How to build characters in short stories 120

How to Build Characters in Short StoriesEnglish 120-122 Creative Writing

Lynn Pollock

Characters are the reason…

…readers love short stories. Without interesting, engaging and realistic characters, stories have nowhere to go.

There are basically two kinds of interesting characters.– Heroes who act out adventures and follow the

hero’s journey motif.– Ordinary People who are thrown into extraordinary

circumstances.

Character Essentials

• Characters want something• Characters are realistic• Characters are imperfect• Characters are sympathetic

Characters want something

Getting what they want is what moves the story forward.

Sometimes what they want is – simply to stay alive– to get the girl or boy– to make peace– to get revenge– to remember– to forgive and forget

Another way of looking at it is that your character has a goal, motivation.

Characters are realistic.

Even in fantasy or speculative fiction, characters need to resonate with readers.

Give your characters real emotions, real feelings, real conflicts like heartbreak, death, job, marriage, kid, or parent problems, health issues, worries over hair loss, weight, their clothes matching, making the mortgage payment

Characters are imperfect.

Nothing is more boring and unrealistic than perfection.Do you know any people that are without flaws or some type of weakness? Granted, there are those that would have us believe they are flawless with a fortress of steel built around their hearts. But all humans have some vulnerable characteristics, some misbehavior.

Heroic characters like Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark is afraid of snakes.

Even bad guys are not perfectly bad. Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs, a very bad serial killer, helps Clarisse, the FBI agent, catch a serial killer.

Characters are sympathetic

Just a few ordinary traits are vital to creating sympathy.

• An important one is simply the will to get through. If the character refuses to quit even when he/she may desperately want to, then the reader won't be able to quit caring, either.

• It's important that the character takes his own feelings seriously. How the character feels about what's happening in the story telegraphs to the reader how to feel about the same events.

• Inner weaknesses are indispensable because everyone has weaknesses, understanding is assured for a character inwardly struggling. If we can understand, then we will sympathize with them.

• We actually sympathize more with reluctant characters, those who have to work to be good and who allow us to see the effort involved.

Sympathy Saboteurs

Writers sometimes mistake character suffering for struggling. Colleen Coble suggests that "dark and depressed and full of angst" doesn't necessarily equal memorable. "A dark, flawed character needs to realize she's in trouble and try to change, not wallow in self pity." But having a character throw a pity-party is only one way to steer the reader toward the nearest story exit.

Other things that undermine sympathy for a character:– * "Woe is I!" dialogue.– * Moral perfection.– * Snobbery.– * Scenes of "goodness" unrelated to the plot.– * Friends telling everyone how wonderful the character is.– * Back story worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize.– * Back story worthy of Jenny Jones.

It's okay for characters to whine, act selflessly, be snobbish, have loyal friends, be philanthropic, or use their past to excuse present actions--for a little while. That's how real people are. But, it's best if none of these things become the dominant impression of the character for more than a couple pages. By that time, the characters and the story should move on.

Building Characters from Spare Parts

The best characters mix factual and fictional aspects. This means combining traits of people you know or have encountered in real life with purely fictional character inventions. Call it the “Spare Parts” approach. It’s a way to make characters who fit a story and vice-versa, and it lends them a fact-based reality.

Back Stories

Every major character needs a biography – or a back-story in movie parlance – that includes all the major events in that characters life, right up to the moment the story begins. Birth date and place, family situation, childhood traumas, school, work, relationships, and all the other critical facts. This is not just a matter of developing basic information. What your fictional characters have gone through in their lives will determine who they are and how they react when there’s a conflict. And conflict equals drama.

Describing Characters

Once you have characters you know and understand, it’s time to introduce them. This means describing them in physical terms. There are two important points to be made. Once again, perfection is not only a bore, it’s unrealistic. Second, readers don’t need a page of detail about a character’s appearance. Usually a few strong, descriptive sentences will do the trick and the reader will fill in the blanks.

Character Danger Zones

Don’t create characters that are Xerox copies of real people. And don’t base characters on yourself. From a truly objective standpoint, very few people have had lives that are interesting enough to make them worthy of a main character. In fact, basing characters on real people has the effect of limiting them to that person’s life outline.

Your Turn:

• Before you begin your new story, take a little time to create fresh new characters that are your own. Think of yourself as the Master Planner -- this is your story and only your characters are going to fit in it. Custom build them to suit your unique story-world. If you really must use real people you know, then try to disguise that person's identity as much as possible.

• .

1. What is your character called

Begin by giving your main character (protagonist) a name that you are comfortable working with and one that promotes your purpose. According to novelist Elinor Lipman, "Names have subtext and identity. If your main characters are Kaplans, you've got yourself a Jewish story, and if your hero is Smedley Winthrop III, you've given him a trust fund. Names done right contribute to characterization." Your character's name provides a lot of information -- not only about ethnicity -- but about your character's age, background, and social class

2) Create a short biography for your new character.

You'll need to decide which physical aspects best suit your protagonist -- height, weight, hair and eye color and age. But these alone will not be enough. Consider creating a personality outline as well. Include:

• temperament • moral/ethical/religious beliefs • political stance • hobbies • habits • quirks or eccentricities • likes/dislikes • fears or phobias • short and long term goals • hopes and dreams

3. Where does your character live?

It's definitely true that character and story grows out of a sense of place. What country does your character live in? What region? Does he live alone or with a family? In a trailer park or an estate? How did he end up living there? How does he feel about it?

5. Where is your character from?

In a similar vein, where did your character's life begin? Did she grow up running around the woods in a small Southern town, or learning to conjugate Latin verbs in a London boarding school? Obviously this influences things like the kinds of people your character knows, the words she uses to communicate with them, and the way she feels about a host of things in her external world.

6. How old is your character?

Though this might seem like an obvious question, it's important to make a clear decision about this before you begin writing -- otherwise, it's impossible to get the details right. For instance, would your character have a cell phone, a land line, or both? Does your character drink martinis or cheap beer? Still get money from his parents, or worry about what will happen to his parents as they get old?

7. What does your character look like?

Is your character tall enough to see over the heads of a crowd at a bar or to notice the dust on the top of his girlfriend's refrigerator? Does she deal with weight issues and avoid looking at herself in the mirror? Though you need not have a crystal clear picture of your character in mind, physical details help your readers believe in the character, and help you imagine how your character moves through the world. It sometimes helps to scour newspapers, magazines and even the internet to find a picture of someone that fits the character you are creating. Tacking an image onto a corkboard at your workstation with a brief bio beneath it can give you a wonderful visual image to work from

8. What kind of childhood did he or she have?

As with real people, many things about your character's personality will be determined by his background. Did his parents have a good marriage? Was she raised by a single mom? How your character interacts with other people -- whether he's defensive or confident, stable or rootless -- may be influenced by his past.

9. What does your character do for a living?

• As with all of these questions, how much information you need depends in some part on the story, but you'll need some idea of how your character makes money. A dancer will look at the world very differently from an accountant, for instance, and a construction worker will use very different language from either one. How they feel about a host of issues, from money to family, will be in some part dependent on their choice of careers.

10. How does your character deal with conflict and change?

Stories involve some element of conflict and change -- they're part of what makes a story a story. Is your character passive or active? If someone confronts her, does she change the subject, head for the minibar, stalk off, or do a deep-breathing exercise? When someone insults him, is he more likely to take it, come up with a retort, or excuse himself to find someone else to talk to?

11. Who else is in your character's life?

Relationships -- how people interact with others -- reveal character. They're also excuses for dialogue, which break up exposition, offering another way of providing necessary information. Think about who will best help you convey this information, and what kinds of people would realistically be in your character's world in the first place.

12. What is your character's goal or motivation?

Many of your character's actions will result from the intersection of what she's trying to achieve and her personality, which is composed of everything you've invented so far. When in doubt about how your character should behave, ask yourself what your character wants from the situation.

So now you have a character to work with, but this information is not enough to bring him or her to life. Using the principle that all good stories are about unique, individual complex people, you'll need to map out a few more points.

Strengths and Weakness

• When you are creating your character's personality description, decide what his great strengths are. Give him several strong traits and then add one major glaring weakness. Your character must still be at least likeable, but the glaring weakness must form the underlying tension that drives his behavior.

Staggering problem

Now create a staggering problem that preys on that weakness. It must be a difficult or fearsome problem for your character to overcome, so that the story can recount his struggle to turn his weakness into a form of victory at the end. Above all, never let the protagonist know he is going to succeed. That way he can not win unless he surrenders something of inestimable value to himself.

Your character must have a complex set of problems.

• The primary goal must always be in sight, but giving your character a few obstacles along the way will highlight the character traits you have chosen to help or hinder him.

• Choose your crisis points. Give your character an agonizing decision to make. If he must make a morally wrong choice in order to succeed and survive intact, your character will gain everything he wanted, but the price for this success must be high.

• He could lose his (soul/conscience/freedom etc.) However, it must be clear in a scenario like this that choosing the morally right path would only result in his downfall or defeat.

• Allowing your character the reversed scenario is easier (choosing a morally correct path), but making the cost a worthwhile challenge is much more difficult.

• If he does concur on the side of 'good over evil', be sure he is forsaking all he holds dear. He survives the struggle intact, but still must pay the price for making the right choice. Even though he is spared the downfall that threatened originally, he will ultimately lose all that he cherished/believed.

Finally, by the end of your story, your protagonist must have survived an enormous struggle, or moral dilemma, to arrive at the finale having undergone a fundamental change. He may have lost his beliefs, or his conscience. He may even have overcome that glaring weakness you assigned to him when he was created. Whatever the change, it must be noticeable.

When you have all these pieces in place, you'll have a complex, empathetic character that your readers will remember and hopefully come back for more!