Creating Complex Characters

I’ve started reading and editing the first book I published with Kensington Publishers (finally got the rights back). It’s the one book I’ve written that’s gotten the most awards, so I didn’t think that I would need to edit or change very much, but I did want to read it through and update it a bit before I re-released it to the world. But in doing so, I’ve realized something:

I’ve got amazingly interesting and complex characters in there!

The wonderful thing, though, is that while they are complex and even seemingly contradictory (my heroine is both shy and outspoken), there is terrific back story which completely explains why they are the way they are.

Now, if you know me, I don't usually toot my own horn like this. The funny thing is this is the first book I wrote and I had no idea what I was doing. I really don't know how I ended up with characters like this! Reading and editing this book--which I've completely forgotten it's been so long since I wrote and read it--is a process of discovery for me.

 

Luckily, I didn't dump the characters' back stories in there, but sprinkled them in judiciously. I gave the reader just the information they need to know when they need to know it—no more, no less: touches of why the heroine is so shy; what makes her open her mouth and promptly put her foot into it. (With a tendency to do that, do you wonder that she would rather hide behind potted plants than put her self forward to speak to people? She’s an intelligent girl. She knows where her weakness lies, knows that she has trouble controlling her tongue.)

The point is that these are fully-formed, interesting people. Their childhoods molded who they are at the beginning of the book.

Your characters are that way too.

You just need to make sure you know it. And you know what that childhood was like. What was it that formed your characters into who they are? What were the big events which shaped them? What did their parents tell them—or not tell them—about themselves which shapes their self-perception?

I’m reminded of the example used so often by Michael Hauge when he talks about the “hero’s wound”. Each of us, Hauge says, has a wound which we carry around with us from childhood or young adulthood which shapes the way we see the world and ourselves. He gives the example of the movie “Good Will Hunting” where the hero was told as a child by his father that he was stupid and would never amount to much. The child believed his father, naturally, and so never realized that he was a mathematical genius who had the potential to do amazing things. This “knowledge” that he was stupid and worthless shaped his life and what he became of himself. It took the great Robin Williams who played his therapist to convince him that he could do more, be more. It took the story for him to learn to get beyond the wound inflicted by his father.

So, too, does my heroine, Teresa, have a wound that keeps her from controlling her tongue. She knows she should not be so outspoken, but doesn’t think she’s able to control it, so instead she hides from social interactions as much as a girl who is being presented to society can.

Now, as I said before, it's been ten years since I wrote the book, and therefore since I last read it, so I don’t remember how she gets beyond her wound, how she grows out of it, but I’m sure she must. And I will continue to read and edit my way through to find out how.

So, when you create characters, do you explore their background? Do you find their wounds? What tools do you use to do so? Here's a link to the Hauge Worksheet (and others--they're all bundled together in an Evernote Notebook).