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| 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
