The Place For My Writers Notes

first posted 28 April 2007

Bringing Your Character to Life

How do you make compelling rounded characters? Well, Writers Digest, August 2004, page 20 and 21, James Scott Bell suggests three key features. Let's take a look at them.

Attitude! "Compelling characters have a way of looking at the world that's uniquely their own" In first person point of view, the attitude is part of the narrator's voice. In third person, the dialogue, actions, and thoughts of the character (if you sneak into the head of the protagonist, at least) show us their attitude. James suggests a little freeform fast writing to learn about the attitude of the character. You might use some of these questions to kick off your thinking (answer from the character's pov, please? Although your own answers may be interesting, right now we're exploring your character):

• What do you care most about in the world?
• What really ticks you off?
• If you could do one thing, and succeed at it, what would it be?
• What people do you most admire and why?
• What was your childhood like?
• What's the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you?

Courage. "Novels are about challenges and threats to your hero, and that means he's going to have to show courage. This creates a rooting interest in the character, always a good thing for readers." James suggests that a dragging novel often means the protagonists has given up too easily, is just taking it or thinking about it. Make sure that your protagonist gets up and does things.

"Go back and put some fight in an earlier scene. Get the hero's dander up again, make him take some action against a person or circumstance. Whether it's as simple as taking a step into the unknown or charging ahead into a dangerous battle, courage bonds your readers with the main character."

Surprises! Raymond Chandler suggested that when your story starts to drag, "bring in a guy with a gun." Surprise us! People often do surprising things when they are excited, under stress, or have some inner conflict pushing them. So get your protagonist in trouble, crank up the tension, and let the behavior be a surprise.

Okay. That's the three suggestions that James had. Make sure your character has attitude, courage, and surprises us. Now, how do you put that into action? One easy thing to do is go back over your story and see where the dialogue or the action shows us the attitude, courage, and surprises of the character. You might use a highlighter and see if there are sections of your story that don't get marked up. If so, you may want to go back and think about putting some attitude, courage, and surprises in those sections. Another trick is to do some brainstorming. Take a sheet of paper, and make a list of at least five possible dialogue or action bits that would show us the attitude, courage, and surprises of the character.  15 little bits? Then pick out some really good ones and work them into the story.

In any case, don't forget. A character with attitude, facing vicissitudes with courage, and some fireworks and other surprises keeps the reader reading - and that's the point!

So write.