Creating Characters, Part II

Speech

When you are creating characters, do you hear them speak? Aim to remember voices you hear at parties or in public and use them to create fictional characters. Recreate the speech patterns of those around you. Listen to people speak in restaurants, on the train, in a line-up.

Carry a notebook, and when you hear something good, jot it down for later, when you want to create an authentic voice.

I once saw a re-enactment of an emergency room drama. An addict pulled at her sleeve, obviously proud of herself. "I've got worms," she said, several times, in a high pitched and self congratulatory tone. Her doctor ordered a stool sample, but as a nurse attempted to usher her out of the room, the addict raised her sleeve to expose an open cavity she had dug into her arm. "I've got worms," she said again, and pulled an earthworm from the wound.

Her voice, as recreated by the actor, with that proud inflection, resides in my memory, and one day soon, I will challenge myself to find a role for this character and will build a fictional life around this one sentence: "I've got worms!"

Thoughts

Characters think in the same unique voice they use when they speak, and they reveal an otherwise hidden side of themselves in thought, so keep them "in character" even when they are silent. One character may be obsessive in private, another silently critical. One may daydream often, while another doesn’t waste a minute.

Avoid creating characters who think flat, generic lines. Thoughts are as important as speech in characterization, and a character that wonders who turned the damn heat up is much different from one who thinks, Goodness, it's warm in here.

Is your character outwardly cool, but inwardly jealous? Does he skew the truth? Delude himself? Is she self-congratulatory, or always thinking the best or worst of others? These private thoughts and feelings allow readers to know more than other characters know. This imbalance creates tension and provides authenticity.

Creating Characters That Take Action

Every action is preceded by a motivating desire. We eat because we are hungry. We retreat because we are afraid. Sometimes we know why we act, and sometimes we don't.

As good writers create fictional characters, they consider motivation. Selfish characters will be motivated differently from generous ones, according to their beliefs and values.

A character that drops money in the bowl of a street beggar may believe that the beggar needs the money, or that giving money to the poor is the right thing to do, or that it will help someone. Someone else may pass by without contributing anything because he believes that the beggar should work for his money, or that he will spend whatever he collects at the nearest liquor store. These thoughts and beliefs will colour all their actions, not only this one.

Understand your characters' belief systems, and what caused them (whether or not that information is in the story), and use this knowledge to make each one take consistent and convincing action.

Creating Characters That React

Focus on differences more than similarities, as differences create tension. In life, the most memorable people you've met are not conformists but people who stand out as different from the crowd. Make characters equally memorable by focusing on differences that will incite conflict. Characters may laugh at others when they run up against their differences. They may try to knock differences out of the way. They may manipulate, cajole, and bully. They persuade, discuss, or acquiesce. But always they react.

If two characters plan to live together and both of them dream of a little house in the country with a white picket fence and a lilac bush, you have no story. If one dreams of an inner city condo, and the other dreams of the house in the country, readers will want to know if one must give in to the other, or if they compromise.

Whatever the characters do to get what they want, differences demand a response; similarity does not.



Go to Creating Characters, Part I



Read about Character Motivation

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