People often ask me how to build credible, meaningful and interesting characters. My most common piece of advice is to look around you. When you pay attention, there are weird and wonderful characters just coasting on the edge of our lives who are just begging to be brought onto the page.
I've also often seen or read about lists of attributes that you can fill out to build a character. People cling to those lists as creative life rafts, allowing you to survive but not quite providing sustenance. I believe such lists have value, as long as they are not the final step in your creative process to build multi-dimensional characters.
Kiefer Sutherland, of 24 fame, said on his Actor's Studio interview that when he looks at characters on the page, he begins by defining two things: the first is what the character would always do, and the second is what he would never do. This gives him a framework within which to build depth.
When we describe a friend to someone who has never met that person, we often skip through the basics of name, nationality and occupation to go right to the one thing that makes that friend who they are: a personality trait, an unmistakable flaw, an incorrigible weakness for something, or an unmissable physical feature. What we are describing is the one thing that makes that person stand out from the crowd. It is usually what will make that description stick in our mind, serving as the anchor to which all of that person's other features are tethered.
Once we spend time with a person that was described to us, we will eventually form our own opinion of what stands out in that person. This will lead us to describe him or her to others in a similar way, but with the emphasis tweaked to our own subjective point-of-view. We will have made that character ours.
Taking these elements into account, I would suggest the following 10 tips to building memorable, intriguing and empathetic characters:
1. Give them a rich backstory that you exploit but never fully reveal
A character is merely the sum of where they come from and what they've done. This makes origins and backstory important to flesh out a solid character. A character coming from a broken home with no siblings will behave very differently to a character who grew up in a happy home with several brothers and sisters. This backstory will be the well from which you drink when writing that character into your story. It will inform everything else.
2. Give them flaws
No-one can empathise with a perfect person. Think of how hard it was at first to take Superman seriously: not until Clark Kent humanised him could we feel anything for the man. Characters with flaws are more accessible. These flaws can be as simple as clumsiness or as intricate as Alzheimer's Disease.
3. Give them fears
Fear is an emotion we relate to a lot faster than hope or happiness. A character who fears something will attract empathy, will encourage us to root for him/her, or will give us hope that, as a villain, they might eventually be defeated.
4. Make their end goal require a direct confrontation of those fears
The most powerful stories are those where the heroes confront and overcome their greatest fear. This is because we all dream of being able to do so. It is also the highest stakes that a character could face, so it makes for more compelling drama. In short, it is the most efficient and visceral way to make us care.
5. Give them a hobby that relates to their flaws
A hobby shows something more personal about a character, because it reflects a choice without influence. We pick up hobbies for ourselves alone, so they are by definition an extension of our personalities. A hobby that allows a character to either deal with a flaw or confronts it is a hobby that we will immediately associate with the character. It will also tell us a lot about the character's goals. A mercenary who loves crossword puzzles probably has a higher opinion of himself, wants to be seen as more than just muscle and might even have the brains to pull it off.
6. Give them a redeeming weakness that always puts them in trouble
It might be that uncontrollable urge to feed the neighbour's cat, even though they shouldn't. Or that overindulgent croissant that they just can't stop buying on the way to work. This weakness is not a flaw, because it is something that the character is conscious of. It is something that the character knows has influence on him, which makes it that much more convincing, interesting and real.
7. Give them potential that is revealed but not confirmed
The broken wings syndrome is the most engaging one out there. When you show a character with incredible skill at something (eg. Chess) that no-one has noticed yet (eg. He/she plays speed chess at an underground tournament), you create a desire in the audience to see that potential revealed. Readers and viewers dont want to keep secrets. They want the secrets you show them to be given away as soon as possible to the other characters in your story. Readers and viewers want to share.
8. Give them tastes that real people can relate to and that clash with their archetype
A serial killer with a taste for French wine makes that character human. That killer could be your neighbour. A shy student with a penchant for techno-rock makes her cute and weird at the same time, a powerful combination. The key is to give the character a taste for something that is surprising but acceptable to find in such an archetype.
9. Put them under pressure to reveal their true nature
Readers will never fully embrace who a character is until they are forced to make difficult choices that they don't want to make. When the hero has to choose between saving his wife or his sister, something deeply intimate will be revealed when that choice is made. It works better if this happens before the ultimate climax of the story, as it will create expectations that can then be exploited for further drama towards the conclusion of the tale.
10. Spend time with them
The best way to know someone is to spend time with them. Write scenes with your character going about a daily chore, going to the dentist, having a meal with a family member or a friend. This will tell you more about the characters than any list can reveal. Finish this off by writing a letter to a friend describing the character as someone you might have just met. This will distill that character down to its essence, making him or her a truly memorable person.
Please let me know if you feel this list needs to have more points on it. Comments and opinions are always welcome.
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