Series: Building Realistic Characters, Part 2
Witty? Serious? Playful? Villainous? We're delving into personalities in Part 2 this week. Stay tuned for Parts 3 and 4, published each weekend through March.
Hello and welcome! This month I’m diving into the process of developing fully realized characters, and today we’re exploring the intricacies of personality. If you haven’t read last week’s overview on physical description, you can find it here. Next week’s Part 3 will go into body language and manners of speaking, while Part 4 explores culture and that all-important Shard of Glass.
Whether it’s emotion-centered literary fiction or a high-stakes genre story, a huge part of what compels someone to keep reading is their connection to the characters. You’re rooting for the Happily Ever After, or for the hero to save the day, or for the villain to crumble under the weight of justice (or get away with their evil plans, no judgment). But it’s the people that propel the story forward.
The most effective characters are those who are nuanced and complicated, with authentic emotions, flaws, habits and idiosyncrasies. Think of Sherlock Holmes—obsessive, brilliant, meticulous, but also sometimes unintentionally cruel, and a cocaine addict—or Stuart McLean’s Dave and Morley—a longtime married couple who perfectly embody the contradictions of loving your partner in a deep and unconditional kind of way, while at times still wanting to throttle them.
People are made up of dichotomies that slide around on a daily basis, but generally folks will tend toward personality traits, and it’s here where you can begin to understand who they are, and by extension, how they’d react in different situations.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it’s a starting point. You have a fairly detailed image of what they look like from last week, so let’s try on a few inner qualities and see what fits.
If you’ll recall, last week my sea-story love interest started out as a disembodied floating head of romantically unruly hair. After spending some time with that initial image, I also learned that he’s moderately tall with a swimmer’s lean build, that he wears loose, billowy clothes bound tightly with long lengths of narrow fabric, and that he’s semi-inspired by Santiago Cabrera.
So now I have an image where the details are already beginning to make sense for the world he inhabits. He’s lean and strong because when you grow up on a ship in a water-world where dry land is unpredictable, you have to be a strong swimmer to survive. His clothes are bound tightly so that if he has to jump overboard suddenly, he’s not being hampered by drag. But then he’s able to unwind the fabrics to let his loose and billowy clothes dry quickly afterwards. He’s also covered from neck to wrist to ankle in tattoos, but that’s a plot point, so we’ll skip over that for now. ;)
As I sketched out that rough image, personality quirks also started to emerge. He’s intelligent and clever (has to be to survive in this capricious world), and he’s got a quippy sense of humour (but uses jokes and witty banter as armour).
Is he more an introvert or an extrovert? On the surface, extrovert, but how much of that is performative, and how much authentic?
Is he trusting or cynical? He lost the ability to trust a long time ago, and it would take a huge amount of work for someone to earn it from him.
Is he selfish or giving? Once, a long time ago, he was giving and free with affection, but now he prioritizes himself, his survival, and his ultimate goal (which in itself is actually inherently giving).
Some of this I know or can infer because I already know the rough shape of the plot and what his internal and external goals are. But you can take these personality traits and try them on your character, and one of my favourite ways to do that is to just drop them in a situation and write it out. Set a timer for ten minutes and try something like:
Describe them waking up. There are so many shouting voices in the publishing industry (rightly) begging writers to stop opening their first chapters with a character waking up, but it is a fantastic way to introduce yourself to their world in writing practice. Do they wake up slow and relaxed, or with a jolt of adrenaline? Are they comfortable? Why or why not? Are they calm or worried, and why?
Have them confronted with something they’re afraid of. People tend to have very visceral reactions to fear, and it can tell you a lot about how they think. Do they get angry immediately? Do they go into crisis-management mode? Do they freeze? Is their first reaction ruled by logic or emotion?
Frustrate them. Similarly to fear, seeing someone when they’re angry tells you so much about who they are as a person. Do they go into fight or flight? Try to reason their way out? Think the world is against them or that it owes them a “win”?
Put them in a situation with someone they love. Is it mutual, or unrequited love? Does the other person know your character is in love with them? Do they feel safe enough to show their true self to this person? Or are they masking themselves? Showing what they think the other person wants to see?
DIFFERENT HATS FOR DIFFERENT SCENARIOS
Finally, it’s always good to remember that people often act differently around others than when they’re alone. Think about your own interactions: you likely show different parts of yourself depending on who you’re with. A casual co-worker won’t see the same person as one of your oldest friends, someone who’s seen and still loves the rawer pieces of you.
So what does your character feel safe showing to the world? What do they hold close, only sharing with a few (or perhaps no one)? This can turn a little sinister, too. That sweet old lady who bakes pies for all the neighbours and who everyone loves might have a dark past, known only to those who can’t speak for themselves anymore.
Happy writing! And stay tuned for Part 3 when we explore body language and manners of speaking.