On writing: characters and characterisation

[StillStunned]

Big topic this time. Lots of aspects to discuss, so I'm looking forward to some interesting points. (But perhaps we can keep debates about "based on real people" to a minimum in this thread. I feel like it's a topic that comes up regularly in other discussions.)

Do you have a preferred way to give your characters... well, character, I suppose. Do you have a firm idea of who they are, or do they appear organically? Do you have a sheet for everyone who appears in your story, with their appearance, background, likes and dislikes and quirks? Or do you just give them an action and a dialogue, and hope they stand out from the grey masses?

How do you do character growth? Do you make it explicit, or do you modify some behaviours and hope that the readers notice? Do your characters even grow - is it necessary, in fact?

Have you ever written (or read!) a character that you particularly enjoyed? Were they nice or nasty? Did writing them leave an impression on you?

How stereotypical are your characters? Have you ever written a story with archetypes? How does this affect the story?

Feel free to add any other aspects of character that you feel might be relevant!

 

[BeechLeaf]

I'm not very good with story. In fact I'm rotten with story. I have my characters prepared for the next thing I want to write, and I'm exploring their complexity and relationships, but I haven't the slightest idea what the events will be. They talk to each other, they confess failings and desires, but what happens? I have no idea. Doesn't matter. I have Fleur and Sally, both about fifty, the former is an actor, she's recently been in something with Jenny Agutter. Sally is a mathematics lecturer. They've been friends for more than twenty years.

I can spin their personalities endlessly. I know Sally recently had a health scare and Fleur's visiting her in hospital. I can spin so much of this. They're so important to me. But I haven't thought of any story yet. I am just walking these people around, getting to know them, and hoping the germ of something writable eventually emerges from the soil.

Mostly what I know of people is what I write in the story. I don't do huge background files. I think I probably should. Proper grown-up writers seem to do that.

 

[StillStunned]

I tend to be a bit of a minimalist with my characters. (Huh, I say that about my plots too. Maybe I need to put more effort into my stories.) They tend to serve the plot, and I come up with a general idea for the main characters as the story starts forming in my mind.

Probably my best-developed characters are Avilia and Sligh from my sword & sorcery series "The Rivals" (9 instalments published for a total of about 84k words). The idea began with an image in my head of a warrior woman shoving a creepy guy into a pit with a demon during a dungeon crawl. Somewhere during the writing Sligh, while still a lecher, became too interesting to make entirely awful. But their characters were essentially set during the first few pages: Avilia is spontaneous, Sligh is a meticulous planner.

This wasn't immediately clear to me. But when I started writing the second story, there was Sligh working a long con, with Avilia making her decision on the spur of the moment. After four or five stories, someone commented that Avilia's actions didn't make sense, but to me they did. And when I thought about it, I realised that she was an adrenaline junkie. She'd always been that way, even though I hadn't made a conscious decision to write her that way.

As the series progressed, and the characters became more entangled, they started to adopt each other's habits. Avilia actually prepared for a heist, Sligh started carrying a spear. Avilia used his "By the Skies!" a few times. In some WIPs she quotes poets and philosophers. I'm not sure anyone noticed, but for me it's there.

 

[NotWise]

I usually have a basic idea of what I want in both the characters and the story, then develop them together, so that each provides what the other needs. I tend to get carried away with the characters, and I have to get a grip to keep them from telling their story instead of my story.

 

[Katiel3036]

Im new to writting so character development is still devolping. I currently use spread sheets to keep track of them. Most of my caracters are completly fictional though i do model some from people i know. Currently all my stories are first person. I find it easier to keep everthing on track. But as i improve as a writer i want to expand into more multi character story lines. So this thread has been very helpful. Thank you.

 

[Stanfield2025]

Contradictions help make a character stand out from the rest.

Savannah and Miguel from How to Date A Better Woman are the most interesting characters I've written in a while. I could've just written a generic domme/sub relationship, but that wouldn't have been interesting. Miguel is partly based on myself, and his biggest flaw is the same as mine. I wrote an entire backstory for Savannah, though maybe half of that backstory is explicitly brought up in the actual story. And it's only brought up when it's relevant.

While outlining and backstory-writing, I figured out who she is by figuring out her subconscious belief about the world that drives her actions directly and indirectly. She's the first character I've ever done this with, and it greatly helped me give her contradictions. She believes she must be needed by someone or else she's a waste of space. As a result, she's a loving mom, but she also dreads that her kids will leave soon and not be needed by her anymore. It even gets to the point that she doesn't look forward to their graduation from high school. She has other contradictions, but all of them make sense (at least to me) because they stem from her subconscious belief, flaws, strengths, etc.

The subconscious belief even informs some of the words she uses in her dialogue, though I tend to have difficulty differentiating dialogue between characters. Her go-to insult is "useless", as that's what she's trying not to be.

Savannah's wants and needs, at times, dictated what kinds of scenes I wrote. Sometimes I even had to write kinks I'm not necessarily into. I didn't plan to write a facesitting scene at first, but I had to because it's the exact kind of thing she'd demand from her boyfriend. Other times I had to avoid interesting situations because they wouldn't make sense for her. It was great when that happened, though. It made her feel alive.

 

[AStrangeDesire]

This is an area I'm evolving. I try to give my characters something 'interesting' in their backstory that drives some of their behaviour. Whether it's from a previous relationship, interactions with parents / siblings etc. This is typically the first thing I write beyond the story idea, which can be a single paragraph.

Once I have that, then when I write I use it to base my decision on as I'm pantsing. Sometimes as I'm plotting, it depends on the story.

In addition, I keep a mindmap of characters that has really high level characteristics, so they stay consistent as I go through the story. Given that I frequently work on 3 or 4 at a time, to keep things fresh, they're basically character crib sheets.

If I get stuck, I've recently started summarizing the characters motivations at that particular part of the story, to think about how possible paths would play out for them.

For dialogue, again I try to do basics. Some characters swear more than others, or use more slang, or simpler vs. more complex words. Based on education, background, age, etc.

... and then sometimes, I throw all that out and I sit down and write, with no plan, no character outline, just an idea.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I know who my characters are before I start writing, but how their character dynamics develop and are described largely depends on the narrative perspective chosen for the story.

IMO, third person offers the most latitude, but I still tend to have readers get to know my characters through their interactions with other characters in the story rather than a bio dump.

It's similar to how I get to know people in real life, by watching how they interact and treat other people. That's what I want my readers to experience as much as possible.

 

[yowser]

Good memorable characters in a tale are golden, and I am always impressed with those who can portray vivid living characters in the limited confines of a short story.

I try to let my characters breathe via action more than talking, but it usually takes both to work. Have them move around, do clumsy things, trip over themselves, and show their warts. But all of them, especially the major ones, need some sort of an emotional core or it all falls apart. There is one wonderful book that serves to remind me how to think about the people I generate in my stories: The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass.

A year or so ago I was trying to figure out how many different people I had birthed in my stories (almost a hundred tales, but with a dozen series, so shared personalities in some.) Main characters (often a pair in a story) number over a hundred, and if you discount the dozen or so that are mostly me, in varying degrees of autobiographical accounts, there are still a good pile of folks I have brought into the world to wreck havoc. And these have considerable variations, from mythology demons to anthropomorphic genitalia, to (mostly) regular working, breathing, sensory humans who mostly think too much and do dumb stuff.

I admire those who do this part of creation well.

 

[StillStunned]

Have you ever written (or read!) a character that you particularly enjoyed? Were they nice or nasty? Did writing them leave an impression on you?

A couple of characters that stand out for me: Rulk the Rat, and Myrna from "Red Hot".

I enjoyed writing Myrna because of her flirting. At a certain point she sends the narrator a photo of her outfit, captioned "This is what I'm wearing." And another of her underwear, saying "This is what I'm not wearing." It's the kind of thing my wife would have done if we'd had smartphones back in the day.

Rulk is such a nasty character - murderer, rapist, thief, bully - but with a background that made him plausible, and relatable enough that it's hard not to wish he'd been dealt a better hand in life. I'm not sure that writing him left a lasting impression, but I had to go to a dark place.

(The Hag in "Hag-Ridden" was also fun to write, but that was mostly for her dialogue. She has little in the way of personality beyond speaking in filthy rhymes.)

 

[Writer61]

I often start with a real person (an actor, model, porn star, even a politician in my current WIP) to give me a visual image of the character, but I do not try to use any aspect of their personality. It is simply a hook on which I hang my own imagination, which will include nationality, behavioural traits, and so on. It's the way my mind works.

Developing characters is something that I am working on, and hopefully improving. I think I did a reasonable job of Laura in The Fall of Laura, and have a fair idea of where Adam is going in the final (if ever written) series about him.

 

[Stanfield2025]

Another thing I've done is watch videos on trauma-bonded relationships to better understand the relationship b/w the two characters in my series.

 

[liliput1]

I'm kind of in love with the notion that sometimes when you understand your character, and realize how that character would react to a certain situation, you're now writing a different story than the one you thought you were writing. Because of course John wouldn't do that, and his partner would think you were lying if you said he did. So now these two other people are going to get together instead and you have to rewrite all the setup and foreshadowing.

I do kinda wish I could get a peek at the author's first draft at the moment they decided they had to rewrite. To understand what they changed and whether I would have done the same.

 

[liliput1]

Another thing I've done is watch videos on trauma-bonded relationships to better understand the relationship b/w the two characters in my series.

I'll happily read about two characters getting out of a TBed relationship but I don't like it when the whole story is codependent.

 

[BeechLeaf]

There comes a point in my characters' lives when, roughly, they move from minor character to major character. (This is in my main writing, not yet in the small amount of development I have under this BeechLeaf account.) I can do things to or with minor characters. But after a while, they have their own lives, they are developed, they know what they want out of life, they have their foibles and no-go areas. I can't, as a writer, just push them into things they wouldn't do. It's more like figure skating, where we're joined and we're trying to do something elegant, push ourselves, create a bit more beauty, perhaps if we're lucky amaze some spectators, break a barrier. I can no more change or manipulate a major character than I could a real-life friend.

 

[Writer61]

There comes a point in my characters' lives when, roughly, they move from minor character to major character.

I have a few of those. They are interesting enough, to me at least, to merit their own story. It's one of the things that I like about writing in a universe. A minor character in one story/series can become the lead in another, and vice versa. Seeing the possible connections pleases me.

 

[RetroFan]

Like any writer I have character types I enjoy writing more than others.

I especially like writing stories about spoiled rich girls who are stuck-up, selfish and bossy. Not really sure where that comes from, but it is one of my favorite types of stories to write. Although clearly not to read, as one angry reader told me to write about anything but spoiled rotten bitches, and the girl in that story was more smug and superior rather than overtly spoiled!

I also like writing stories about slackers. I guess growing up I watched a lot of movies and TV shows with slackers as main characters like the Bill and Ted movies although this genre seems to be dying out in more recent years, so these types of stories would mostly appeal to younger Baby Boomers, Generation X and older Millennials.

Another character type I have a lot of fun writing about are stupid characters. They can range from bumbling buffoons and those just not very bright, but some are more spectacularly stupid. Like a 300-pound high school bully who is so stupid that he thinks about himself in the third person; a stepdaughter in another story who thinks dinosaurs only became extinct just after World War I; and a young wannabe influencer and social media star who naively sends photos of her freshly pedicured bare feet to guys online who claim to be gay and who also thinks that the Titanic was 'like some fictional ship from some like really old movie from the 1990s'.

Grumpy characters are fun non-erotic characters to write too. Like a high school teacher whose much younger floozy wife is having affairs all over town and making a fool of him, while his students drive him insane. Or an authoritarian Italian-Australian father who constantly shouts at his lazy and under-achieving young adult son, forcing him to go back to high school at age 19 and punishing him for every infraction, such as making him sit on the floor and eat his dinner with the cat for being late home.

Mostly I write characters who I hope readers will like and think I am flexible enough to write character types I'm not overly familiar with and who otherwise wouldn't overly interest me, but again like anyone else I would struggle to write some. Paradoxically given my love of spoiled girls stories, I don't think I could effectively write one about a spoiled guy.

 

[Stanfield2025]

There comes a point in my characters' lives when, roughly, they move from minor character to major character. (This is in my main writing, not yet in the small amount of development I have under this BeechLeaf account.) I can do things to or with minor characters. But after a while, they have their own lives, they are developed, they know what they want out of life, they have their foibles and no-go areas. I can't, as a writer, just push them into things they wouldn't do. It's more like figure skating, where we're joined and we're trying to do something elegant, push ourselves, create a bit more beauty, perhaps if we're lucky amaze some spectators, break a barrier. I can no more change or manipulate a major character than I could a real-life friend.

Reminds me of how GRRM didn't know Jaime Lannister would have a redemption arc until long after he started writing ASOIAF.

 

[SkyBubble]

Usually, I basically know my characters' character, so to speak, but they always wind up with additional traits while I'm writing them. I didn't realize that one of my characters likes Cheez-Its until I wrote it.

 

[liliput1]

Reminds me of how GRRM didn't know Jaime Lannister would have a redemption arc until long after he started writing ASOIAF.

He is never going to finish. I was thinking after you posted this, wondering if working on the screenplays broke the story in his brain, or if it's burnout.

 

[anthrodisiac]

I love characters. I love characters so much. Most of my stories are about people, dealing with events and plot, sure, but the focus is almost always on the characters. I have a whole slew of different approaches to characters.

Sometimes I really get to know them before I start writing (which is generally the advice I give to people): likes, dislikes, pivotal moments, formative experiences, their voice, their attitude, all that. This is usually a really solid approach to writing, because it allows you to understand who the characters are and how they should react, so you can keep your in-universe logic consistent, which is one of the most important things in my opinion.

However, I actually prefer to go in with a minimal understanding of who they are. Some basic facts, their voice, personality, and that's really about it. As the story evolves, I get to see who they are more and more. It allows the backstory to come out more organically, because it pops up as an explaination as to why someone did X (or maybe I just have that backstory in my head, but use it to inform the actions). It's a process of discovery by rolling around in the trenches of the story with them and seeing what they're made of. It's almost like reading the story itself (pantser, by the way), seeing who they are, what they do, how they react and feel about events, it's a joy to see new facets of a character I thought I knew come to light. Of course, then I have to go back and make sure it's consistent, in-universe logic editing, but it's one of the main reasons I write, to see who these characters are and how they navigate the challenges and moments the story throw at them.

Creating multi-faceted, depthful characters is one of the true joys of writing for me. Each angle offers a new insight into the character, but even little things that seem irrelevant can paint a big picture of who someone is. It's why my general rule is that any information about a character has to be doing something besides just conveying that information. It has to speak to who they are, or serve the plot, or whatever other purpose. Tying it into the story connects them to the story more, it makes the details more pertinent, and their depth meaningful.

 

[StillStunned]

Creating multi-faceted, depthful characters is one of the true joys of writing for me. Each angle offers a new insight into the character, but even little things that seem irrelevant can paint a big picture of who someone is. It's why my general rule is that any information about a character has to be doing something besides just conveying that information. It has to speak to who they are, or serve the plot, or whatever other purpose. Tying it into the story connects them to the story more, it makes the details more pertinent, and their depth meaningful.

Character building is a lot like worldbuilding in this, I think. I used to plan the entire world, with kingdoms and maps and economic systems. Nowadays I only describe what the story needs - what the characters interact with, basically. Their immediate surroundings with perhaps a little bit of history or current goings-on for colour.

Characters work the same way. Do you need to know that Andre dropped out of school, worked for a few years and then decided to go back and get a degree? Is it important that Belinda always wanted to live abroad, but never took the step, or that Carlotta loves cats? I don't think this needs to be explicit, even for the writer. Those are things you can invent later to match the character's actions or dialogue.

 

[StillStunned]

Example of organic characterisation from an active WIP.

The goodies meet the baddies, in the form of an evil bishop and his henchman. The bishop is wearing black with purple, so for something a little different I gave the henchman fancier clothes with brighter colours.

I had a face-off planned, with the baddies backing down when they see that the goodies are armed. But this is set during the Thirty Years' War, so I was wondering how likely it would be for them to be carrying a loaded pistol, and whether the baddies might take a chance with it misfiring.

So - in an Aha! moment - I decided that the henchman would make a move, and get smashed in the face with the butt of the pistol. The usual deal: broken nose, loose teeth. And combined with his fancy clothes, I realised he had to be something of a dandy, and now he hates our goodies with a passion that's very personal.

Would I have ever come up with a character like that by plotting ahead? Nope. Now I'm very pleased with myself, and I'm all the more likely to keep writing the story.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

I try to give my characters at least some weaknesses. Perfection becomes boring.

How to establish a character's personality? I sometimes just cruise through the Net, looking at photos of people, any people. Every so often, I'll find somebody distinctive, sometimes in terms of character, but more often in terms of the individual striking me as having a truly sparkling personality. As one example of this, I stumbled on a photo of a young woman towing her suitcase through an airport. There was a spunky grin on her face and she wound up being the basis of a character in one of my series. Whenever I felt I was starting to stray from where I thought she should be written, I could look at that image and it would recenter my efforts, if that makes any sense.

 

[WittyUserName]

Big topic this time. Lots of aspects to discuss, so I'm looking forward to some interesting points. (But perhaps we can keep debates about "based on real people" to a minimum in this thread. I feel like it's a topic that comes up regularly in other discussions.)

Do you have a preferred way to give your characters... well, character, I suppose. Do you have a firm idea of who they are, or do they appear organically? Do you have a sheet for everyone who appears in your story, with their appearance, background, likes and dislikes and quirks? Or do you just give them an action and a dialogue, and hope they stand out from the grey masses?

How do you do character growth? Do you make it explicit, or do you modify some behaviours and hope that the readers notice? Do your characters even grow - is it necessary, in fact?

Have you ever written (or read!) a character that you particularly enjoyed? Were they nice or nasty? Did writing them leave an impression on you?

How stereotypical are your characters? Have you ever written a story with archetypes? How does this affect the story?

Feel free to add any other aspects of character that you feel might be relevant!

I struggled with this one at first. My characters seemed like carbon copies of each other. To start fixing it, I gave them each a quirk. Nothing major. For example, in one of my recent stories there's someone who LOVES birds and bird watching. No deep reason, it's just something that comes up.

For growth, I do tend to have the character explain that they realized they weren't behaving right. I have an issue with over-explaining things in stories that I'm still working on.

Do characters have to grow? Depends on the character. A main character? Yeah, probably.

Sometimes I just give myself enough to start writing. Then I let the story take over and end up surprising myself!