Creating three dimensional characters isn’t easy. Writers tend to draw on real life experiences so our characters experience those universal emotions. It’s tempting to draw on real life people as well. Much easier than coming up with three dimensional people from scratch. And it can be so freeing. Yesterday at work something happened that really ticked me off. It wasn’t completely this person’s fault. I was anxious to leave so I could go swimming, I was already running behind and then I had to stay a lot longer to deal with something. So on the way home from work I decided this person would be the next victim in my serial killer book. Putting people like that in my books is how I blow off steam so I don’t get angry. And sometimes they actually give me good characters.
But do I do that all the time? No. As hard as it is to come up with sympathetic, three dimensional characters, I do create most of them from scratch. I use various methods for getting to know my characters. And I’ve discovered, partly with the help of Karin Tabke’s advice on characters, that I need to REALLY know them before I can write my stories. I use a template that is a mash up of a number of different templates. I list the basics like height, weight, hair colour, eye colour. Then I go further and pick three positive traits and one negative trait. After that I decide what secret the character has. Now this secret may never come out during the course of the book but they’ll still have a secret that they don’t want anyone to know. I figure out who their family and friends are. What their childhood was like. I figure out their favourite food, colour, music. Then I decide what their personality is like. Are they funny? Depressed? Serious? No matter what role they play in the story I give them a Save the Cat! moment. Something that makes them sympathetic.
After I do all that I figure out the really important stuff. The stuff that will drive the book. I figure out what their goal, motivation and conflict is. Internal and external. What the character wants and why will drive the story. What are they willing to do to get what they want?
One of the reasons I can’t wait to write my new urban fantasy idea is because all of that, down to who her best friend was in college, came to me in a flash. Literally. I was driving home from work and suddenly I just KNEW her. She’s really damaged but she’s going to be a lot of fun to write. I’m sure she’s hiding a few secrets even from me but I’ll find them out.
Anyone out there use real people as the basis for characters? How do you change the character so the people don’t know? If I base a character on a real person I always change something about them so even if the person who the character was based on read it, they wouldn’t know it was them. Except the protagonist in my ghost story who is actually my best friend. But she knows about it. I told her. I did change her name.
Well, off to work.
Until next time…
Cindy
July 7, 2010 at 2:04 pm
I love your idea of the secret. I hadn’t really thought of that one,
although Sosie Bend, my main character in my novel Night Surfing, is carrying a big secret. Secrets can be both a way of being kind to someone, but they also have a tendency to detonate and do major damage. I guess that’s what makes them so intriguing to use in our writing. Great post…
July 7, 2010 at 7:43 pm
I try to think of the characters’ primal needs and the GMC, but I don’t go into the details that you do. The times I did, the characters turned out completely different when I started to write. I’m such a pantser.
July 7, 2010 at 11:13 pm
Cindy, I loved this blog. When I wrote my ghost story, I used five sisters and patterned them after my own…well kinda. (We’re all very close.) There is one slut puppy in the story!!
Anyway, I love how you nail the character traits before you get started. I have a Profile sheet I fill out on every character in my story. It usally changes three or four times while I’m writing the story. I definitely plan on adding the secret to it.
July 8, 2010 at 8:20 am
:yes: Loved your post and I envy you. The more I try to complete character charts, the less I know about the character. Mine are almost always completely in my head, but then, that’s everyone I meet. I combine real-life traits, things I’ve seen on people or by people into characters so they’ll be realistic.
The only characters I’ve truly used for secondary roles, are old friends from high school (that was a while ago). I don’t know much about them (not needed for a secondary character) and it’s mainly points you’d find out every five years at a reunion. Surface stuff.
Again, I envy the depth/level you get to know your hero and heroine.
~~Angi
July 8, 2010 at 11:35 am
Cindy, great post!
My characters all have good and bad traits, but I don’t normally list them on the character bios. Will have to add those two items to the list.
Barbara
http://www.barbarawhitedaille.com
July 8, 2010 at 9:07 pm
Hi Word Actress. Thanks for stopping by. The secret thing was something I picked up in a screenwriting class I took. Now I use it for both.
Edie, I’m a half pantser half plotter. I need a general outline, not a really detailed one. And I have to know everything about my character or I get stuck I’ve discovered.
Thanks, Liz. For one of my first books I based all the characters on my group of friends at the time. Made them really easy to write since I knew them so well. The book never went anywhere though.
Thanks, Angi. I started out without the charts but found I just didn’t know my characters well enough to know what they would do in a given situation.
Thanks, Barbara. I list them so I can show at least one trait in every scene. And I try to show the bad trait in a good way at some point in the story. And one of the good traits in a bad way.