Building Great Unforgettable Characters:
Great characters can turn a mediocre plot into a great book. Most of you have heard that you shouldn’t write two-dimensional characters—but what does that mean? The easiest way to explain it is—Superman—from the comics (in the movie they gave him personality) He is “perfect”, so the reader can’t really relate. To a six-year-old perfect is cool. To an adult perfect is (a) impossible, (b) boring, (c) unbelievable, (d) two-dimensional, and (e) did I mention—Boring. Nor can your antagonist be pure evil. Even the Devil is charming. Something turns your character bad or evil, once he had parents, at some point he learned evil. Glimpses of the cause, while they don’t justify the behavior, give us insight to why they occurred.
Okay, then. How do YOU create these three-dimensional characters we are told are necessary, characters the reader can’t forget, characters they talk about at work or school the next day, characters they want to BE? The reason for the huge success of Harry Potter is that almost every child wants to be Harry—or one of his friends. He resonates with them, they feel his rejection, his fear. And yet he overcomes odds with help from others who become his friends. The reader’s deepest desire is fulfilled if he is Harry Potter.
Think about the formation of his character. The book did not open with a long description of Harry or his surroundings. It started with a sad, lonely Harry, doing his best to ‘be good’, but he just wasn’t good enough for his “muggle” relatives.
In adult fiction you need to show your readers your character’s feelings, beliefs, values, and traits. Ones that will resonate with the reader. Some writers mistake Flaws with creating a three-dimensional character. Often they fall into the two-dimensional trap because the flaw alienates the readers. They don’t care why the character is screwed up, they just don’t like him enough to finish the book.
I am going to use excerpts from a number of best-selling novels and explain how each of these builds characters.
1) Something was altered inside of her, and not just her moral compass. She felt different with him. She didn’t have to immediately know everything about this man she’d shared her bed with. She didn’t feel the need to demand answers about the obvious abuse he had suffered. For the first time in her life, she felt patient. The girl who had gotten kicked out of Sunday school for arguing with the teacher and driven her parents, her sister, and eventually her husband crazy with her unyielding desire to understand every last detail about everything on earth was finally learning to relax.
This single paragraph in the protagonist’s mind tells us a lot about the heroine. We see her growing, “learning to relax.” Most adults can emphasize with her. This paragraph came near the final the third of the book. It enhances and reinforces the reader’s connection.
2) Pescoli and Alvarez were seated in the two visitor’s chairs, while the principal, a slim woman with slightly pinched features and pale skin folded her hands over the desk. She sat up straight as if she had a metal rod up her spine; her blouse was crisply ironed; her brown sweater without a speck of lint or a bit of fuzz. Not one strand of highlighted hair out of place.
The terms neat as a pin and perfectionist and a little OCD flitted through Pescoli’s mind.
A great description of a minor character, by the way, but this principle is being observed through the protagonist’s eyes, her thoughts, so we learn about her character while seeing the principle and the room.
3) How did they do it day after day? Killing themselves for pointless jobs that ultimately lined someone else’s pockets. They sat in an endless snaking line only to get home to a ceaseless litany of needs. WHY? Why did so many people live like this?
Failure wasn’t a feeling; it was a taste in his mouth, an ache at the base of his neck, a frantic hum in his head.
These two paragraphs are inside the head of one of the bad guys near the beginning of the book. Haven’t most of us wondered at one time or another at the pointless waste of some people’s lives? And the second paragraph—how many have never tasted failure? So the “bad” guy isn’t that different from us. In many ways this increases the tension. Yet, while connecting with the reader on one level, as a whole thought the character seems arrogant, insensitive, disconnected. Not quite likable.
4) “I’m sorry, Mom.” Willow turned around then.
“I don’t want you to be sorry, Willow. I just want you to keep your promises to me.”
“I know. I just…” Willow dipped her head into her hand.
“I know. You want friends. You want people to like you. That’s why you lie to them, to me. That’s why you will break all your promises. We’ve been through this with the doctors, with each other. I know. But now it’s time to grow up, Willow. You are enough. You are exactly who you need to be. And anyone who doesn’t see that, who doesn’t like you for who you are…well, those people are not meant to be your friends.”
Willow worried a thread on her sleeve. Bethany knew That Willow couldn’t hear her. At that age nothing your mother said got through. But Bethany thought that if she kept saying it, one day it would sink in.
Every parent, everyone who has ever been a teen—can relate to this teenager’s angst seen through her mother’s eyes. As parents we’ve given advise that isn’t heeded. As teens—we all heard advise, ignored it, and then rued the consequences, filled with remorse. This is excellent characterization. We begin to understand both Willow and Bethany and like them both.
5) She wasn’t sure if she agreed with this. Death was life. Maybe it wasn’t the end people thought it was. Maybe it was worse than that. People did horrific, unspeakable things to one another. And there was so much pain. But it was just one part of this gorgeous, hideous, chaotic, and wonderful mosaic they experienced from the moment they drew their first breaths until they drew their last and beyond. And wasn’t it a gift, in some ways, to see all the colors, all the sharp and broken bits, the ones from which all others turned their eyes? According to the Kabbalah, every human soul is just a fragment of the great world-soul, just a tiny piece of the cosmos, linked to every other piece. Eloise liked the idea of this and felt that it could be true. And that was as close to faith as she thought she was apt to go.
This paragraph allows the reader to see Eloise’s internal beliefs, and how and why she formed them. The reader may not agree, but he understands.
6) “He was Prince Charming until I got pregnant, every girl’s dream. Handsome, wealthy, intelligent. Beyond that, you never see until it’s too late. It’s not until you get older that you realize kindness matters, the courage to love and be loved. All the rest of it is a lie.”
This is short and it was spoken by a minor character, but it very succinctly gives the reader an insight into who she is—disillusioned and wiser.
7) “Doesn’t make him a liar. Just makes his version of the truth questionable.”
Isn’t that what the truth comes down to? An agreement of variations? Think about your last family drama or the last fight you had with your spouse. What really happened? Who said what and when? Who was the instigator and who was the reactor? Is there an absolute truth, one that exists separately from the personal variations? Maybe. But maybe not. Quantum physics tells us that life is a series of possibilities existing side by side in any given moment; it is our choices that create our version of reality.
This line of dialog by a friend of the protagonist leads to our insight of her internal thought process regarding the statement. We learn so much about her in this paragraph. It makes her trait of questioning everything evident, her open-mindedness to see other’s perspective, AND her spiritual belief is stated. All in six lines.
8) He’d modulated his voice to sound sweet and pleading. She could actually see him tearing up. But those eyes were dead. The game was up; she knew that.
She’d been doing some reading. The sociopath has no real feelings. He does not experience guilt or remorse, love or empathy. He knows only his own needs and goals. But he’s a skilled mimic, a brilliant actor. And as easily as sociopaths hide in plain sight, they all have one thing in common: the pity play. When confronted or discovered, they will always try to make you feel sorry for them in order to control you. Paula had read about this in her research. She was fairly sure that’s what her husband was. But it wasn’t until this moment that she dared to admit it.
We see the “bad guy” through the eyes and mind of his wife as she finally accepts that he is—bad.
There are countless more examples I could give you, but I hope you are getting the gist of this technique. As you read your next book, look at the characters. Do you like the main character? Why? Pay attention to how each character is built. It isn’t a laundry list of his looks and beliefs. Writers show personality through dialog, inner thoughts, reactions to people and circumstances, and actions taken.
Exercise: Please go through your manuscript and pull three paragraphs—one from the beginning, one from the middle, and one from near the end that show your main character’s personality. Does your character come to life? Does your character grow and change with the events happening to them?