Ten Ways to Create Unforgettable Characters

TEN WAYS TO CREATE UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTERS

My oldest son and his friends used to play Dungeons and Dragons back when it was a game that came in a box with dice, a game board and little metal game figures—a pre-digital version. (We painted pictures of it on the walls of our cave.)

From what I observed while refilling their bowls of Fritoes and bean dip, it appeared that each of the boys had a character, a warrior who possessed all manner of weapons, spells and powers.

Apparently, the game consisted of dispatching these characters into dank and dusty caverns  in search of treasure. Or out to do battle with the requisite fire-breathing dragon guarding a creepy castle stuffed to the parapets with gold.

How, exactly, I was coerced into playing the game myself is still a matter of hot debate in our family. (I’m thinking some sort of out-of-body experience.) But there did come a day when I sat with six pre-teen boys and asked, “Ok, who am I—who’s my character?” I assumed I’d be some sort of warrior princess, armed with spear and sword or maybe a sorceress with a pocket full of toad’s earlobe and hair of aardvark.

“You’re nobody, Mom,” my son responded, “…yet.”

Seems I had to build my character. And that construction consisted of a maddening sequence of rolling the dice to determine the level of my strength, what equipment I had, what weaponry I could take into battle—even what life form I was. That was the deal killer. When it turned out I was an asthmatic troll with a slingshot, I bailed.

You see, I wanted to go on quests and adventures, slay dragons, find treasure—maybe even do a little side-jobbing as a looter/pillager. I did not want to waste an afternoon just getting to the point where I was able to engage the game.

You can see where this is going, can’t you.

There are several clear parallels between playing Dungeons and Dragons and writing a novel. The most obvious, of course is that a writer must know the characteristics of his hero before he sends the poor schlep out to fight the bad guy. But equally obvious is the fact that the writer can’t expect to back a dump truck up to Loyal Reader and unload all the details of the hero into her lap before he allows her to play the game.

We must know something about our characters before we begin their story—true. But the key word in that sentence, folks, is “something”—NOT “everything.” The tricky part, as anyone who’s ever written a novel will tell you, is that characters change as the story unfolds. Sometimes, perhaps even most of the time, they surprise you. They grow, reveal passions and foibles, interests and strengths, quirks, ticks, weaknesses and amazing humor you never imagined they had when you first typed “It was a dark and stormy night.”

Consequently, it’s not only a bad idea to unload the whole character-trait truck in Chapter One—you can’t. You don’t know all the character’s traits yet. What you should do, and all you can do, is give readers just enough information to get them started and reveal more and more as the tale plays out.

There are as many different methods of designing a novel as there are novelists. Some writers start with a character and build a story around her. Others start with a story and come up with characters to execute the plot. Still others start with theme, a point they want to make, and design a story and characters to convey that message. There even are a handful of writers who sit down at the keyboard and type “It was a dark … ” with absolutely no idea if it ever stops raining. But it doesn’t really matter where you start, at some point in the process you WILL have to come up with characters and it is your job to make those characters compelling, interesting and realistic or Loyal Reader will nod off and start drooling on page three.

I’m not here to tell you that great characters are more important to your novel that a great plot. The best characters in the world eventually have to DO something. But I am 100 percent certain that if you can create characters the reader cares passionately about, characters who grab him by the lapels and drag him into the story to live it with them, characters Loyal Reader still considers family years later—you, my friend, have captured lightening in a mason jar.

How do you do that? How do you design great characters and then express those characters in your story? There are dozens of ways, of course, but I’ve narrowed my own list down to ten. (Why ten? For the same reason Jules Verne didn’t write Nineteen Thousand Five Hundred and Seven Leagues Under the Sea and God didn’t give us the Eleven Commandments. As I said last week, some things just is what they is.)

I believe you reveal the personality of your characters through:

1. Name

2. Back story

3. Physical description

4. Actions

5. Dialogue

6. Thoughts

7. Abilities and skills

8. What he wants most, fears most, loves most and most despises

9. The reactions of others to the character

10. The character’s reaction to other people

We’ll plop the suitcase filled with these ten elements up on the bed next week and start unpacking it.

Write on!

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