Characters Make the Story

Imagine Oliver Twist being anything other than a poor orphan. Imagine Uriah Heep in David Copperfield being a good guy who really was humble. Imagine Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice being a total harpy. Changes the story, right?

Right.

So, we writers have to pay close attention to those characters. That means their physical descriptions, their personalities, their backgrounds, how they relate to people around them, and their names.

Crafting Your Characters

You have a great plot. You’ve written the perfect opening where Billy kills Johnny – an opening that will hook a prospective reader instantly. (See my post “How Do You Get Started?” here.) Now you sit back and think, “Who the heck is Billy? Who is Johnny?” Time to craft those characters to bring them to life for your readers.

Profile Your Characters

Your readers need to be able to identify with the characters in your writing. To do that, those readers need a profile of each character. That profile should include:

• Gender and how it affects and is a part of the life they live (this is true even in these days when gender has become such an issue)

• Age (helps readers better understand a character’s life experiences, reasoning ability, and personality)

• Race / ethnicity, both being items that can shape a character’s personality and how that character interacts with others

• Cultural background (helps create a back story for your character, telling practices they uphold and what they believe in)

• Basic physical appearance (height, body type, facial structure, and physical limitations to help you write how that physical appearance affects them)

• Where the character is from (hometown, state, country), with mentions of their childhood, economic situation, and lifestyle

• Interaction with others (Who are their friends and associations, their enemies? Are they outgoing or loners?)

• Skills, talents, hobbies, and interests – this might include their favorite author, even (one of my main characters is an Ayn Rand fan)

Remember, elements in that profile will also serve as your characters’ motivations, an answer to “Why did Billy kill Johnny?”

You don’t need to state each item in your narrative, but you need to keep them in your mind and allude to them as you write. A good tip is to keep a pad of paper handy to jot down profiles of your characters or type them in a separate document on your computer. Some writer software has a special place for you to list your characters and their profiles. I have an extensive Excel 2003 spreadsheet that tracks character descriptions, ages, and key events in which they are involved throughout the manuscripts written so far.

How Dialogue Can Show That Profile

Dialogue is the perfect vehicle to demonstrate your characters’ profile, since they are talking directly to your reader. They express their personalities more clearly than pages of narrative text. You can reveal other aspects of a character through that dialogue. A deep thinker will say something like, “There are friends, and then there are friends.” A more simple character will say, “They’re not friends. They’re just here for the free food.”

Vocabulary, wording, speech rhythm, complexity, and accent are other factors that you can use in dialogue to convey a character’s profile. One article I saw on character development says that each character’s dialogue should be so individual that readers could tell them apart without the character speaking being revealed. Frankly, I think that’s excessive, but the choice is yours.

Copying from People You Know

I see this tip a lot. It can be tricky, though. You may end up getting sued if your character is too recognizable as being patterned after someone in real life, especially if that person is in the public eye or being portrayed in a negative way.

Safe choices:

• Spouse

• Siblings

• Parents

• Neighbors

• Co-workers

• That friendly librarian or store clerk

• The mail carrier

• The guy or gal who makes donuts at the local donut shop

• A favorite literary character or two

Blend traits of several of these choices into once character or spread them across several characters. Jim O’Connell, the hero in Hammil Valley Rising, is a blend of my husband, me, and a few literary characters.

Why Bother

Knowing your characters well will help your writing flow and keep you from having a character do something he or she shouldn’t be. One of the biggest issues I see with a lot of writing is characters that act contrary to the nature the author has given them. Yes, people have sudden changes of heart (it seems to happen a lot in movies on The Hallmark Channel), but an evil person doesn’t suddenly become a philanthrope, like Ebenezer Scrooge (shame on Dickens!). It took my heroine Rose Wilson in Hammil Valley Rising a year (and 200 thousand words) to learn who Jim O’Connell really was.

Readers will remember truly compelling, vivid characters long after they have finished reading a novel or watching a movie. My guess is that you are thinking of such a character right now. Scarlett O’Hara from Gone With The Wind, Dagny Taggart from Atlas Shrugged, Jean Valjean from Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, or even Charles Dickens’ title character from David Copperfield jump into my mind.

One thing to avoid: using great character profiles to compensate for weak plot or a so-so writing style. (Yes, I actually saw someone recommend that you do this.) It can be as annoying as seeing a movie that has as its one redeeming feature great special effects, a great movie score, or a tour-de-force acting job. Everything has to work together in balance.

More Tips

Keep it real, and you will keep your readers coming back for more. A key is giving your characters a problem to overcome based on a strong need, longing, or desire. Survival is top of the needs list. It is accomplished by keeping a job, marrying someone rich, or otherwise securing the means to provide food and shelter. Get even more specific, though. Jim needs to protect his business from those who seek to destroy him. Rose, his neighbor, needs to learn how to make a living on a ranch and how to tell who is really on her side.

Avoid overdoing the quirks. They have become a cliché, especially in detective novels, movies, and TV series. Sherlock Holmes has many, such as a Persian slipper that holds his pipe tobacco. Hercule Poirot is fastidious in his personal habits and touts his “little gray cells” as the secret of his success. Lt. Columbo smokes cigars, wears rumpled clothes and a raincoat no matter the weather, and keeps saying, “One more thing.” And on and on. Quirks are not the same as habits, though. Rose has her cup of tea at breakfast and at other times during the day. Jim likes to gaze at the stars on a clear night. Not too quirky. Oh, and if you do add quirks, make sure they fit your character, possibly revealing part of that character’s back-story. Sid Minot has an oily, sly personality and a smile that can send shivers down your spine. It comes from his years of learning to get his way through back channels.

More Character Aspects

Your character is going to have an occupation of some kind. And by that I mean something he or she does as a regular thing, even though it may not pay. Long-term student even qualifies.

Some common (to the point of being totally overdone) occupations:

• Doctor, nurse, or medical examiner

• Lawyer (both defense and prosecutorial)

• Detective (as part of a police force or private)

• Actor or otherwise involved in entertainment

• Advertising / marketing agent

• Realtor or construction worker

And then there are wizards, fairies, witches, warlocks, and other fantasy character types.

Try for something a bit different, like accountant, economist, art dealer, or even a salesperson at a large retail store. Some articles think that the profession indicates personality type, but that’s a bit cliché. I’ve known all sorts of people in each of those professions. Not all accountants are dull. Not all economists talk in totally esoteric terms. Not all art dealers are scheming wheeler dealers, and not all salespeople at those large retail stores are out to push you to buy something you don’t want. Give the reader something fresher than that. And make it memorable.

Do it with details. Make that art dealer an expert on Vermeer or that salesperson a philatelist who in his or her spare time is chasing down rare stamps. Just be sure to make it believable, which will involve some research on your part.

The character also has to fit the type of fiction you’re writing. If it’s fantasy, the sky’s the limit, including such common mythical creatures as giants, goblins, trolls, and unicorns. Science fiction gives you a lot of flexibility, too, depending on how true to real life or how “far out” you want to be. Otherwise, stay with professions that are in the real world.

Of course, you can always twist things up by making that accountant be someone terrible at math but who went into accounting to try to fix that. Or your economist could be someone who has filed for bankruptcy several times only to become rich again. And really twist things up by having that economist leave his profession, buy an island, and start up his own nation there.

Character Naming – What a Pain!

What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, or so Shakespeare declares in Romeo and Juliet. A famous line that has a lot of truth in it. In fact, the names Romeo and Juliet have come to symbolize passionate, doomed love. Sigh.

You might be tempted to slap any old name on your characters when you start writing, but don’t. Use a placeholder such as “A” or “MC1.” As you write and your characters develop, you can then select a fitting name.

Why delay? For one thing, you might miss replacing that starter name with the new name here and there, causing reader confusion. For another, the name, if it fits the character, helps you write about that character. Who knows how long Charles Dickens pondered before coming up with “Uriah Heep” and “Mr. Murdstone.” They sound as nasty as they are. But David Copperfield is a name that sounds innocent and hopeful (and ultimately successful). Huckleberry Finn embodies the spirit of that boy who rafts down river with the runaway slave. Captain Ahab is a name befitting a madman after a white whale.

I plucked the names of my hero Jim O’Connell and heroine Rose Wilson in Hammil Valley Rising out of thin air, wanting ones that were easy to remember and very down-to-earth, like my characters were. The name Rose was a play on words, having to do with a special rose cultivar whose development Jim funds. Other names were chosen with more care, especially Peter Thorn. Easy, memorable, but allowing for a great bit of wordplay. He starts out as a thorn in everyone’s side, plus the idea of a thorn relates to the rose cultivar. And then there’s Henry Baum, whose name means “wood” (or some say “forest” – same thing, essentially) and fits the fact that he makes things from wood, including musical instruments and kitchen cabinets.

One article I’ve seen on naming characters talks about the sound of certain letters. The author claims that a hard k sound is supposed to suggest strength and courage, whereas h and r and vowels suggest weakness, hypocrisy, and even evil, and l and n could sound sexy or convey feminine weakness. I remain doubtful of this, though. Rose is far from weak, hypocritical, or evil. Nor is Henry. Not all “expert” advice is realistic.

But one tip is definitely true: pick the right name for your characters. Yes, it can be a pain, but it will pay off.

Tagging Your Characters

No, this isn’t about a kids’ game on the playground. It’s about repeated verbal descriptors that identify a character and help him stick in the reader’s mind. These descriptors can be certain habitual gestures such as an eye twitch or clearing the throat before speaking or certain words that character uses such as saying, “Gee, I don’t mean to intrude” when he or she is clearly meaning to intrude. They can also be related to the character’s appearance or behavior. A classic example that I’ve seen used in various articles is Uriah Heep describing himself and his mother as “humble” while he rubs his clammy hands. Another often-cited example is Sherlock Holmes with his violin and declaring, “The game is afoot.”

Various options for these tags include:

• Voice quality (hoarse, whiny, gravelly, raspy, lilting, singsong, etc.)

• Gestures and body language (twirling a strand of hair, hand wringing, throat clearing, shifting from foot to foot, shoving hands in pants pockets, not being able to look someone in the eye, etc.)

• Dialect and speech mannerisms

• Physical descriptions such as hair (color, style) and clothing (jeans, Goth, Steampunk, ultra conservative, patched, dirty, etc.)

You can sway the readers by describing red hair as either “carrot red” or “blood red.” Rose has dark auburn, a rich color often seen as sensuous. A minor male character has silver gray hair tied back in a ponytail with a black silk ribbon. This hair helps someone pick him out from a crowd but also gives the character a somewhat foppish aura. Of course, my American Indian characters have black hair. There are also bleach blonds, honey blonds, dark browns, and light browns in curly, straight, and wavy styles.

Think your characters through. The more you write about them, the more you’ll know them, and the details will start to come naturally. You may find yourself doubling back to add in some of those details in the earlier mentions of those characters. Worth your time.

Killing Your Characters

There is a hierarchy among your characters – main, secondary, occasional, and cameos. Some are killable, and others aren’t, or so many literary “experts” say. They claim that main characters are in the “not killable” category. But it’s open season on the others. In reality, killing your characters is totally at your discretion as the author. However, you have some things to consider before you bump off any of them, especially the main characters.

1. Method

You can go traditional (sickness, shooting, stabbing, choking, poison, accident, etc.) or offbeat (complex situations that often mean the victim has to be in just the right spot at the right time). The genre in which you are writing will help determine this as well as how you do the deed.

• Romantic fiction – less detail and more traditional. (Rodney put his hands around her throat and squeezed until he knew she was dead.)

• Horror – the gorier and more offbeat, the better. (Rodney slashed her throat with his long-bladed knife and laughed as the blood spurted from her carotid artery, lapping up the drops that splashed on his face.)

• SciFi – high tech and unusual. (Rodney injected the nanobots into her throat and watched as they multiplied into a bulge in the side of her neck, slowly suffocating her.)

• Murder mystery – a bit of gore, realistic, and possibly a bit offbeat or startling. (The woman’s body was lying on the floor, showing clear signs of strangulation. Rodney just shrugged as the Police Detective studied first the body and then him, saying, “The person who finds the body is often the killer.”)

• Action/Adventure – same as murder mystery but a bit more “active.” (Rodney stepped back as the Police Detective entered the room to examine the woman’s body, seeing clearly the marks of two strong hands on the throat. Rodney took a step to run away, and the detective grabbed him. A knockdown, drag out fight ensued.)

The British murder mystery series Midsomer Murders is full of situations that rely on improbabilities – that victim being in exactly the right spot at the right time, etc. It works for them. The series is intended to be a somewhat lighthearted approach to characters biting the big one. If you don’t intend humor, think through your character’s death very carefully. Make it believable. (The more I work out my own death scenarios, the more I see these improbabilities in TV and literature.)

2. Approach

You can dive right in and kill off a character in your book’s opening – a popular technique in an age when writers have to have a “grab the reader” opening in order for a publisher to take interest in their opus. Or you can build up to it, being careful not to give too much away. Sometimes you might be rolling along and see the perfect opportunity to whack a character. Just be sure you’ve done the right setup. Going back and rewriting earlier scenes (or even an earlier manuscript that’s part of the same series) might be necessary.

Thinking ahead is definitely key, but you can always go barreling along with your writing and then back track and add in necessary set up items later. For example, an important scene in the first chapter of my manuscript for Beyond Hammil Valley (part 3 of Freelan: The Dawning) has a main character killing an occasional character who first appears in the manuscript for The Hammil Valley Effect (part 2 of Freelan: The Dawning). The entire scenario was given careful thought. I had to have everything work logistically as well as fitting the characters. What I found is that part 2 hadn’t really set the stage for this event (my character had to have the right skills to carry out the killing), so I had to go back to that manuscript and do some additions and editing, an advantage of not having the manuscripts in publication yet. I also killed off a main character (protagonist) in part 3. Again, the scenario had to be given a lot of thought, with the stage being set in advance. Not to give away too much, he pissed off the wrong person (also a protagonist) who had friends “in all the wrong places.” Another example spans several manuscripts (as of the writing of this post, but things could change). A secondary character dies of a health condition that is diagnosed in Beyond Hammil Valley. (I’m a non-discriminatory character whacker! No level in the hierarchy is safe.)

3. Risks

Your biggest risk in killing off a main character is that your fans may not be the least bit happy about it. In fact, they may revolt.

A couple examples:

• Agatha Christie killed off Hercule Poirot, had to bring him back.

• Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes, had to bring him back.

Sometimes, though, you have to do what you have to do. A main character’s death might be needed to make a point, such as when bestselling author Ayn Rand killed off a heroine in one of her novels (I don’t want to specify, it would be a spoiler). You may have to kill off a main character to move your story along. The death of that main character may spur another character to revenge, for example.

Killing off characters willy-nilly is not the best answer. Nor is killing one off because you’re bored with him. I would have loved to have kept that protagonist going, but frankly his time had come, plot wise, and I had his replacement lined up and ready to go – someone far more insidious. Know when your characters’ time has come, keep it believable, and make sure it fits your genre.

When a Minor Character Becomes Major

You’re typing along about a scene with a character that you intend to have a minor role in the story or novel and suddenly realize you’ve unearthed a real nugget of gold. Your minor character has become major! What do you do now?

Option 1: Rethink Your Plot

Finding a real nugget of gold (or winning millions in the lottery) can send your life in another direction. Realizing that a minor character has much more potential and could therefore be a major character can send your plot off into a different direction. You will need to decide if you want this redirection or not. If you do, you could find yourself discovering that nugget is part of a whole vein of gold, adding a whole new dimension to your story.

For example, one of my minor characters in the manuscript covering Year 14 of the Freelan Nation is a gang leader. His role in the manuscript grew from a brief mention to being a symbol of those who have been drawn in and destroyed by the false idea of utopia. I could, of course, change his fate so that he lives and becomes an inspiration to others also caught up in that idea and steering them away to reality. The decision on that is still in progress.

Option 2: Spin Your Character Off

Rather than disrupt your plot flow, you can opt to spin the character off or grow his/her role in a sequel. Just like some popular supporting characters in TV series have been spun off over the years into their own series (Rhoda Morgenstern of The Mary Tyler Moore Show was spun off into the show Rhoda and Phyllis from that same show was spun off into Phyllis). Your formerly minor character might now get his own novel or story.

Think of Tiny Tim growing up and becoming Ebenezer Scrooge’s new clerk, replacing Tim’s father who is now retired. Or what about the pirate Smee in Peter Pan going ashore and buying a pub (inn or public house)?

Bottom Line

Have fun with your characters and be open to them growing. You never know what treasure you’ll uncover.

Hope you found this helpful and have been inspired to start and/or continue writing!

See my article: Publisher Agent Fiction Genres Defined (complete with downloadable PDF).

Please check out my works in progress (WIPs). And thanks for reading.

Disclaimer: I get no compensation for links in this post or on my site to other sites and/or products.