Character Construction

November 7, 2008

Mary Rosenblum:  Nice to be here. And nice to be talking about my favorite topic tonight. Characters. I can’t say too much about characters. They are the soul of fiction and personal narrative and very few writers do them very well.
Speck:  Or hate 'em for not cooperating:--)
Mary Rosenblum:  So if you can create real characters that live and breathe you rise right to the top of the slush pile you find your personal narratives selling nicely. And, just to set this myth of 'non-cooperative characters' aside, characters ARE constructs and their cooperation  or lack thereof, is the author's doing and none other. What those non-cooperative characters actually do mean is that you created a character that does not work for your story you are a savvy enough writer to realize it, rather than just turning that character into a plot puppet.  

Most people start with plot puppets.  You simply make them do what the plot demands, even if their motivations seem completely incomprehensible to readers. And since real people behave in certain ways, when your characters do not, the readers think 'unreal' and they just don't care.

Info:  What about characters the remind a reader of someone else's character but is still different?  Would that be consider Plagerism?

Mary Rosenblum:  Well, info, everybody probably reminds someone of somebody else. Ideally you want to avoid creating a twin of a well known character from popular media. Someone who behaved much as Bart Simpson does but is call Carl Bagin, and doesn't have a father named Homer, but otherwise is the same, smart mouthed type of kid is fine. find a host of Tolkien clones with different names and slightly different costumes and pasts all over mediocre fantasy. But whether you start with the character and construct the story to suit, or start with the story and construct the character to suit, the story and character must match. If they do not, you either have a plot puppet or an uncooperative character.

 Now I’ve been doing this a long time. I 'try my characters on' if I begin with the story, until I find the right characters to serve that story.  If I come up with a cool character, I try on stories until I find the right story to suit that character. Think of it as dressing dolls. Okay, guys, don't think of it like that!  You really need the right fit.  You want a character who has his/her own agenda, but that agenda will be served by following your plot.  If you start with the character, find a plot that will serve his or her needs. If you start with the plot, find a character whose needs serve the story. It took me quite a few failed stories to realize sometimes you simply have to dump the MC and start over, OR you simply have to dump the plot and start over. I have done both.

Charge2charge: and if the character becomes kinda useless near the end they can get killed off or ride into the sunset?

Mary Rosenblum:  Charge if your main character is so unnecessary to the story that you can just dispose of him, you have a real problem. Unless your story is entirely plot driven, you're not going to engage readers.  Characters are the glue that holds the readers to the story most of the time.

Charge2charge: oh well I meant didn't mean the most important main characters, like other important main characters

Mary Rosenblum:  Sure, you can get rid of any character during the story, Charge. I tend to want the exit-stage-right to matter to the story, rather than have the character just wander off into the mist.  Of course, your minor characters, the 'spear carriers' can come and go as you need them. They're furniture basically. Well crafted furniture, but furniture nonetheless. You can provide some strong emotional drama through secondary characters that come and go in your story, as long as they matter to your POV character.

Charge2charge: what if the POV is third person?

Mary Rosenblum:  Doesn't make any difference as to POV, Charge. The same thing works in first or third.  If you're writing in first person, your first person narrator is most likely going to be around to the very end. But that's going to be your main character most of the time...not always.  Think about what is going to happen in your story...your plot.  Think about what your character needs in order to succeed.  Will the plot force that main character to achieve the end he/she needs to achieve?  Then your character is most likely a very good fit for the story. He can be totally unaware that ne needs to 'fix' something in himself. The plot can force him into situations where that 'flaw' gets fixed. And in the process, he helps resolve the central conflict. But if your character's flaw requires other actions in order to 'fix' it, that character may seem very 'reluctant' to engage with your plot. You may find yourself stumped because you're not sure how to make this character do what you need him to do.  Or you may create a personality that simply cannot do what you need that person to do.

 Maybe you create a loner who's cool, sexy, seems just right for your story. But the plot requires that person to cooperate with others and trust them with his life. Oops. You realize this person would never do that. So you can rewrite your plot so that our loner can handle the situation on his own.  Or maybe you give the character his pink slip and find someone who can trust the others.  What you don't want to do is to make that character do what is needed....anyway.

The absolute key to real characters is consistency. We act very consistently as humans. And we're all experts on humans. So when a character acts the way a real person would not, the readers shrug. Not real. This is why I suggest that you spend time with your character before you start the story. Or start the story so that you get the first scene down on paper and then stop. Think about this person. What does she need? How will she fit with the plot? Will she get what she needs? Does she NEED the story to get her what she needs?

 If your main character can fix her own problems without your silly plot, she's going to go off and do it. If  you sit down and analyze stories with strong characters, you'll usually find that the characters have a flaw which they have failed to resolve on their own.  It is through the actions of the plot that they are forced to resolve that flaw.  I see a lot of what I call 'comic book fiction' from novice writers. The writer has a cool idea, plots it out, and then sticks people in to make the scenes work. The people have no reality, they're two dimensional, just there to flee the monster, fight each other, speak the lines, generally make the plot move forward. They do what the plot requires and thus we never get any sense of who they are. Everyone starts like that.

Learning to craft real characters takes practice.  When I was starting out, I used to put my characters into scenes that weren't part of the story at all.  I created situations where my characters had to act and react, often making up scenes from the backstory I had created for them.  Not only did it give me practice with the character's voice as he or she spoke and thought, it allowed me to create situations that the characters reacted to, revealing emotion and their motivations.  It helped me create a fully dimensional chracter on the page when I started the real story.  And occasionally, it inspired a spin-off story, too.  

You really cannot know too much about your character. Make notes.  It’s not just eye color and hair color.  What were the significant events that this person remembers...the high and low points of his or her life?  You all have those moments in your own past...events that probably had no meaning for others, but had significant meaning for you. Create a few for your character. Especially if you plan to use this person in a novel, I would write out several of those scenes, really working to 'show' readers your character's personality. Don't tell, of course!

 One of the things that makes characterization hard is that there's no one thing that makes a character 'real'. It's a combination of things that all come together. It is your character's decisions, her actions, what he notices as he looks around, what he fails to notice, how she reacts to situations...all those things together plus many many more. The hard part, as novice writers, is that you KNOW these people. YOU see them in full color, three dimensionally.  It's hard to realize that this doesn't instantly and automatically translate to the page.  You have to create that three dimensional vision for the readers on the page quite intentionally.  Always be aware of your characters' motivations.  Everyone has 'surface' motivations -- get a good job, kill the evil king, become Captain of the Guard.  Everyone has hidden motivations; be better than my father, live up to my mother's expectations, prove that I really am worth something.  Those motivations are hidden from the CHARACTER. You need to make them visible to the readers though. And it is the hidden motivator that connects with your plot to bring about the flaw-repair that your main character...and your story...needs.

Let me give you an example.  You have a young man, a younger son, who was always seen by his father as the 'other kid' the failed son, the one who couldn't come close to living up to his brother's larger-than-life, football hero, status in Dad's eyes., And Older Brother died in Iraq.  So now Younger Brother is particularly aware of his 'failure' status. Dad is stuck with him.  So our character converges with the plot to end up in trouble, partly because the plot gives him a chance to show his Dad he's worth something. Only it backfires and as he ends up dealing with the resultant mess, he finds that he no longer needs to live up to Dad's expectations.

Info:  Sometimes I find I have trouble trying to find the right words to describe a scene or specific things. Ex would be wanting to show how angry a person is by expression and feeling like I don't have that one right word. Any suggestions

Mary Rosenblum:  My suggestion, info, is that you do a lot of people watching. Take notes. You  run into people who are clearly angry in public...yelling at someone, or quietly furious as they stand in that line at the counter. Ask yourself how you know and then write down your observations.  Set jaw, tight shoulders, pale face, clenched fists. The more you observe people (politely please!) the better you'll be at describing them to reveal emotion. I love parties. I love shopping malls. I love airports.  When we're not consciously hiding our emotions, we reveal a lot. As people congregate in places where other things occupy their minds -- airport, mall, etc -- you have a wealth of emotion to observe. I used to have lunch dates with two other writer friends in summer. We'd choose an open air cafe or take our lunch to a park bench and make up stories to suit every person that passed by.

We started with their body language and the emotions we observed, then we made up a quick 'backstory' for that person. It was a ton of fun and VERY good practice. We took about one to three minutes per person. I do it on my own if I'm bored and standing in line.   Everybody around me gets an interesting little backstory, heheh.  I try to base it on what I observe. It's excellent characterization practice. And a great way to keep from getting impatient in that long line.

Well, I hope this helped. Have a good weekend!