The more I read of ‘amateur’ writing, the more I realise that problems with character building and expression are one of the key places that the text falls down. There are a thousand reasons for it, and I think the most common reasons are rushing to get to the fun part and asking the wrong questions of the people in our heads. I see countless ‘character questionnaires’ that answer aesthetic questions we have about them, such as their favourite colour and whether they trim their nails weekly or fortnightly. The problem with this is that the characters become nothing more than people who like sky blue and break out the clippers every four days and three hours. They’re not people with any depth to them - would you want to read about that person?
If yes, I suppose you can stop reading.
You should really be asking yourself, and your characters, the following:
What is their one genuinely positive trait? (Yes, one; I know some characters may be more ‘good’ than others, but let’s keep it simple, for the time being)
What are three of their negative traits? (Yes, three; let’s face it, people who can’t claim the sun shines out of their backsides are much more interesting)
What is their goal? This should be comprised of two things, their interior goal, and their exterior goal. Their interior goal is the thing that they really want or need to achieve, whilst the exterior is how their goal is filtered through their positive and negative traits, thus how others perceive it; for example, X wants to save the world, but X believes that purging it of human life is the way to do this, making their exterior goal the destruction of mankind.
What is their motivation? Why do they want to achieve this goal? What drives them to do it instead of letting someone else do it?
How do they look? What factors of their appearance are affected by their lifestyle? A peasant isn’t going to wear velvet, and someone who spends their life sitting down and eating rich food isn’t going to be thin. Someone who spends all day working the fields in a warm country will be tanned. Someone whose culture expresses itself through tattoos, will have expressive tattoos. Sometimes, this can’t be answered thoroughly until you’ve created solid cultures, which is fine. A general outline is good in the beginning, you can expand on this later.
What is their demeanour like? Again, this only needs to be basic, until you’ve established cultures that value certain ways of behaving. Are they polite and well spoken, or do they speak in short, clipped sentences and avoid extending conversations?
How does their goal relate to, or conflict with, the goals of others? This one is better answered when you have a group of characters prepared, as you’ll be able to correlate them into groups of pro-goal and anti-goal.
How does their motivation affect how they will try to achieve their goal? This is vital to ensuring that your character remains true to themselves and as untouched by your God-like hands as possible.
How do their positive and negative traits influence how they react to other characters? This is also something that is better done when you have the basics of a group of characters. It will allow you to have the beginning of an understanding of how your characters are going to interact.
When you’re deciding who your protagonist should be, you should look at your collection of characters. By now, you should know the answers to the above questions. Your protagonist should be the character who;
Is likely to change the most throughout the course of the story.
Is able to show the majority of the main storyline from their perspective.
Is best equipped to allow the reader emotional access; this should be someone who the plot has a potent effect on, someone whose life is irrevocably changed by the circumstances you’re about to inflict on them.
The most important thing about your protagonist isn’t that you like them, or that your reader is guaranteed to like them. Neither are necessary functions of your standard bearer. What is important, is that you don’t shield them from conflict. This is another place where texts stumble and inevitably fall over; the protagonist is not challenged enough to change, and I’ll discuss exactly how important that process of change is when I come to Storytelling. At this point, suffice it to say, that if there is no change, there is no story, and you’re not going to sell any books, or hold anyone’s interest for terribly long. Your treatment of your protagonist should, in fact, become worse and worse until she finally achieves her goal, or fails spectacularly in trying to do so.
The bottom line is, your protagonist is holding your story up by its ears. She should be driven to achieve a goal through gradually worsening circumstances, greater challenges and harder situations. She should endure a hotbed of her worst fears and she should have to jump over ever-bigger obstacles. Her difficulty is your reader’s reason to care.
Have I belaboured the point enough?
Which takes us to an equally important person in your story.
There’s nothing worse than a paper villain. You know the sort; they’re claimed to be the biggest threat in the universe, and yet the reader never sees them, or really feels the effects of their nefarious behaviour. The first rule of antagonists is that they not only feel threatening, but that they are a threat to your protagonist. There is a chance they’ll win. There is something that they can do that your protagonist can’t. There is every possibility that if your protagonist makes the wrong decision, her antagonist is going to bring the world crashing down around her ears.
Your antagonist should be the character who:
Has a diametrically opposed exterior goal to your protagonist. Bear in mind that they can’t see one another’s interior goals, they can only perceive one another through actions and words. They might well have the same goal and different ways of achieving them, but the exterior goal, at least, should give your protagonist a reason to want to burn them at the stake.
Has enough power to eventually achieve their goal.
Is capable of supplying the hardships your protagonist needs in order to achieve change.
The most important thing in the development of your antagonist is understanding their ‘whys’ and motivation. They don’t just ‘wake up evil one day’, they weren’t born evil unless you’ve made a race who can be born evil, and I’d urge you to delete them from your world entirely. Their motivation and ‘whys’ are going to have a huge impact on their behaviour and progress towards their goal. Make the effort to understand them, so that you can unleash their full potential on your poor, unsuspecting protagonist.
Make them a force to be reckoned with, and your reader is going to be more inclined to stick around for the reckoning. Let them win once in a while, it makes that threat feel more real.
There’s this idea in fantasy that reads a lot like you’re about to enter a dungeon in World of Warcraft; the idea of the different kinds of companion. You know the drill, there’s a warrior and a mage and a healer and a rogue and a ranger and…
What is necessary is grouping characters by their goals. I know I’m going on about it, but it’s the easiest and most effective way of deciding who is going to group together. People with the same goals are more likely to band together to achieve them, even if potential conflict comes out of their ways of reaching their desired conclusion.
The key components of these groups are:
They must have a reason to follow the Protagonist/Antagonist. Without it, there’s no sense in them doing so.
They must share a common goal.
They do not have to like one another, or the way others go about reaching their goals.
They should fail and require help sometimes - it makes their need for following the Protagonist/Antagonist more realistic.
They must have a useful purpose for your Protagonist/Antagonist, otherwise, again, there’s no sense in them tagging along, they’re just dead weight.
That’s all for now. I’ll be back later with more on the elements of character.
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