wrote: »

Crimson King's post raises an issue I've struggled with: how many different facets does everyone give a character at once? I've been accused of having characters that are too one-note, and looking back there's truth in the complaint. I tend to think in archetypes, ideals, which hinders the believability of the character because nobody is all one thing, or even all two things. There are many competing influences on a character in any given situation, and those need to be reflected in the differing choices the character makes. At least that's my new perspective.

how many different facets do people have?

i think there should be something about your character that's essential, irreducible, but i don't think you should be able to put it into words any more than you can neatly summarize a real person

it's all about the show don't tell. you gotta capture your character's voice and know what they'll do in a situation, but that's rooted in an intuitive understanding of their nature which you can't, and shouldn't attempt to, communicate directly. it's a theory-of-mind thing. you know how, if you understand someone well enough, you can learn to predict how they'll talk and what they'll do? you have to trick your brain into having that same relationship with someone who doesn't exist.

at least that's my working hypothesis.

liquiddark · June 2012

@Crimson King That's pretty close what I was calling acting earlier. Except instead of "predicting", you actually begin to feel the way that character feels, which means you can react the way that character reacts. It's a fine balance to do that and still move forward with a story, particularly since you're often switching characters on the fly, but it's a magical experience if you can get there.

As @Quoth points out, use the tools when editing. I would say in my own experience that's really the time to do so. And then you don't have the same pressure to balance everything at once.

Quoth · June 2012

Also keep in mind that the checklists and whatnot are not intended to be immutable or strict; they're to help as needed. If they don't help, don't use them. If you use them and in the course of writing find that something you've written doesn't jibe with your checklist, screw the list. Or fix what you wrote, whichever makes sense.

The tool analogy still stands. You can build a dog house with nails or screws, wood or plastic, red paint or blue. You can use plans or wing it. Whatever gets you to a finished product that satisfies you. But if you screw the pooch and your dog house sucks, don't blame the tools.

thursdaynext · June 2012

I tend to make up every character slightly differently. I tend to just spend time thinking about who the character is, what they want and how they fit into the story without necessarily jotting anything down. There have been a few characters who I created only to exist as people that show up for one paragraph, only to find good excuses to bring them back into the storyline and develop them further. The main reason is because I tend to only produce general outlines that exist without specific details. I find the more time I spend planning out my writing, the less time I spend writing.

Kamar · June 2012

I repeat this advice a lot but I figure its worth repeating: If you have trouble pinning a character down, write an outline just for them, as if they were the hero of a first-person novel. Cover only events that they encounter, only for their viewpoint. If their story is incoherent or lacks sensible motivations, figure out why and fix it. Everyone is the hero of their own story--they don't just go sit on their thumbs and wait for a new way to react to the protagonist and villain.

ElJeffe · June 2012

It's also worth pointing out that, even in the real world, people are often irrational and inconsistent. I think this grants an author a little leeway. If you need your gruff character to act tender at some point, it's not hard to justify that. An idiot can have a good idea, a nice person can be a dick. My feeling is that having a character seem realistic is largely accomplished by having them not always act to type, and not just a matter of giving them a half-dozen iron-clad personality traits.

KrubixCube · June 2012

Harrier wrote: »

Crimson King's post raises an issue I've struggled with: how many different facets does everyone give a character at once? I've been accused of having characters that are too one-note, and looking back there's truth in the complaint. I tend to think in archetypes, ideals, which hinders the believability of the character because nobody is all one thing, or even all two things. There are many competing influences on a character in any given situation, and those need to be reflected in the differing choices the character makes. At least that's my new perspective.

I feel you don't need too many as long as a few facets come into conflict with one another. I think if you have a character who isn't conflicted enough in themselves then they can be boring. For instance, say you have a character who acts like a bit of a cowboy/rough and tumble type who also has a need to maintain appearances or respects authority. Well, or take that in a literal sense: you have a cowboy type who also respects "the way things were" or the good old days - oblivious to the fact that his violence isn't any more justified than anyone around him. Basic example, but it creates tension at least. Like ElJeffe said, if a character always acts the same way they'll never impress an audience I think. It's the unexpected moments, or the things they do that betray an underlying trait that make them interesting. I think that's true for almost every character I've really liked in a TV show or movie or whatever.

@Kamar that is a good idea. Every major character in a story should have some sort of arc. Even if they're a character who only shows up a few times if they change a little bit it implies they're real people I suppose.

But I've enjoyed reading all of your suggestions guys, you've all definitely given me some things to think about. If anything if I'm stuck it gives me a resource to look at and try a new approach.

Penny Arcade

Approaching Character Writing

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