Getting to Know You: Creating Fictional Characters that Click

I call it the Click: that moment when a character in a book, whether one you are reading or one you are writing, comes to life and discloses himself as a true, living, thinking human being. Blake Snyder, screenwriter, author, and, in my opinion, greatest guru of plot, touched on it in his widely popular and immensely successful book Save the Cat!, when he defined the literary tool which gave his book its title. He describes 'saving the cat' or, alternately, 'the save-the-cat moment' as the point (usually a single event) in a film when the audience discovers why it is rooting for the hero. It is the moment when we see that small spark of humanity that, innately, we all have. Snyder says that it is always there, in every good film, whether it is the instant when the Viking chooses not to slay the dragon, or when the political activist stops his coach to protect an abused horse. The truth of this is evidenced not only by philosophic sense but by the fact that Snyder was one of the most popular writers and teachers on screenwriting in the entire film industry before he died. But we are looking at fiction, and although saving the cat is an important element in novel-writing especially, there is much more to crafting a character than that.

The necessity of creating truly human characters is profoundly serious. All the best novels are loved not primarily for their epic plots, not for their beautiful language, but rather for the humanity and reality of the characters who inhabit them. Take Gone With the Wind, think of the round realness of Scarlett O'Hara. Or A Tale of Two Cities, and the depth of Sydney Carton's struggles. We don't like J. K. Rowling's hugely successful series because of its brilliant writing style, but because we love Harry Potter. We don't continue to churn out fan-fiction after the style of Ian Fleming because of his great philosophical genius, but because we are fascinated by James Bond. Think of any popular series and it is the character, almost always, that makes us read the next book. People of Dickens' era and before tended to capitalise on this magnetism of the hero by naming their books after the main protagonist. Nicholas Nickleby or Anna Karenina comes to mind.
Realising this, the writer's job becomes even harder. It's difficult enough to create the other aspects of a novel as they should be, but to create humanity, to bring life onto paper, must be the hardest proposition yet. I am faced with this overawing obstacle, and worse than that, I hardly even know what it is about the great characters of the past that makes them so intensely alive. What is the essence of the Click? What are the principal elements that make us want the hero or heroine to win out? I am still discovering, but I've been able to pinpoint a few useful aspects.

• Purpose

It may be obvious. That is why I have it first. But the character MUST, absolutely must, be there for a reason. A reason other than your story, something outside of that. He isn't there to do all the things a hero is supposed to do in a story. He's there for something else, to show your reader the one overarching thing you are trying to say in your book. Make his conflicts happen for a reason. Some time I intend to write a treatise on point, because it is one of the most important things that a story needs. Make your character have a point. Make him be there for a reason. That isn't to say that you must attach a little 'and the moral of that is. . .' to the end of your book. But your readers want to get something from reading your book; a different view of the world, a different view of human nature. We don't need a revelation, we just need to see that the story and the character happened on Purpose and got where they were going.

Make your character and your story have a reason to exist.

• Wants and Desires

Perhaps the most common advice you'll find on writing characters is to make him want something. The maxim bears repeating, because it could well be the one most important thing about really good characterisations. The hero or heroine must be after something. He could be after several somethings, but he must have an active desire to pursue. He may want to go to the moon, and will take steps to get there, by signing up for an astronaut training camp, perhaps. He may want to do nothing at all, but he will still take steps to satisfy that dream, possibly by locking his bedroom door against all intruders and lying down on the bed. Wants and Desires are not only the foundation for everything that your character does in the story, but they are also the groundwork for most of his conflicts. In other words, Wants and Desires are where the story starts. There are different levels of desire, and the best stories involve all ranks. Needs fall into the category of Wants and Desires as well. In fiction, a hero may want to survive, but he doesn't need to. (Insert evil laughter.) 

Make your character want something and actively pursue that want.

• Obstacles and Conflicts

All human beings have Obstacles to attaining what they really want. In fiction they can be anything from alligators in the hero's bathtub to evil uncles who arrange marriages between innocent princesses and dastardly knaves. Whatever they are, they get directly in the way of what the hero wants. The kind of Obstacles he encounters are just as important as how he reacts to them. Javert in Les Miserables is a constant obstacle to Jean Valjean because of the mistake Valjean made in the past, and yet Valjean eventually refuses to kill him when he has the chance. Those two aspects of Valjean's character are made more real by his conflict with Javert. 

Most Conflicts arise from obstacles that are set in the hero's way. How the hero or heroine deals with Conflict is another part of who he is. He must have Conflicts, no matter what. It doesn't matter if it is Conflict with an alligator or with an evil uncle. But Conflict is the most inherently human thing about a character, second to Wants and Desires, and it is where story comes from. You will hear this advice often as well, because it is true. 

Make the Obstacles and Conflicts in the story enhance the reader's view of the character.

• Doubts and Weaknesses

Perhaps you were expecting me to say Strengths and Weaknesses. But strengths aren't nearly as important in fiction as Doubts, as far as the Click is concerned. This isn't the age of Superman. Beyond some super-special-effects, computer-graphics movies, superheroes aren't all that in. They certainly never appear in works of literary merit. People honestly care more about what your hero or heroine can't do than what he or she can. They're more drawn in by what he's afraid of than by what he never blinks at. Your character may have to climb an impossible cliff on a Mediterranean island and destroy the Nazi outpost; that's the story. But add to that the fact that he's afraid of heights -- not just heights, but everything, he's just deathly afraid of the world -- and you have humanity and art together. Suddenly we want him to win. We want him to innately, not because we admire his weakness, or even pity it, but because we understand it. Because if we were there we would want to win. And we can imagine ourselves there. But Doubts and Weaknesses serve another purpose, and that is to present more obstacles to the hero's path. The plot is greatly internalised when you make the hero fighting against himself. When the hero internalises it, the reader internalises it. Suddenly it becomes deeper and more magnetic. It starts to Click.
Make the character's internal Doubts and Weaknesses be important enemies.

• True Humanity

One form of 'saving the cat,' True Humanity is the aspect of a hero or heroine's character that tells us they aren't humanoid robots, that they have a heart and soul beneath however crusty an exterior. Doubts and Weaknesses can be this True Humanity, but it could also be something more positive -- like a heroine who heals wounded animals, or a teenager who is polite even when he doesn't want to be. The greatest characters have a good side to them. There are very few bad-to-the-bone heroes, and none who can really pull it off. The main character has to have something in him that we can admire. Sherlock Holmes may be a cocaine addict and an arrogant sort of genius, but he is willing to help anyone with a mystery.

Make the character appeal to our better nature.

• Unique Nature

I could spend an eternity on this one, because it is one of my personal favourite tools to use. Everyone has his quirks. As I have created various kinds of people, of different nationalities, the most fun I have is making them have something strange about them. This is similar to Blake Snyder's 'Limp and an Eye Patch,' but not exactly like it. In one story I hope to write eventually, I have a particularly shrimpy, skateboarding boy who is destined to succeed his uncle as dictator, but although main characters need something different about them more than others, minor characters benefit from quirks as well. In Royal Opposition, I have a tertiary character who is an amateur food critic and likes Aston Villa. I had a secondary character who rode motorcycles and looked like a popular opera singer, but he accidentally became one of the chief antagonists. That is what happens when you give characters specialness. They become more real, and more important. Do something unusual with your characters. Something new. There are millions of things that aren't done -- and according to the Theory of Creativity (to be discussed in a later post), that's one of the most important things to writing. Try a pool shark. Try a World Ten-Ball Competition winner. How about join the new craze of 'World's Only Teens' (think teen spy, teen lawyer, etc.) and make the world's only teen-aged mortician?

Make the character be something a little bit different.

• Religion and Belief

Closely tied in to Wants and Desires, Religion and Belief is what dictates what the character does at certain times. It is also called worldview by some people. Whatever you choose to call it, it is very important. Although you don't have to directly address it, it is important to know what your character believes about his fellow people and the world around him. It will tell you why he wants what he wants, and exactly how far he is going to go to get it. I'm not saying that you have to know whether your character is a Buddhist or an Atheist, but you must know what he believes about the world. (There are inconsistencies in many religions, so what a character believes about God does not always translate to what he believes about himself and his fellow humans.) This is an important aspect in making him Real, but it also serves another purpose. It is what drives him -- essentially, the deepest part of his nature, even below his Wants and Desires. You don't have to determine what Religion your character subscribes to, but you must give him something to Believe in. This is something internal and mysterious and powerful that we can relate to and, often, admire.  Make the character have something to Believe in.

• Time and Place

In the world you've created, the hero isn't in because you want him, but because he wants or someone else wants him. He may not even like being there, but he must have ulterior motives for being there. I might use Gerald Kerring, introduced in a previous post, for an example. He is in Roaldavia because he's the King's grandson, and can't really be anywhere else. He might rather be in a neighbouring country where people generally let him do what he wants, but he's there because of his own choice, or the choice of another character, not because of mine. There can be no haphazardness about setting and character, they go hand-in-hand, and a character must always have a reason, a real, deep-down, authentic reason for being where he is. Why is your little girl a native of Miami? There has to be a bigger reason than the fact that you have never set a story there before. There must be a distinct, internal connection between where the story is taking Place and who the character is; how he thinks, acts, or feels about himself or the people and world around him. Lord Jim, in the book by Joseph Conrad, runs around Asia and ends up on the isolated island settlement of Patusan because he is running away from his past and the reputation one single action has forever given him. Gerald Kerring's connection to Roaldavia plays an important role in his attempts to define himself by something other than a title.
There is also the question of Time. Some of us have read books set in a particular time period that might as well have been set now. Some of us may have even read books set now that should have been set in the Cold War. The hero must connect with his Place in Time as well as his Place in setting. Perhaps a war is part of conflict. Perhaps, like in Around the World in Eighty Days, the conflict wouldn't have been a conflict in modern days. Don't put him out of place because you like the clothes or the way of talking.

Make where and when the story happens tie directly into who the character is.