Fiction Craft: Characterization

by Robert Ferrier

Readers live your story by experiencing how people deal with danger. Your characters must seem like real human beings--feeling, caring, striving, failing, winning, hurting. Above all, they must earn reader's respect. Readers have seen every plot imaginable, yet they have not learned how your characters handle adversity. This column and the following one will answer these key questions:

1. How do you create a character?
2. How do you give a character direction?
3. How do you make a character fascinate readers?

CREATING CHARACTERS

Never model a character after a real person. Human beings possess too much complexity for a story. Yet the traits you emphasize enable readers to understand why a character behaves as she does under stress; only stress reveals true character.

Characters react to stress because of motivation. To ensure they act as you wish under pressure, you must construct their past to set up the desired reaction in the future.

Give them a biography, including a "backstory." The more important the character, the more complete the biography. Print out this "story resume" for each character and place it nearby. Include the character's name, date and place of birth, physical description, age, address, occupation or primary endeavor, immediate relatives, friends and relationships with each. List every facet of their physical and emotional makeup. Build them from the inside out, including traits that set them apart and differentiate them from other characters.

Above all, give them a current problem--the story goal--or in the case of a villain, a reason for blocking that goal.

A tip for "bracketing" your character: List one sentence quotes about her strengths from five of her fictional allies. List one sentence quotes about the character's weaknesses from five of her enemies. Then you'll know your character.

In the backstory, list date and circumstance of pivotal events which have imprinted the character. Think action/reaction. Impact characters with a past event that explains why they react in a certain way to a present event. Not all past events need be revealed. (If they are revealed, use sequels or dialogue). However, as author you must know their backstory. Otherwise, you won't know how and why your characters react as they must under pressure.

Give all your characters a conflicting "story equation." Loyalty vs. Greed. Honor vs. Cowardice. Love vs. Fear. True characters struggle with internal choice. In commercial fiction, heroes and heroines will make the right choice, no matter the personal sacrifice. Villains choose the wrong path and pay the price during plot reversal at the denouement (the subject of a later column).

Armed with the character's background and personality, you are ready to begin the story, which should launch in full stride with an immediate change threatening the character's well being.

USING CHARACTERISTIC ENTRY ACTION

As author, you see your characters clearly. You've created them. However, readers view your characters as if looking through an opaque glass pane. They lack your clear vision of the character. Let's take a situation: You've put reader in the main character's viewpoint, and another important character enters the scene for the first time. Since first impressions imprint readers, and they're looking through the opaque pane, you must paint the character in broad, heavy brush strokes. To you, the description may seem almost "clown-like." To reader, however, your heavy hand allows the reader to "see" the character through the opaque glass, rather than presenting a fuzzy shadow.
Here's a scene introducing the character, Joe Buck, in my novel, THE WITCHERY WAY:

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"Damn blowdown!" roared a voice

Wade stared open-mouthed at the figure before him. Joe Buck stood six-feet-four, wearing fire engine red overalls that matched the color of his face. The overalls showed smears of grease, dirt, burgundy paint, coffee, dried egg yolk, blood and something that looked like a smashed jelly-filled donut. His square face looked the color of Oklahoma clay, and his eyes bulged like two lumps of coal. Big ears stood out from his head like two leaves of cauliflower, and his black, coarse hair flew awry. The nose looked all Choctaw--wide and hooked. In contrast, his mouth formed perfectly, turned up at the corners--a smiling grizzly. Joe Buck pointed at Wade. "Do you know how to fix a blowdown?

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AVOIDING COMMON MISTAKES IN CREATING CHARACTERS

1. Don't begin a story by introducing the character's background. Place readers in the character's viewpoint as they face an immediate threat to their status quo. Introduce background during sequels.

2. Don't censor yourself in creating characters. Your family and friends won't try to see you or themselves in your characters, which are fictional constructs designed for story purposes. Readers will forget about the author, and lose themselves in your story.

3. Don't make the character one-dimensional. Give her faults, quirks, physical and emotional "tags" and flaunt those tags often. Above all, give her feelings and show them through viewpoint.

4. Don't fail to differentiate your characters. Never begin their names with the same letters, and choose names carefully to fit the character. Contrast characters physically and emotionally.

In summary, your characters carry the story. Build them from the inside out, giving them feelings and purpose.

Having given characters a history and motivation, now put them in motion with a threat to their well-being. Set high stakes for the protagonist's story goal: life or death, happiness or despair, love or loneliness. To ensure the story goal merits readers' concern, match the quest against standards in Georges Polti's book, The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations. Using examples from literature, Polti categorizes the human conflicts which motivate characters.

DRIVE THE CHARACTER

Drive your character with three actions:

1. Give the character a story goal.
2. Threaten the goal.
3. Provide reasons for the character to continue fighting.

ESTABLISH PROTAGONIST'S DOMINANT ATTITUDE

Readers want heroes, not victims. Though saddled with human flaws, the protagonist looms large in one trait: she never quits. Against increasing odds, she summons the will to fight, scene after scene. Sequels reveal her wounds, supporting characters offer her chances to quit, and the antagonist gains the upper hand throughout the story. Yet the heroine uses skills, smarts and guts to counter-punch.

In my novel, DEAR MR. KAPPS, 14-year-old Rafe Mackey, an aspiring comedy writer, struggles against two of Polti's dramatic situations: Falling Prey to Misfortune and Obstacles to Love. Here are segments from Rafe's opening letter to his idol, television comedian Solomon Kapps:
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Dear Mr. Kapps:

Today I finished reading your book, Know Jokes! I hope you can help me. I finished reading the book in my doctor's office, because I needed something to take my mind of the news--good or bad.

Dr. Wong told me I have lymphoma, cancer of the lymph glands. I didn't know I had lymph glands. They're supposed to keep me from getting sick. I didn't want to start this letter with a downer, but you need to know the real deal. Dr. Wong said I had a "good" cancer. She meant lymphoma can be cured. She said my cancer hadn't spread much, but by that time I'd already hit the off button.

I write. So I'm writing you.

You've got to be asking, "Why are you writing me? Well, I love your television show. I love the way you make Mom and me laugh and I love your book. You want to know what's weird, Mr. Kapps? I choke when I speak in front of people, but when I write jokes and funny scripts, the kids all laugh. When I make people laugh, I feel good.

I dream about three things: football, you and Jenny Outland (more on her later.) I can't imagine not playing football, but Mom and Dr. Wong said maybe next year, when I've finished chemotherapy.

Now I need to write to someone who can make me laugh. I'm scared, Mr. Kapps. Last night I had a nightmare. I saw my own funeral. Guys from the football team carried my casket. I woke up sweating.

Maybe you could write something from Chapter One, "Getting Material from Your Life." My life's a train wreck: I've got cancer; I can't play football and my head will shine like a cue ball. Then there's the Jenny thing. (But Jenny deserves a whole letter.)

I promise you, Mr. Kapps. I'm going to beat this cancer.

Hoping to hear from you,

Rafe (Soon To Be Bald) Mackey

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SHOW AS MUCH COURAGE AS YOUR CHARACTERS

Creating courageous characters demands courage. To make characters come alive, you must reach deep within yourself, writing both to your passions and fears. During my presentation at a writers conference, a member of the audience asked, "How did you research Rafe's cancer experience to make it seem so real?"

I answered that I had lived Rafe's experience, surviving lymphoma 23 years ago. More than two decades passed before I could revisit the fear, uncertainty and pain. Rafe and fellow cancer patient Brad Boxleitner challenge each other as they attempt to build a P-38 model airplane in a race against time. Through his letters to Mr. Kapps, Rafe's life unfolds in a story of love, loyalty and growth.

In summary, nothing ranks higher in your story than multidimensional characters. Whether heroines or villains, build them from the inside out, using the mortar of your passions, experience and dreams.

Copyright 2001
Robert Ferrier