Strong Characters

I have noticed in real life as well as in novels that strong characters attract other strong characters. If you want your protagonist to be kick-ass, make sure that the people around your character are the same way. You can’t have a strong protagonist surrounded by weak-willed, uninteresting people. It doesn’t work in terms of plot and character development and it just doesn’t make sense. Likewise, you can’t have strong side characters trying to support a weak protagonist.

In real life, strong people are surrounded by other strong people. I don’t mean to suggest that they are the same kinds of strong. They usually aren’t. You can have a loud-mouthed person with a very soft-spoken person, but who is steely-minded and stubborn like no one else. There are many kinds of strength.

If you see someone who appears strong with someone who is subservient and submissive, what you have is someone who is pretending to be strong, but isn’t really. If that person were really strong, then guess what? They would be strong enough to attract other strong people, and they would want strong people around them to challenge them and make them grow. That’s what real strong people do. They’re not afraid of anyone, and they like people who demand more of them.

When you have a strong character, you usually have a character who makes things happen, who wants and demands that the world change to be better. But be aware that there are strong supporting characters, as well. There are people whose strength is to follow, but who follow while asking questions. Not everyone wants or needs to be the leader, the one who is in front, drawing fire, so to speak.

Really strong characters will have conflicts with each other because they  see the world differently. they may not necessarily fight or yell at each other, but they express themselves.

And then there are the strong characters who simply endure what life brings to them. This is a difficult kind of strength to write, but it exists. When I see people like this, they are not always the ones who talk about what endurance is, but as a writer, it is important to make sure that a character like this is given some kind of voice, so she doesn’t appear weak.