Are Your Characters "Real"?
Submitted by jbdrydenco on Sun, 10/28/2007 - 21:54
Coincidentally, two editors - John McIntyre and Angela Booth posted on similar topics this week, and I think it pertinent to respond to them with my own opinions, though I already did give a bit of an opinion on Angela's post.
I would have to agree more with John in saying that my characters are only ever mechanisms to further my story. That isn't to say that I can't write empathetic characters or realistic ones, but I can't say that a character has ever gone off to do his own thing. My characters do what I tell them to do, because they are my creation. As well, while I know my characters well, I never really craft them in such a way that I'm conversing with them at every turn of the corner.
Characters can be as you wish them to be, though, and I would say that however you create your characters works for you. So long as they are fully completed when they are placed into the story and successfully act their part to further the story in such a way that it brings across your point.
So how do you create a character? Do you go through the process of living their life through story? Or do you chisel them from a block of character clay and mold them as they are put through the plot of the story?
Comments
Inevitably I mirror my female leads after myself and give them my own attributes, ideas, characteristics, even sometimes my own looks. I know an artist that paints many different characters and everytime I see one of her paintings I see her in them, even if only remotely, I think it's an unconscious thing. She doesn't ever see it.
Other characters, the flat characters, I use purely to keep the plot going, but my round characters I usually try to humanize while using them to forward the plot. They're there to serve a purpose, though I wish I could be a writer that writes more on the development of the character than the plot. In general I like those kinds of books more.
Something I really like to do to make the character more real is to give them their own voice by haveing a certain phrase or action, a nervous tick even, that might arise in a reader the remembarance of someone they know to relate to. I like to take attributes from real people I know well to make them more real.
I would say a little of both. When I first get an idea for a story it starts with a character in a situation. It's a single scene that stays in the back of my mind until it intrigues me that I sit down and start asking questions. How did the character get into this mess in the first place? How is the character going to get out of it? What does this situation tell me about the character?
Sometimes I'll sit down and flesh out a whole personality, history, etc. for them. I'll keep doing this kind of background work until my muse prods me to start writing the story. Sometimes I'll feel like my characters are fully fleshed out and sometimes I won't.
The other night I hit a snag. My main character's wife wasn't acting in the way I thought her personality would go so I stopped writing, sat down and asked myself what had changed. If she's the kind of character who has her head in the sand and doesn't want to know what's going on around her, what has made her ask questions now? And I went with the character the way I had set her up and came up with a plausible reason for the change. It added a nice new element to my story I didn't see coming.
For minor characters I often pick up people I see on the bus or subway in the city. My prison guard is a guy who sat next to me on the bus last week. Anybody who says something interesting, or who's looks attract my attention end up in my little notebook.
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