How do you give your characters personality?

[anthrodisiac]

Here's another angle on personality.

In my latest library book, the personality of the character was very present in the story. It was about him, much more than the plot. But we saw only two aspects of his personality. One was the nuanced disintegration of a romantic relationship, and the other was the morally complex attempt to save a friend from bad guys. Emphasis on the moral issues. I thought about whether it would have improved the story if the MC had been more rounded, if we had been shown his sense of humor, his taste in food and music, what he sounded like when discussing trivia with those around him. I decided it would have been a different book, but perhaps not a better book. In this case “less is more.” I appreciated the clean focus on those two struggles.

Is this an issue you think about when you write a story? Whether or not to flesh out your characters?

It depends on the focus of the story. I tend to flesh out characters no matter what, because characters are usually my favorite element of a story, as well as the main focus of most of them, but there's also an element of making sure that you don't just go too much into extraneous details about a person. I enjoy multi-dimensional characterizations, but I always try to make sure those different dimensions are pertinent in some way. Whether it's to the story, as a way to shape and explain their actions, as a frame of reference, as part of a joke, emotional weight, etc. I wouldn't want to just toss things in that have no bearing on the story or character.

Example: When they were a kid, they caught five fish on one trip, and six fish on another.

Okay, cool. Doesn't tell me anything about them, and unless the story is about them trying to top that six-fish trip, it's not doing anything useful. It doesn't really add depth, and it doesn't offer new insights into who they are.

Now, in the story you read, if the story really is about the struggle of his two facets, then maybe even mild extra details could distract from that, and you'd want to keep a tight focus on just those two elements. But the author could still have added other details that fed into those facets. He has a dark sense of humor; plays into the dark morally gray side of him. His taste in music is oversappy love ballads; over-focusing on romantic details if he really empathizes with certain characters in the love ballad, or he connects a song to his doomed relationship and it offers a window into that relationship. Not only do they offer insights into his character, but they make him feel more real, because someone can go, "Oh, I like that joke," or "I love that song!" Small details like that, may seem insignificant at times (and a lot of the time, I see authors throwing in extraneous details like that aren't doing anything useful), but they add a bit more depth and reality to a character, and can serve as useful tools for giving fresh insights, or reinforcing qualities of that character.

 

[Stanfield2025]

For the most interesting character I've written recently, I figured out her backstory and everything else just kind of fell into place. Of course, I didn't give much of this backstory away in the actual story. In fact, there are quite a few details about her that readers won't ever know since they aren't pertinent to the actual story.

My characters fit into archetypes, but those archetypes deepen as the story goes on.

 

[anthrodisiac]

For the most interesting character I've written recently, I figured out her backstory and everything else just kind of fell into place. Of course, I didn't give much of this backstory away in the actual story. In fact, there are quite a few details about her that readers won't ever know since they aren't pertinent to the actual story.

My characters fit into archetypes, but those archetypes deepen as the story goes on.

This is something I tell people to do all the time!