It’s Not Working: Character Troubleshooting
Welcome to It’s Not Working, a troubleshooting series that I’m uniquely qualified to run because I write things that don’t work all the time. This week, we study characters-why they don’t work, how to know, and what to do about it.
Think of a character that’s been giving you some difficulty, and answer these questions:
Are you unsure of their motivations, both scene by scene and in the whole plot?
Do they start and end with the same motivations, perspectives, personality, and outlook?
Does it feel like their lines could’ve been spoken by any other character?
Do you have trouble describing their personality, even to yourself?
If you answered yes to these questions, you may have an underdeveloped character.
Do they tend to act differently scene to scene?
Do you not know what to do with them in scenes?
Do they not have a part to play in the plot?
If you answered yes to these, you may have an unmotivated character.
Did you answer no to all of the above questions, but beta readers and critique partners are disagreeing?
Readers can’t understand their personality, motivations, or effect on the plot?
Then you may have an misrepresented character.
Underdeveloped character: We’ve all heard of them before. They come off as bland. There’s no significant development or change to them throughout the story. Characters are your readers’ foothold into the story. If they feel like empty bottles, its going to be a lot harder for people to become invested in the plot.
Unmotivated characters lack one thing: yes, it is motivation. It’s the ultimate reason for your characters to do anything. Why do they feel like they have to save the city? Why do they get upset at that one joke? Without proper and consistent motivation, your readers are gonna get whiplash trying to figure out all the why’s of the character’s actions. And if they’re too busy worrying about that, then they’re gonna lose interest in the plot and the book as a whole.
Misrepresented characters are fully formed, at least to the author. They know everything about them, from their MBTI to the color of their second favorite rain boots. The writer has charts of how their motivations shift throughout the story, diagrams of their highs and lows, but for some reason, when readers get their hands on it, they give feed back like ‘flat’, ‘boring’, ‘generic’. Something needs to bridge that gap between the writers knowledge and what’s on the page.
Underdeveloped characters:
Find character questionnaires, follow character prompt blogs, take personality tests as your character. Really explore who they are as a person.
Make a chart of where they start and where they end. What happens in the plot that can significantly change them and the way they think?
Write scenes from their first person voice. Yes, even if you write in third. Write it like diary entry, write it obnoxiously first person, so first person even first person writers would cringe. Every spelling mistake you’d think they’d make, all the tangents, everything. Get a feel for the way they sound and think.
What makes them unique? What makes them so interesting that you would rather write them than a whole different character? Let this shine through.
Consider cutting them or combining them with another character if they really aren’t doing anything for your plot. I know, it hurts. You can always save pieces of them to use in another project, but sometimes it’s for the greater good.
Answer the questions: Why are they my main character, and why are they taking part in this plot? If you can’t answer those, then you either have the wrong main character, or the wrong plot.
Fill in this triangle and refer to them whenever you’re unsure of how they should react to something:
Write an elaborate backstory for the character. Why do they come off as stoic all the time, except when they shriek around antique dolls? There’s a story there. You don’t necessarily have to write it in the text, but the more you know about your character, the more credible these choices will feel to the reader.
Have inconsistencies addressed in the story. If they say that they don’t care about anyone on the team, and then run into a burning building to save them, it should be noted. Not necessarily flat out said, but noted.
Tone down big reactions. The wailing, screeching, jumping for joy. Some characters might do some of these things. Some might do some of them sometimes. But one character will very rarely bounce around the peak of every emotion all the time. If you do write that character, it needs to happen very intentionally.
Take a good look at the character’s introduction. Are you telling instead of showing? Is the reader distracted by larger plot things during their first scene? Do they have chances to prove their personality traits to the reader through actions or dialogue?
Can you hear them? Do they have a specific voice? Mannerisms? Quirks you can show the reader?
Are you leaving too much in subtext? I love assuming my readers will be scouring my books for clues and subtleties one day. But for major character traits, it’s better to be upfront about it. No one can assume your characters backstory out of thin air. Sometimes you have to be upfront about their motivations
Have you given an accurate, and somehow not boring, character description? If this is where you’re stuck, I understand, I’ve been there. But think of it as a chance not to list off eye color and hair length, but as a chance for each element to tell the reader something about the character. A ‘severe’ haircut gives us a different tone than ‘soft curls’. ‘Enough dirt in their nail beds to give an archaeologist chills’ give us one impression, ‘a smile that knows how high her cheekbones are’ gives us another. Play with it. Have fun.
Are you using them in each scene they’re in? Not only as an effect on the plot, but also using the scene to showcase who they are. It should be a symbiotic relationship, scenes and characters.
Some last few pieces of advice:
Don’t kill off a character or make them leave for the rest of the book because you don’t know what to do with them. If they stop having a purpose after a certain point, consider combining that purpose with a character that sticks around.
Don’t kill off a character just because you think you have to
There’s no such thing as ‘needing’ a love interest. If you have a character that is exclusively there as a love interest, they’re probably gonna come off as flat (unless it’s a straight up romance novel, in which case, have a blast).
Don’t feel like you need certain tropes. ‘Funny best friend’. ‘School bully’. ‘Evil dictator’. Don’t put them in unless they actually have something to do with the plot of your book.
We could take about characters for weeks. Months. Years. But hopefully this not so brief overview gave you some ways to rethink any problem characters you might have.
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