How I Write Fiction: Characters (Fall Equinox 2016)

Frog King

My goal in creating characters is to make them feel like real people to the reader. People who move purposefully and realistically through the world I’ve built. People readers would want to have a conversation with, maybe invite over for a party, or cross the street to avoid. 

This weekend, I read some advice from a writer. In two of his fourteen points, he mentioned characters. In one he said that all characters incorporate a piece of the writer. In the other that characters aren’t the author’s alter-egos. While seemingly contradictory, both of these are true in ways. And both can be a bit untrue. They are bound together in the way that a writer makes a character feel like a well-rounded person. For me, that’s based on bringing personal experience and insight to the table.

For each character you write, you have to find a point of empathy, a point of resonance, to make that character believable. One way to do this is to reach within yourself to find that grain or seed that could sprout into the trait your character exhibits to make s/he seem genuine, whether positive or negative. We all have those traits within us, at least to some degree. It’s just a matter of whether we allow them to emerge. As a writer, you have to be willing to explore those traits within yourself honestly. Otherwise, your characters come out flat and one-dimensional.

One way I try to create believable character traits, which is similar but not quite the same, is to listen to the people around me. To actually listen to their beliefs, their internal logic, their struggles. To use empathy as I attempt to understand.

People are interesting. Whenever I can, I talk to individuals one-on-one. In isolation, without an audience to perform for, without other friends around to maintain a façade for, without potential partners to impress, people sometimes let down their guard and tell you the truth. They let you peer very quickly behind the veil and see who they really are. Sometimes it happens after a drink or two, sometimes late at night or early in the morning, sometimes just spontaneously. But at one point or another, most people want someone to hear their story. They want someone to understand. If you listen in that moment, you can learn a lot about motivation and human nature.

Motivation. That tends to be the key to characters for me. There are a couple ways characters can work in fiction. One way is to have them serve the narrative by creating each to fill a need. Sometimes they start with an archetype or a role, a personality trait, a goal or motivation. Starting with an archetype can be useful because they resonate with readers. Readers understand them with a quick glance. The trick is to move beyond a mere archetype and create a flesh and blood character with his or her own desires.

Which leads to the second way to approach characters. Instead of having them serve the narrative, you can have them drive the narrative through their goals and motivation. I end up using a combination of the two. I spend a lot of time thinking about characters, about what they would do in a given situation rather than what I want or need them to do. About how they feel and how that might drive them. That often requires crawling deep into their psyches.

Oddly, for me, that doesn’t always mean coming up with an in-depth background or description. Some writers recommend unearthing a ton of personal details about characters, down to childhood memories so nuanced they might not know them about their spouse, all before they get started. I tend to approach it from the opposite direction. I start with a sketch of a character and unearth those details as I go along, as the narrative unfolds. Then I note them for future reference. For me, that helps curb the urge to over-develop a character then wedge those details I’ve spent weeks constructing into the story.

One aspect of characters I don’t spend much if any time on is their appearance. In many of my stories, physical details tend to be sparse. Usually, I start with gender (because it determines pronouns). Unless some detail reinforces the character or narrative, I try to leave it to the reader’s imagination. Things like height and weight, hair, skin and eyes, and physical attractiveness are often up for grabs. Sometimes I’ll mention a character’s eyes are green or ice blue or a color that shifts from grey to green to amber depending on the light for connotations they bring or the picture they paint beyond a physical description. Or, say, in the case of Gigi Gagnant that she had one breast surgically removed to show her fellow LOW OrbIT Marines she was as tough as any male. An Amazon.

Otherwise, I’m not sure I see the point in a lot of description. Readers fill in physical details in a way that suits them, according to their own internal archetypes. And I, for one, am tired of reading about gorgeous heroes and heroines with rippling muscles and flowing locks who sound as though they were ripped from the cover of a 70’s romance novel. So I favor a silhouette rather than a portrait.

An aspect of characters I do tend to dwell on is their name. Names are important symbols to me. One of the first references I bought when I started writing was a baby name book. Before I settle on the name of a main character, I pore over its meaning and origin. Often, there is level to their name that most readers won’t get, but that grounds me in the character. Take Gigi Gagnant again. Her full first name is Griselda which means “grey battle-maiden.” Gagnant is French for “winner.”  Aside from the direct meanings, the Grey winner aspect of her name hasn’t come out yet in the stories I’ve written with her (but did in stories which have played out in the game she started in, which I one day hope to write). Another example is Nick Michaels. His name is more Anglicization and allusion. His name evokes his personality. Nick, Niccolo. Michaels, Machiavelli.

Now before you start to drive yourself crazy looking for hidden meanings in all the character names I’ve used, consider that I also created a random name generator fed by the first and last names of international soccer players from several men’s and women’s World Cups. Often, I’ll have it spit out a dozen or so names and just mix and match the one I like best. Or if a piece is historical or set in a specific geographic location, I’ll research common names from that area and time. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

One of the first lessons you hear as a writer is to write what you know. A word of caution, do not do that with characters. Making recognizable characters out people in your life is a very risky proposition. People are unlikely to see themselves the way you see them, even if you think your portrayal is flattering.

I think of many of the characters I write as people I almost knew. They are inspired more by interesting attitudes, beliefs and background details I’ve run across than actual people cut from whole cloth. Most are an amalgam of elements of various individuals I’ve met, which I see as fair game. The same goes for making characters just another facet of myself. How I see myself (or would like to see myself) is just one more element thrown into the mix. But I am not my characters, nor are their attitudes and beliefs a shadow play of mine. Except where they are. If you can’t guess which is which, then I am probably doing my job.

So where else do inspirations for characters come from? Well, for me, some come from non-player characters in various games I’ve run or played, characters who developed their own personality and history over time. In “Slow Tuesday Night” I used lines from two songs as inspirations for two minor characters. I’ve used impressions from mythology and dreams. I’ve used people I’ve seen in various locations and made up quick stories about. Plus the back stories of people I know or have met, as well as my own. Pretty much all of my experience gets fed into the hopper.

More than once, I’ve based characters on the personalities of our various cats, past and present. Watching them interact, especially when we’ve been a multi-cat household, has provided a ton of inspiration. Their personalities may be more subtle but they definitely come through if you pay attention. The best fiction example is "Chosen". Bast/Beth is based on a cat named Sandy, which is even more apparent in Aluria’s Tale where she first appeared. As an exercise, I used to make up dialog of what the cats might be thinking or saying if they could talk, as I did with Nyala in "Winter Solstice 2011 (from Nyala)".

And that to me is the most import aspect of character, establishing their voice and their point of view. That’s where characters spring to life and become memorable, more so than by any unique physical descriptions or tics I’ve seen used. The easiest way I’ve found to establish a voice for a particular character is to start writing for that character in the first person, even if I don’t intend the piece to be from that perspective. If nothing else, it helps in generating the way the character speaks. But I’ll get into that more in the next essay on Dialog.

Mostly, for me, creating characters is an accretive process that begins with World Building. Understanding the world a character lives in gives me the best leg up on who they are. Their history within that world tells me the problems and prejudices they have faced and the likely ways they will react. Which gets back to letting the characters drive the narrative, at least to a degree. As you saw in the essay on Plot, I’m pretty much a top-down organizer. But plotting just notes the destinations, the places you want to see on a vacation. Characters determine the route you use to get there, sometimes scenic, sometimes direct. And sometimes, they detour to interesting destinations all their own.

Like most people I’ve met, my characters start as blank slates whose development is influenced by their experiences. But like most of us, the longer they’ve been around, the more they tend to get hemmed in by the patterns of their thoughts and their previous decisions. And the longer I’ve known them, the more comfortable I get in gauging exactly what they might do, where their virtues and flaws might lead them. How they might struggle with and solve their problems.

And that, if I can capture it, is what I think makes them real.  

© 2016 Edward P. Morgan III