Giving Your Characters Character

A character is a person. A living, breathing person.

Well, at least in your novels, it better seem like they're living and breathing. That's the whole point. Your readers want to believe these people you made up are as real as they are.

However, creating this cast and making them all seem alive can take some finesse.


Sally Is As Sally Does

Your mom probably told you that "you are what you do" when you were a child.

Well, in part, she's right. A fictional person comes to life by doing. Not by being described until your reader's eyes cross.

So step one in creating your novel's cast is to think about them enough to know how they'll act in various situations. Sketch out enough detail to understand them. The more major the player, the more you need to know about him or her. So you'll know how they'll act.

Your fictional people don't act in a void, either. They need to act for a reason, with a motive. But... the fun starts when you make your cast act in one way when their motives lie in a different direction. Orson Scott Card put it well in his book, Characters and Viewpoint: "...a character is what he means to do."

Consider, for example, a woman caught stabbing a man repeatedly. Is she a murderer? Or was she defending herself? Was she defending her child? Same scenario, three different reasons she may have been causing mayhem.

Consider the motive beneath the action closely, and you'll bring your novel's cast to life.

Then be creative showing those actions by using different perspectives (if you have more than one point of view person in your cast, anyway.) Sometimes, we learn more about a fictional person by seeing them through someone else's eyes.


Skeletons In The Closet

Maybe one of the players in your novel has a terrible secret. One you don't want to let the reader know right away, but one that influences everything he does, even the dialogue he might have with others in your cast.

A fictional person's past will change how that person acts in his "today". So know your fictional people well enough to understand their motives. Write a little back story for the main players, if need be. It won't necessarily even be mentioned in your novel, but it will help you determine how your people will act in a certain situation.

Perhaps your hero has a reputation. Good or bad, a reputation will follow a person around, like it or not. This, too might color your fictional people's actions. Maybe the teen with the reputation for trouble gets into trouble to live up to that reputation.

Make the most of such background. Your people will seem far more real, if you do.


Schizophrenia, Here We Come!

Do you ever notice how you act one way with your boss and coworkers, another way around your mother and a third way when you're with the person you love?

If you've noticed, then you know another important point about building a character that's real: he (or she) will have a web of "selves" depending on who he's with.

This fact can show us different facets of the people you create. Is she unbearably shy at work, but talks easily to the kids she volunteers with? Is he a clown around his drinking buddies, but a soft-touch, sentimental fool with his wife?

Use such characterization to show us how your different players act differently around each other. They may, themselves, be surprised to find an entirely contrasting portion of their personalities coming to life. Ah, the inconsistencies! The intricacies!

The real life sort of situations. That's what makes your fictional people seem real.


The Nature of Humans

Finally, it is in our nature to try to fit in.

Your fictional people need to do the same. Not so much by genre (though that matters to a degree), but by the place of the story, the kind of story and the events happening in that story.

If your heroine seems out of place, she's going to try to change enough to blend in. If she seems too out of place, your readers are going to toss your book aside for something more entertaining.

So create with an "ear tuned" for making your cast fit the story and events. Then you'll have us by the eyeballs until your novel ends.

For more on creating your cast, see these pages:

Characters
Characterization
Dialogue
Fiction Cast Outlines
Point of View
POV
Protagonist
Antagonist
Fictional People