How Well do you Know your Characters?

When I start writing, I don’t  know my characters very well, though the story has been frothing in my mind for quite some time. I just have the basic idea  about my characters. Many times I am stuck at different parts of the plot, clueless about my characters’ motive.

I  have tried to read as much as I can on how to get into the mind of my characters. The risk taker  that I am, I love the idea of not knowing what is going to happen next. At other times my analytical mind wants every teenie weenie detail down on  paper.

I am currently in the plotting stage of my new WIP. My Beta Reader cum Crit Partner is going over my completed manuscript  with an extremely fine tooth comb.

For my current WIP, I have decided to get to know all my characters, not just the protagonist and the antagonist, but also characters who have smaller roles to play in the story.

I am going to pretend that I am a journalist and interview  all my characters by asking them about their family background, work interest, relationships, religious beliefs, politics, favourite leisure pursuits, hobbies, dreams, ambition in life, relationship with parents and siblings, educational qualification, any fears that they have, friends, favourite childhood memories, pets, people they loved and lost, people that inspire them, things that touches them the most and  things that turn them off.     

  

I  am also planning  to throw in a few questions like what they would do in case they win a million dollar lottery, if they are stranded alone on an island with their enemy, if they meet an alien and what happens if they suddenly develop a super power: the ability to interpret dreams, to read people’s minds, to see the future and the ability to change something.

The responses I  imagine my characters  giving me  will be kept short; these responses I  am sure will help me  know my characters better. It will also be an useful way of catching each character’s  voice, personality  and individual style of speaking.

As I am currently in the brainstorming mood, it will be a fun exercise to do. What do you all do to get to know your characters better? Do you have a method that helps you get into the skin of your characters? Please share with us.

Creating Lovable and Enduring Characters

Its every writer’s dream to create  lovable and enduring characters: a protagonist or supporting characters readers accept into their life and follow his or her literary journey.  These characters  find instant acceptance, they immediately   befriend a legion of  readers eager to  get to know them better and follow them through the pages.

Several things help to create Lovable and Enduring  characters. Here are a few of my thoughts:

1. A Lovable character  has to  Believable. Such a  character must be  as realistic as it’s possible. Then there is an instant  connection  between the reader and character. He or she has to belong to  a world the readers can identify. He or she has to have a real set of problems, much like the problems that haunt us.

2.  A Imperfect Character  who has several  flaws  and  shortcomings  endears himself to the readers. Perfect characters or characters with very few flaws have an artificiality about them. We have an instant dislike for these superior than thou creatures. We love people  who are as flawed as us.

3. A character  who is not afraid  of  Failure is one every reader will love. This character will sacrifice everything to win the conflict, a lot like Harry Potter. This character intensifies the tension with his or her determined attitude to plough through, inspite of the odds stacking up against him/her.

 4. A character not scared to show his or her Emotions. Afterall when a reader is following you page after page, they need to see you  warts and all. They need to see your joys as well as sorrows, your fears as well as strengths, your worries and concerns.   

 5. A character who encounters both Success and Failure is one readers identify with. Isn’t life all about the  highs and lows. The lows the protagonist undergoes makes us rejoice when he or she experiences a high. If a character keeps tasting failure without a bite of success, then the readers label him or her as a loser. And if the character only meets with success, then he is labeled as an overachiever, and the readers somewhere start resenting him.  

6. A character who has  several Inner Demons to conquer. This is as realistic as it can get and also becomes a mirror image of  all  of us.  Life is all about conquering fears. We have as many inner conflicts to overcome as  external conflicts to battle. And our fights with our inner demons is a constant one.

7. A character who arouses our Sympathy and wriggles his/her way into a corner of our heart forges a  bond : albeit a bond of sympathy. James (James and the Giant peach), Mathilda, poor Harry Potter  mistreated by his uncle and aunt, and bullied by his cousin, all wormed their way into our hearts.

8. A character who is slightly Mysterious; has several layers to his personality which have not yet been revealed, wins over anytime. The motives of such characters are not revealed immediately. The intrigued reader  is curious to know more about the character and sticks on despite the plot slackening in places.

What do you think goes into creating lovable and enduring characters? Which trait in a character appeals to you the most? How do you go all go about creating a well rounded character, a character readers will love? We all are eagerly awaiting your tips to perfect our own characters.

TLC for the Supporting Characters

The characters in our books and here I am not just talking of the protagonist and the antagonist, but  about every other character inhabiting our literary city (manuscript). Though the protagonist and the antagonist are more important than the rest of the ensemble cast, the supporting characters do  play  important roles in our books.

If a little TLC (Tender Loving Care, or shall I call it Tender Literary Care) is showered on the other characters the story  gets enriched and is all the better for it.

Many times I have noticed  in some books that the other characters are ignored, they are just props that silently appear on the stage and then do the disappearing act after their purpose is fulfilled. There is not much of a  role for them to play in the story. I agree that the story is predominantly about the Main Character, but is the MC living on an island, all alone. No. More often than not the MC lives in a world swamped with people. Some more closer to him/her  than  others. And these people have lives of their own.

 So isn’t it a writer’s duty to flesh out these supporting characters well. To breathe life into them. We can definitely give them  more prominent roles to play. There can be a couple of  sub plots racing alongside, or  better still intersecting the main plot with these supporting characters in the thick of things.

These characters can have their own goals and  problems to solve, their dreams and aspirations to be achieved. If these characters too grow like the Main Character by the end of the story, the story becomes full bodied with warm blood gushing in its veins.

The supporting characters’ back story can be revealed during their frequent interactions with the main character. Readers are  not just interested in following the MC,  they also  love to read about each and every character in the book. Sketchy characters with  no clue where they are going have a jarring effect. Then it becomes obvious that the writer has not paid attention, or is just not concerned about anyone except the MC.

Supporting  characters  who are  strong entities, who can stand  on their own, push the story even if the protagonist is not around in few scenes. If these characters are on the Antagonist’s side, they can intensify the Conflict. If they are on the Protagonist’s side they can assist in the Resolution.

I have seen that the books I have read and reread have strong supporting characters  and these characters  are not there just  for decoration.  Many times they overtake the protagonist with agendas of their own. The supporting characters  should not be treated as  puppets. They are capable of making decisions and taking actions without the protagonist’s consent. These strong  supporting characters make for a good read.

What about you all? Do you all pay equal attention to the ensemble cast? Do you all shower a little bit of TLC on the supporting characters? How do you all handle these characters? Please tell us. We would love to know and learn.

How well do our Characters Grow ?

The characters ( the protagonist, the antagonist and the peripheral characters) are extremely important elements in our stories/books. All these characters take the story forward. Thereby it becomes  important  to not just  flesh them out in a appealing, healthy and wholesome way: without making them too fat or too thin, but also to breathe life into them.  As these are the  literary  people who will attract  readers into the make believe world we have created.

I have realized I had been indifferent  to not just the peripheral characters who dotted my story,  but also to the protagonist and the  antagonist in my  earliest work. No wonder then, its lying  in the lower drawer of my desk. When I revisited that particular book, I blanched at the flat characters I had created. Forget about bonding with them, a reader may not even like the one dimensional creatures, as flat as cheese trapped between two slices of bread, I had unknowingly unleashed   years back.

 I have realized that  for the characters in our books  to become multidimensional creatures with  rounded personalities that   readers will love, bond and  befriend, we  have  to make the characters grow.  By growth its not just the numerical or the physical growth, but also the emotional, spiritual, intellectual and  mental   growth. A growth that signifies  and symbolizes that life is  not only being lived  every  single moment, but also that its teaching us every single moment. This emotional, spiritual, intellectual and mental growth happens when we experience life in its entirety, when we battle everything that life is constantly tossing in our paths, and yet move ahead without giving up hope or the dreams we carry in our hearts. 

Character development is an important  ingredient of our story.  For a character to develop to it’s full potential,  character growth becomes vital. Not just the main  character, but the antagonist as well as other characters too must grow before the readers' eyes. This can only happen when they  experience the bitter sweet emotions of joy and sorrow,  meet  with  success and failure, adjust with guilt and regret. They  need to forge relations that may or may not blossom, undergo the  ups  and  downs and uncertainities that mark life, show their deepest  fears and darkest emotions,  reveal  their brave fronts as well as their vulnerable sides to the readers. Growth is one facet of life that is constant like change and it will resonate with the readers. Our characters are reflections of what we undergo in our own lives.

As humans we are constantly evolving and changing, sometimes for the better and at other times  for the worse. Though we may be unaware of it,  each and every experience:  whether good or bad contributes to our growth. Likewise for our characters.

When these varied   emotions  are  added to  the characters, its then that he/she/they  really start  living and breathing. The story literally hums into life and the characters develop flesh and bones, blood and skin.  

I am striving to make my characters grow. How do you all  bring about character growth? Do you have any special method to breathe life into your characters? Please share, we all will  surely benefit from your experiences. 

Imperfection : The New Perfection

Imperfection is actually the new perfection. The smudge of Imperfection in characters adds an unexplainable and undefinable appeal.

Characters in books mirror real life people. We all have our own individual idiosyncrasies, flaws, shortcomings and insecurities. So it’s nothing unusual if characters reflects these traits. Actually this quality (Imperfection) makes a character more real. Readers find it easy to identify with someone who is imperfect. Someone who makes mistakes, is swayed by emotions, is prone to mood swings, is more real  than a character who is calm and unruffled and who never makes mistakes. Though we look upto perfect people,  they do give us a temporary sense of insecurity.  We feel small in front of them. We may even secretly and subtly resent their perfection and larger than life image. But it’s the imperfect characters we bond with. In their presence we revel in our own imperfections.

Have you all noticed that more and more often our protagonists lead imperfect lives. As the story unfolds, these imperfect characters leading imperfect lives try to resolve the conflict by tackling their own personal imperfections first.

Aristotle called it Hamartia, which was seen as a character flaw. This character flaw can be a limitation, a problem, a phobia, or a deficiency present in a character who is otherwise quite normal. The character flaw may be a violent temper that may turn out to affect the character’s actions, abilities, or interactions with other characters. Sometimes it can be a simple personality defect which only has effect on the character’s motives and social interaction and nothing else.

Flaws or imperfection add depth and humanity to the characters in a narrative. For eg the mayor with a penchant for gambling, the hero with claustrophobia, the heroine with an alcohol problem. One of the most famous example is ‘ Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.’ 

Character flaws can be slotted into three categories.

Minor Flaws make the characters memorable in readers minds, these give the character individuality, but other than that do not affect the story in any way. They can be a scar, an accent, biting the lower lip, twirling the moustache, a girl constantly flinging her hair back. A protagonist can have several minor flaws, each having no effect on the plot.

Major Flaws are noticeable and important. They affect the individual physically, mentally, emotionally, morally or spiritually. Major flaws are not necessarily negative : they can be rigid religious beliefs or a strict adherence to a certain lifestyle. Major flaws like: greed, blindness, deafness, lust, often hamper and restrict the character in one way or the other. The major flaw is important for the character’s personal development and the story. Heroes and heroines must overcome their own major flaws either partially or completely, either temporarily or permanently, at some point in the story, very often by the climax, by sheer determination or skill to be able to solve the larger problem at hand. For a villain his major flaw is frequently the cause of his downfall. The protagonist’s major flaw defines the core problem, the entire journey to remedy this problem forms the firm backbone of the story, sometimes prodding the plot forward.

The last flaw is the Tragic Flaw, it’s the cause of the character’s downfall and eventual death. Tragic Flaw arises out of the character’s misplaced trust in another character, an excessive amount of curiousity that sucks him into problems, pride that plunges him into a world of loneliness. The fall that often arises out of the Tragic Flaw occurs at the beginning of a story.

Do you like perfect characters? Or Imperfection is the new perfection for you? What kind of character flaws do your characters have?