Establish Characterization
Reveal Character
Change character for good or bad
If you become enamored with your plot twists and turns, you risk creating characters “beyond belief.” Your character can be a Terminator or a talking Sunfish and still be believable if their actions make sense. If our meek sunfish suddenly acts like a shark only to serve a plot twist, then Mr. Sunfish is no longer believable.
On the other hand, if Mr. Sunfish has shown shark like characteristics lurking in his complex character, then we might understand his sudden shift in behavior. Likewise, your Terminator probably won’t don a tutu unless it was programmed by a ballet dancer (or you’re writing a Saturday Night Live skit).
In both plot-led and character-led stories, you must have sympathetic, three-dimensional characters.
The reader must care about your lead character (usually the protagonist).
“What will she do next?”
The reader must recognize something of themselves in the character.
“I would’ve done the same thing!”
Or something they wish for themselves.
“I’d love to be that smart and assertive. Maybe I could be.”
The reader must identify with the nice characters.
“Normally, I wouldn’t be that nice, but under those circumstances, I could be.”
The reader must identify with the evil characters.
“Wow! He’s a bastard. But I can sort of see why.”
Even pure evil has identifiable human characteristics. Readers must at least understand the evil logic. In responding, your protagonist must act as a fully developed, complex, three-dimensional character.
Warning: While you may think of this as a writer-reader interaction, a conspiratorial agreement to “suspend disbelief,” 99% of the responsibility falls on you the writer. All the more reason for you to get every word right. Poetry is a good model for precise word choice and arrangement (diction and syntax).
The protagonist changes and grows over the course of the plot as he or she reacts to events. Moments of stress reveal motivation. Put an obstacle in front of the character. For example, your protagonist has just been fired from her job and her fiancée leaves her. She seeks to feel whole again. What does it mean to be whole? What should she do? Find a loser boyfriend? Move to Spain? Grind it out and find another job, then get revenge on her fiancée? How does she react under pressure? Does she have “grace under fire?”
Example A. Passive voice. Too much info all at once.
Jack Jackson’s blonde-streaked brown hair was thin and floated in front of his face, and his eyes were bluish green. His nose was long and Romanesque. His part was left to right, and his eyebrows were arched and thin. He used a shampoo formulated for thin hair, and he bought it at Walgreens. His shiny black vest was buttoned over his white shirt and back, gold striped, creased pants. His belt was genuine leather, usually brown, but sometimes black, and the buckle was almost always gold, and he wore his pants like any normal person, not low and not too high. He also wore red Fruit of the Loom underwear held with tight white elastic.
Example B. Active voice. Sparse info filtered into action.
Jack Jackson’s hair flopped over his blue eyes. He sipped his martini and smiled, pursing his lips, hiding his gold tooth. Beth touched his arm.
Narrator’s statement. Be extremely careful with this technique. Easy to slip into telling and not showing.
Beth glanced at her feet, as if trying to hide her disappointment.
Action. “Action is character.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
While Lisa’s husband stared at his empty wineglass, she rubbed Jon Jackson’s inner thigh.
Association
He shoved his rusty 1969 VW gear; it lurched and coughed, exhaust cloud rising to the treetops.
Interior dialogue — revealing character’s thoughts.
Example A: What a gorgeous man! Maybe I can find that sweater he’s wearing in Jack’s size and get it for his birthday. It would look great on him!
Example B: What a gorgeous man! Maybe, if we hit it off, I can get his phone number and we can go out next week when Jack is visiting his mother.
Speech
“I was bitten by a dog once.”
“I hate snakes.”
“I know what you want and I can give it to you.”
“You ain’t gonna believe this.”
Other’s thoughts or comments
“Jack thinks he’s cool, but you should’ve seen him last night.”
Archetypes. Typical characters, often with a symbolic function, may be useful to represent something; for example, the big unfeeling oilman who seems bigger than life. Usually Archetypes are minor characters. Used too much and they can erode the story’s sense of reality.
Stereotype. Shallow, flat, no depth. Avoid.
Roman a clef, novel with a key. Real people disguised in fiction. Be careful. You must be able to add, subtract, and deviate from the real character.
While research and learning is essential, trying to actually become smarter than you are can potentially cause problems. You may end up having your brilliant main character acting like a buffoon. (Maybe this explains all the great literature about seriously defective people.)
Write what you know. Likely, you know yourself better than you know the hotdog vendor. So writing from your point of view will likely be easier than writing from the vendor’s viewpoint. Unless of course you sell hotdogs for a living. Then you are particularly suited for the task.
All your characters are you. You are part of humanity. Even if you hate yourself, try to “love” your characters (who hate themselves).
The further afield you tread from yourself, the better actor you must become. If a character is almost nothing like you, you must become that person while you are writing. When changing characters, change your view, change who you are. When your main character transforms into a slightly different person as a result of his or her experiences, then write from that transformed viewpoint. (See sections on Point of View and Style.)
Allegorical: Willy Loman, David Brooks, Alice Love Hunt, Boo Radley. If you work too hard contorting your character’s name, you risk making the allegory fake, an obvious manipulation. On the other hand, the name can be obvious and work perfectly.
Suggestive: Nurse Ratched, Billy Bibbet, Ben Dover.
Characterization Activities:
Describe someone you know in excessive detail, then isolate important traits using just a few words.
Combine two people you know into one. Describe this new person.
Write a characterization list (my least favorite, but useful): physical attributes and history, distinguishing features, style of dressing, schooling, upbringing, formative influences, job, and so on.
Character Activities:
What are your character’s inner conflicts, quirks, idiosyncrasies?
What causes your character the most stress? What is most likely to change your character?
Character in Conflict Activities:
Character A wants something but an internal conflict keeps her from getting it (at least right away).
(Common in numerous fiction guides and the most popular activity in my workshops.) Character A wants something character B does not want to give.
