Character

[Hey_jude]

"A writer should create living people; people, not characters. A character is a caricature."

Ernest Hemingway

What makes a character great?
It’s a simple question, one in which we all have different opinions on. First of all, a character has to be memorable, which in a way is the same as being great. The character needs to be real, in other words believable, it needs to have a certain charm, a certain something that makes the readers generally care about them. This certain something doesn’t necessarily have to be a talent or trait, in fact there are numerous examples in literature of characters we truly have no reason to like or even much care about (take Kathy and Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights or even Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind) These characters have been remembered and stand out to the rest of the writing world as great. They’ve become not just a character, they’ve become real, so real and believable that we no longer classify them as fiction. To us, they are real, and we talk about them not as characters but as people.
As writers we write for numerous different reasons.
To express opinions, to open new gateways to other worlds, to create a world in which we and the readers can get lost, where anything can happen. Face it, we all write for one of these reasons in mind, but primarily the writer’s job is to entertain. And lurking behind every one of the reasons above, is the writer’s fear and the determination to met this goal of enchantment. It may not be a conscious feeling but it’s there inside every writer all the same. And there’s always this little part of us that’s terrified that we won’t met this goal.
Of course any writer worth his or her salt knows that a story cannot survive on plot alone. Frankly, a story is nothing without characters to populate it’s setting whether it be animals, aliens or nature itself. Characters can be everywhere, they don’t necessarily have to be of the human variety, but however you do it, most characters whether human or not will have the same human emotions in order for the readers to empathize with them and be drawn into the story.
For example, a story about a tree would be meaningless if the tree was simply that, a tree without feelings, thoughts of emotions. But if say the story was about a tree that was actually a magic tree, able to observe the world around it, who had memories of it’s early life as a seedling, and had emotions, yes, real human emotions. We would then be able to care about this ‘strange feeling tree, and the tragedies that could befall it, such as destruction of it’s forest, relocation, or the pollution surrounding it, to the happiness it feels when children climb it’s branches.
This simple tree is no longer a tree then, it’s a character and it’s real, perhaps not in reality, but certainly real to the reader.
The essence of creating great, memorable characters all hinges on making the reader care. Some writers may think that creating characters are easy... and that is true if you’re creating a two dimensional cliché who the readers will easily class as a stereotype and disregard within a few chapters.
Oh that doesn’t mean cliché characters will make a reader stop reading the book, especially if the story is interesting. They just won’t come away with the same feeling they would have if the characters had been more three dimensional instead of two.
In order to craft a truly believable character, you have to know them. That’s where character sketches come in. We’ve all made them at some point or other and most sketches contain general information and details about the character so the author doesn’t get lost within the writing or forgets say the eye colour of his or her main heroine.
That’s all fine and good, but in order to make the character stand out as a person, as real to the reader, you the writer needs to know this character inside and out. You have to be able to know how this character would react in a certain situation, their life story, their favourite hobbies and foods. A bunch of seemingly useless information that won’t necessarily be added into the prose itself, but makes all the difference in creating a successfully memorable character.
The reader needs to care about the character in more ways that one. They need to be able to empathize, they need to be able to know this character, especially if they’re spending days consuming 300 to 400 pages immersed in said character’s world.
The main key is to make sure your character is believable. This means that your character has depth, it isn’t just a walking cliché, it has history, feelings and emotions. Even the most unlikeable characters have certain traits and a good level of believability that makes the reader’s care enough to form an opinion about them.
And remember, not all bad guys are rotten to the core. Few people are, same as few people are perfect to the core. We have an equal balance of good and bad, it’s normal human nature.
Resist letting your characters fall into stereotypical traps of good guy versus bad guy. There are too many clichés floating out there, soiling what could have been promising stories with their mediocre.
Spend time with your character, delve into their past and their present, explore every little detail about them let your brain and imagination go into overdrive when creating a story for them.
There are numerous excellent exercises to use in order to get to know your character….some authors recommend interviewing your character, other’s suggest using character sketches. You can either create a basic character sketch for yourself or try looking for some downloadable ones online. Any good sketch contains just more than the physical attributes of the character, it contains the small details that makes up this character’s life, emotionally as well as physically.
Soon your character will take on a life of his or her own, generally with amazing results.

[Cheylyne]

All of this is so true. I want nothing more than to be able to create memorable and realistic characters. I'm the kind of person who spends hours and even days planning out my stories. But the one main area I spend most of my time planning out, is the characters for my stories. My characters are real to me, I know how they would react in different situations, I feel like I know them inside out...but the problem is that I don't know whether the readers can say the same or not.
Thanks Hey_jude for posting this! I can really relate to some of the things you've mentioned. I've really been working on avoiding cliche characters and trying to make them different, yet believable. Amazingly enough, my one character has 'taken on a life of his own' and I am really surprised by how real he has become. Thanks for the tips, I'll be sure to use them:)

[Hey_jude]

I'm glad they helped...I think as writers we've all struggled (myself included) with creating believable and memorable characters. WHen a character takes on a life of it's own, and seems more like a person than a fictional character, it's just an amazing feeling...and the realization of success is certainly worth all the hard work put in at the beginning:)