Hi, and welcome to my writing lab, where I try and rummage through my brain for insights and advice on the art of writing I’ve practiced, both for pay and for fun, for the past thirty years or so.
For the past two editions of the lab, I’ve discussed the process of prewriting, or the essential assembling of ideas and structure that kicks off the entire writing process. After discussing some of the basics behind prewriting and then taking a look at how I’ve developed stories over the years, let’s spend this weekend discussing character development.
[AUTHOR’S NOTE:] While the advice I give here is geared mostly toward fiction writing, it can easily be applied to nonfiction as well. You likely will just need to sprinkle some research over it, lol1.
On Prewriting, Part 3: Character Development Bodybuilding in your head
Dogs are friendly souls with emotions who can be dear companions and even family to us, but they’re not reading our stories. As much as the dastardly chat bots and AI entities crawling across the Internet might suck in endless numbers of stories in an attempt to recreated them2, there’s no way they are consuming and enjoying them in the way we do3. In the end, we are homo sapiens writing stories for homo sapiens, so it is only natural for these stories to be populated with humans, or at least characters who are acting like humans. We relate to people and want to see what happens to them. Human or human-appearing characters are at the center of our stories because we want to see people like us and their experiences.
But we don’t want to just meet people. We want to learn about them, follow their stories, root for them. So to do this, as we consider the premises of the stories we tell, we need to know how to create characters we can build stories around.
Molding Characters
You probably have a basic idea of the people who will be part of your story at the beginning when you develop the premise. But as you go further along in the creative process, you get to know these characters better. First you meet them, and then you start to have a dialogue with them, just like meeting real people for the first time. You have to ask them some questions; it’s a getting to know you process.
The question is, what do you need to know about them? What information do you need to know about these characters – especially main characters – to get you interested in them?
Role/Motivation
What role does each of the characters play? Who is your protagonist (the main character)? Who is your antagonist (the one who opposes the main character)4? Is the character a mentor, helper, or love interest5? You might have already sorted this out in the process of coming up with the premise, but you’ll need to solidify it by this point.
You also need to sort out the motivation and goals of your characters, especially your main character/protagonist. We need to know why we should care about them. Oftentimes, you will have a main character with multiple goals and both short and long-term goals.
For example, let’s take the main character of my debut novel, The Holy Fool – newspaper columnist Samuel “Sonny” Turner6. Early in the book, his main motivation, given to him by his mentor, editor Gus Pulaski, is finding out whether the owner of the newspaper he works at, the Chicago Journal, is planning on selling the newspaper to someone likely to strip it for assets. Once he confirms this is, in fact, happening, his focus shifts to seeing if he, with the help of his fellow staff, can possibly stop the sale.
However, it becomes clear that he has other goals, as well. He has what he considers a big story involving the ongoing war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and yet he finds himself in conflict with both the owner of his paper, who doesn’t see it as a proper story, and with Sonny’s mentor, who sees the value of the story but believes the preservation of the paper should come first. Sonny finds himself becoming attracted to a co-worker even though it is at a turbulent and inconvenient time for him. Meanwhile, in the long-term, Sonny realizes the old ways of journalism he was taught by his mentors are dying out, and he begins to consider whether there might be a better way to report on the world around him than the way he’s always done it. Now we’ve got a bit of complexity around him, something of interest.
However, this can be done just as well around side characters. One example from The Holy Fool was Casey Barnes, an African American employee of the Chicago Journal who works in the newspaper’s Washington, D.C. office. Casey is a lifelong D.C. resident, born and raised. He wants to properly report on his home, in a way that’s authentic rather than glad-handling. So, he avoids the typical D.C. cocktail parties and attempts to gain influence. He talks to the people on the ground, the grunts who make the nation’s capitol work. And through that, he becomes a journalist’s journalist7.
Backstory
For someone who is a massive fan of world-building8, the idea of developing a back story or background for these characters is essential.
I am very much a believer in the “iceberg” concept of back story and background, where you develop a lot of information and story even though the reader might only see five or ten percent of your work, just like ships will only see five or ten percent of the icebergs they have to avoid.
Even if your reader is not quite sure of what a character’s entire story is, and you might never reveal all of this story, it is vitally important you understand what it is so you can fully understand the character, and all of their intricacies. You need to understand what they have gone through, what drives them, and why they seek what they seek. It’s your job as a writer to reveal just enough of this story so they are motivated to see what will happen next.
Personality
What are the strengths and weaknesses of your characters, especially your main characters? To make them realistic, to make them more breathing people and less Mary Sues9, you have to include both.
When I started to put together the idea for my book The Yank Striker, I had a main character, DJ Ryan, who was about as different from me as any character I have ever written. I was inspired by the past athletes, highly successful ones like Michael Jordan and Tom Brady, people who were focused on excellence to the point of obsessiveness, so the idea of having someone who could be successful in one area of their lives while having tunnel vision shutting out other things seemed to fit. And yet, while he’s very successful as a football player, as a soccer player he’s still learning and has to measure himself against opponents with more experience and skills that he doesn’t have. These contradictions can add depth and originality to your characters.
Also, these characters, like actual people, can have true contradictions. While DJ has a problematic relationship with his father, he very much shares his hair-trigger temper. However, while his father’s temper is triggered by disrespect to him, DJ’s is triggered by injustice to other people, especially those who find it difficult to fight back.
Character Arc
Finally, there’s the important character arc, or the progress the character makes toward their goals. What are the internal conflicts (moral choices, ethical quandaries, self-doubts) they have to face? What about external conflicts, like obstacles human or otherwise, that get in their way?
Although we like to talk about positive character arcs, remember the journeys your characters take could be triumphant. They can also be tragic, or even ambiguous. Regardless of the path you choose, you have to have a clear realization or resolution at the end of their story.
Next Time…
Next month, we’ll get into plot development. There are some writers out in the world who believe you should just start writing and follow wherever their whims take them. (I’ll talk about these “pantsers,” as in seat-of-their-pants writers, as part of the next installment.) However, I’m of the opinion you should have a rough idea of where a story is going before you head out onto the story road. We’ll talk about how all the different ways you as a writer can make the journey.
I’ll see you later, then.
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- A piece on proper research will definitely have to be a selection for a future Writing Lab piece in this series. Feel free to make any other topic suggestions for a Writing Lab piece in the comments. ↩︎
- #copyrightinfringement ↩︎
- #bulterianjihad ↩︎
- Fun fact – this does not necessarily have to be a human; it could be a force of nature, an aspect of society, or maybe even the protagonist himself if you are really tricky. Just make sure if it’s not human, you throw in some personification to make that non-human being a bit more relatable. ↩︎
- For goodness sake, make the love interest their own individual person with their own interests and desires. It shouldn’t be some Manic Pixie Dream Girl creation intended only to support and fuel the protagonist (look the term up, kids). ↩︎
- Also the main character of its in-production sequel. ↩︎
- He plays a big part in the sequel set in 2024-? (the original is set in 2008-2009). ↩︎
- Ohhhh, we’re going to get into it in a later edition of this Writing Lab, trust me. I love building worlds. ↩︎
- This is what a Mary Sue is. ↩︎