Lastly there is the question of morals. Now it might seem obvious that good guys do good thing and bad guys do bad things. Of course we both know people are never that simple. Developing a moral code (meaning what they consider wrong and what they would do in their attempts to fulfill their desires) can really make a character feel real. To do that you need to ask yourself a few simple questions. What would this character consider bending the rules? What would they consider crossing the line? What would make this character cross the line? Almost every character, even villains, have a moral code. Remember a good villain always thinks they are doing the right thing, even if no one else does. Of course once you know a character’s moral boundaries, feel free to push them to the edge or push them across it. Which one you do write is often a reflection of the type of story you’re trying to tell. "Darker and edgier" stories will more often reach that line and force characters to cross it.
As suggested by Loral in the comment below try checking out Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development. See where your character falls. Do they have a black and white morality scale? Or are they all shades o' grey?
Ultimately, as you can see, a lot of different elements go into making a well-developed characters. If you want to make a dynamic character you’ll really need to pull from the elements you made up here. Make them confront their past. Push them to do something they consider wrong because they feel they have too. Give them their wants and needs and let them hate it. Even static characters benefit from this level of development if they will be a main focus of your story. Remember the only difference is that the events in the story won’t change your character significantly.
Second and tertiary characters are also help by in-depth development. Doing it can help not just a subplot, but your main plot too. The world feels more real, the plot more dynamic and by giving these characters firm goals, needs and personalities you avoid making your main character seem like a Mary Sue.
So in review, you need to look at the character's personality, background info, relationships, life events, the goals, wants and need as well as their moral code, doing so will help you create a fully developed character.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Basics: Characters (Needs)
This section continues our discussion of how to build characters.
As mentioned in the previous post, this post will being covering characters’ needs, fears, wants and goals, in other words their motivation. A character’s needs, wants, fears and goals push the story and create conflict. They drive the story into action.
1. Needs: A great place to build ideas for your characters’ needs is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Is the character homeless? Then they might need shelter. Is the character abused? Safety. Often times the lower down on the pyramid the need is, the more dramatic and the stronger desire the character has. Also note that characters can have more then one need and that some needs can be met with relative ease and others cannot. Those that cannot often, and probably should, drive the story on an obvious or underlying level. Needs can also manifest themselves in fears.
2. Fears: Not fears like being afraid of spiders, but fears like being afraid to disappoint a parent. Maybe the main characters refusal to leave her horrible job is because she is afraid to disappoint her father. Perhaps she’s afraid to let anyone see her without makeup because if she does she thinks no one will ever love her.
3. Wants and Goals: Needs can be unconscious, but wants and especially goals rarely are. However, passionate goals and wants commonly (but not always) reflect an inner a need or fear. Maybe Sally really wants to win the gymnastic tournament because her self esteem is derived from it.
These are the issues that drive the story. You don’t need to know your character's every need and desire before starting, but at least thinking about it can help you bring real emotional depth and meaning to your story.
So how do you find conflict using your character's needs, wants and fears? As you write and explore your characters examine their areas to see if they can be exploited for plot and drama. That can mean keeping them unsuccessful at reaching a goal, but it could also mean giving the character what they think they need/want. Remember that what a character thinks they need/want might not actually be what will make them happy. As such you can make reaching their goal not what they expect or exactly what they expected, but they find themselves disappointed. Think of the movie Megamind, where the titular character gets exactly want he thinks he wants and he ends up hating it. If you do this in your story examine how your the characters feels about reaching their goal. What are their reactions? Was it what they expected and hoped for?
In reverse use the characters fear of something to drive a plot point, wreck a relationship or any number of awful things. Though for a twist, maybe the worse happens, but it turns out to not be so bad. Or even better in the long run.
As for reaching their goals in general there are a few things to keep in mind. From a story standpoint, the after effect of reaching their goal really depends on how easy the goal was obtained. A major goal/need/want gained easily should rarely be what they expected or make them happy (a la Megamind). However even reaching a hard earned goal can also be subverted, like Jack Kelley in Newsies, who despite wanting to move to Santa Fa the whole movie turns down the chance to go in the end. This is often because as characters develop and change throughout the story their wants and needs change too as do their life situations. These changes should reflect in their reaction to reaching their goal. Jack didn't end up leaving because during the course of the movie he had found the family that had truly wanted and needed. It wasn't that he didn't want to go to Santa Fa anymore, it was that staying allowed him to fulfill a greater need.
There is also another way to use needs to create conflict. Want to know the way to get good conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist? Have their needs, wants and/or goals be incompatible. Their needs could be completely unrelated (i.e. one needs acceptance from friends, the other needs higher self esteem), they could be exactly the same (i.e. both want to get the best part in a ballet), related to each other (i.e. one needs to feel in control and thus tries to become immortal, the other needs to stop the antagonist from threatening their lives and the lives of the people they care about) or in direct opposition (one needs to ensure that a building survives, the other needs to ensure it gets torn down).
As mentioned in the previous post, this post will being covering characters’ needs, fears, wants and goals, in other words their motivation. A character’s needs, wants, fears and goals push the story and create conflict. They drive the story into action.
1. Needs: A great place to build ideas for your characters’ needs is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Is the character homeless? Then they might need shelter. Is the character abused? Safety. Often times the lower down on the pyramid the need is, the more dramatic and the stronger desire the character has. Also note that characters can have more then one need and that some needs can be met with relative ease and others cannot. Those that cannot often, and probably should, drive the story on an obvious or underlying level. Needs can also manifest themselves in fears.
2. Fears: Not fears like being afraid of spiders, but fears like being afraid to disappoint a parent. Maybe the main characters refusal to leave her horrible job is because she is afraid to disappoint her father. Perhaps she’s afraid to let anyone see her without makeup because if she does she thinks no one will ever love her.
3. Wants and Goals: Needs can be unconscious, but wants and especially goals rarely are. However, passionate goals and wants commonly (but not always) reflect an inner a need or fear. Maybe Sally really wants to win the gymnastic tournament because her self esteem is derived from it.
These are the issues that drive the story. You don’t need to know your character's every need and desire before starting, but at least thinking about it can help you bring real emotional depth and meaning to your story.
So how do you find conflict using your character's needs, wants and fears? As you write and explore your characters examine their areas to see if they can be exploited for plot and drama. That can mean keeping them unsuccessful at reaching a goal, but it could also mean giving the character what they think they need/want. Remember that what a character thinks they need/want might not actually be what will make them happy. As such you can make reaching their goal not what they expect or exactly what they expected, but they find themselves disappointed. Think of the movie Megamind, where the titular character gets exactly want he thinks he wants and he ends up hating it. If you do this in your story examine how your the characters feels about reaching their goal. What are their reactions? Was it what they expected and hoped for?
In reverse use the characters fear of something to drive a plot point, wreck a relationship or any number of awful things. Though for a twist, maybe the worse happens, but it turns out to not be so bad. Or even better in the long run.
As for reaching their goals in general there are a few things to keep in mind. From a story standpoint, the after effect of reaching their goal really depends on how easy the goal was obtained. A major goal/need/want gained easily should rarely be what they expected or make them happy (a la Megamind). However even reaching a hard earned goal can also be subverted, like Jack Kelley in Newsies, who despite wanting to move to Santa Fa the whole movie turns down the chance to go in the end. This is often because as characters develop and change throughout the story their wants and needs change too as do their life situations. These changes should reflect in their reaction to reaching their goal. Jack didn't end up leaving because during the course of the movie he had found the family that had truly wanted and needed. It wasn't that he didn't want to go to Santa Fa anymore, it was that staying allowed him to fulfill a greater need.
There is also another way to use needs to create conflict. Want to know the way to get good conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist? Have their needs, wants and/or goals be incompatible. Their needs could be completely unrelated (i.e. one needs acceptance from friends, the other needs higher self esteem), they could be exactly the same (i.e. both want to get the best part in a ballet), related to each other (i.e. one needs to feel in control and thus tries to become immortal, the other needs to stop the antagonist from threatening their lives and the lives of the people they care about) or in direct opposition (one needs to ensure that a building survives, the other needs to ensure it gets torn down).
Basics: Characters (Character profiles)
The thing about creating characters is that everyone does it differently. One common and useful way are Character Profiles. A character profile is a document which profiles a character, just like a criminal might have a profile. They include the physical, the intangible and the characters history (or back-story). Character profiles, for some, are quite easy and are the first thing they make up. Those people often have pages upon pages of background information on their character. Others, like myself, work best by writing to discover their character. Obviously then what might work well for me won’t work for you. Either way being familiar, at least, with the general themes and question for a character profile can be very helpful while writing.
However, I feel the need to note, there can be a danger in creating character profiles first or too detailed. You can become blocked in by the desire not to contradict the information you've written in your character profile (if that happens don't be afraid to ignore your profile). Furthermore, sometimes it’s fun to let the character reveal their history to you as you write. However, if you prefer more specific and detail questions, there are other places online to find much more comprehensive questionnaires.
Anyway, in an attempt to avoid pigeonholing (and because I generally dislike character profiles longer then a paragraph), I’m just going to address some basic considerations to keep in mind before, during and after you start writing.
1. Personality: What is their general personality like? Introverted? Extroverted? Happy? Sad? Is the way they act outwardly the same as how they feel inside? Just a feel for the character's general demeanor is often good enough to begin with.
2. Background info: What socio-economic class and/or culture does this character come from? What is their job? Religious beliefs? Age group? Do they have any physical or mental disabilities or abnormalities? Are any of their lifestyle choices different from the norm? (Do they live in a commune? Are they vegetarian? A drag queen?) How do these answers affect their worldview?
3. Relationships: What are the most important relationships in their lives? Are these relationships negative or positive? Are they any relationships that were important but have fallen apart? How did they fall apart and what was the impact of that on the characters? This includes friends and family.
4. Life Events: What are a few life-shifting events that have happened to the character? How where they affected? (These events don’t have to be traumatic or unusual, they just have to have had a great impact on their lives, mentally and/or physically).
5. Morals: What do they consider right? What do they consider wrong? What would cause them to cross that line? (More on this in a later post).
5. Fears/Needs/Wants: What does the character truly want? What do they think they want? What do they need? What do they think they need? What are they afraid of? Not fears like being afraid of spiders, but inner fears. (This will be covered more thoroughly in the next post)
These questions don’t need complete answers before you write. They are just meant to help guide you to think three dimensionally. Keep in mind you can also build conflict from your answers. It can be a sideline plot (Does the atheist in catholic family run into any trouble?) or the major plot (The character's quest for a promotion at work and how that changes their life). Of course there are more questions to ask, questions like: What is their middle name? What are their hobbies? What’s their favorite color? What are they afraid of (on a superficial level)? Etc. Though these are fun details to make up, most of these questions don’t have to be answered before hand, just discovered as needed. In fact in can be very freeing while you write.
However, I feel the need to note, there can be a danger in creating character profiles first or too detailed. You can become blocked in by the desire not to contradict the information you've written in your character profile (if that happens don't be afraid to ignore your profile). Furthermore, sometimes it’s fun to let the character reveal their history to you as you write. However, if you prefer more specific and detail questions, there are other places online to find much more comprehensive questionnaires.
Anyway, in an attempt to avoid pigeonholing (and because I generally dislike character profiles longer then a paragraph), I’m just going to address some basic considerations to keep in mind before, during and after you start writing.
1. Personality: What is their general personality like? Introverted? Extroverted? Happy? Sad? Is the way they act outwardly the same as how they feel inside? Just a feel for the character's general demeanor is often good enough to begin with.
2. Background info: What socio-economic class and/or culture does this character come from? What is their job? Religious beliefs? Age group? Do they have any physical or mental disabilities or abnormalities? Are any of their lifestyle choices different from the norm? (Do they live in a commune? Are they vegetarian? A drag queen?) How do these answers affect their worldview?
3. Relationships: What are the most important relationships in their lives? Are these relationships negative or positive? Are they any relationships that were important but have fallen apart? How did they fall apart and what was the impact of that on the characters? This includes friends and family.
4. Life Events: What are a few life-shifting events that have happened to the character? How where they affected? (These events don’t have to be traumatic or unusual, they just have to have had a great impact on their lives, mentally and/or physically).
5. Morals: What do they consider right? What do they consider wrong? What would cause them to cross that line? (More on this in a later post).
5. Fears/Needs/Wants: What does the character truly want? What do they think they want? What do they need? What do they think they need? What are they afraid of? Not fears like being afraid of spiders, but inner fears. (This will be covered more thoroughly in the next post)
These questions don’t need complete answers before you write. They are just meant to help guide you to think three dimensionally. Keep in mind you can also build conflict from your answers. It can be a sideline plot (Does the atheist in catholic family run into any trouble?) or the major plot (The character's quest for a promotion at work and how that changes their life). Of course there are more questions to ask, questions like: What is their middle name? What are their hobbies? What’s their favorite color? What are they afraid of (on a superficial level)? Etc. Though these are fun details to make up, most of these questions don’t have to be answered before hand, just discovered as needed. In fact in can be very freeing while you write.
Basics: Characters (Type)
Basics: Characters (Types)
So now that you’ve learned how not to make a character (in my series on Mary Sues) we are going to address how to make characters. In this post I’m going to cover the different types of characters that exist in your story, introducing useful character terms beyond Mary Sue. In the following post I’ll write about how to build a characters from scratch. This is just a generally introduction to character, I have more in-depth post written about heroes and villains, likely more will follow.
First there are the obvious terms, namely the protagonist and the antagonist. These two characters often get assigned the roles of being good and evil respectively, however that just is not the case. Properly a protagonist is the nothing more then the central character of the story. The antagonist, in contrast, is the character (or even force) that is in conflict with or working against the protagonist. The protagonist could be a rival ballerina, who despite being perfect nice, is just a better dancer then the main character. Of course there is more drama in making the antagonist a negative character and as such it is commonly done.
Another thing of note is the point of view (POV) character. Again this position is often assigned to the main character, but that is not always the case. A story can completely lack a POV character or there can be many. A POV character is nothing more then a character used by the writer to explore the story. By that I mean, the character whose point of view is being used to experience a scene, chapter or book. There can be twenty POV characters or just one.
Next there is another pair of character types, Static and Dynamic. Static characters experience no significant change throughout the course of the story. They are the same at the beginning as they are at the end and there is nothing wrong with that. If their interesting enough they work just find as main characters. Sherlock Holmes is largely a static character and any changes that have been found are slow developments over the course of the many short stories and books. Dynamic characters on the other hand change, and often quite a lot. Keep in mind the change doesn’t have to be for the betterment of a character, it just has to occur for the character to fit the definition.
Again, in contrast, there are cardboard/flat characters and round characters. Cardboard characters can be thought of as cardboard cutouts. They are defined and identified by only one real feature. It could, in theory, be nothing more then their hair color or a limp or their constant weeping. Flat characters on the other hand often have a few noticeable features. Obviously neither one of these types would work well in a long piece as protagonist, they often aren’t interesting enough to hold up a book. However they could work in short stories quite well. Similarly there are stock characters. Stock characters are basically flat characters; the main difference is that their few traits are so familiar that the audience will recognize them. They often show up in similar worlds and situations across books or even media. Examples include the mean librarian or jerk jock. Often times a stock character can be used as a starting point to develop an interesting fully developed character. Round characters, on the other hand, are fully developed, possessing back-story, flaws and strengths.
Lastly there are the extras. They often are cardboard characters and are mainly there to add to the realism of the scene or mood (i.e. set the scene). They might be guardsmen, farmers, shoppers or schoolchildren. These characters might have a couple of lines, but generally they’re the same as movie extras.
In the next post I’ll go over how to build characters. I’ll mainly focus on generally building characters, but I will address a few specific issues to creating the different types of characters.
So now that you’ve learned how not to make a character (in my series on Mary Sues) we are going to address how to make characters. In this post I’m going to cover the different types of characters that exist in your story, introducing useful character terms beyond Mary Sue. In the following post I’ll write about how to build a characters from scratch. This is just a generally introduction to character, I have more in-depth post written about heroes and villains, likely more will follow.
First there are the obvious terms, namely the protagonist and the antagonist. These two characters often get assigned the roles of being good and evil respectively, however that just is not the case. Properly a protagonist is the nothing more then the central character of the story. The antagonist, in contrast, is the character (or even force) that is in conflict with or working against the protagonist. The protagonist could be a rival ballerina, who despite being perfect nice, is just a better dancer then the main character. Of course there is more drama in making the antagonist a negative character and as such it is commonly done.
Another thing of note is the point of view (POV) character. Again this position is often assigned to the main character, but that is not always the case. A story can completely lack a POV character or there can be many. A POV character is nothing more then a character used by the writer to explore the story. By that I mean, the character whose point of view is being used to experience a scene, chapter or book. There can be twenty POV characters or just one.
Next there is another pair of character types, Static and Dynamic. Static characters experience no significant change throughout the course of the story. They are the same at the beginning as they are at the end and there is nothing wrong with that. If their interesting enough they work just find as main characters. Sherlock Holmes is largely a static character and any changes that have been found are slow developments over the course of the many short stories and books. Dynamic characters on the other hand change, and often quite a lot. Keep in mind the change doesn’t have to be for the betterment of a character, it just has to occur for the character to fit the definition.
Again, in contrast, there are cardboard/flat characters and round characters. Cardboard characters can be thought of as cardboard cutouts. They are defined and identified by only one real feature. It could, in theory, be nothing more then their hair color or a limp or their constant weeping. Flat characters on the other hand often have a few noticeable features. Obviously neither one of these types would work well in a long piece as protagonist, they often aren’t interesting enough to hold up a book. However they could work in short stories quite well. Similarly there are stock characters. Stock characters are basically flat characters; the main difference is that their few traits are so familiar that the audience will recognize them. They often show up in similar worlds and situations across books or even media. Examples include the mean librarian or jerk jock. Often times a stock character can be used as a starting point to develop an interesting fully developed character. Round characters, on the other hand, are fully developed, possessing back-story, flaws and strengths.
Lastly there are the extras. They often are cardboard characters and are mainly there to add to the realism of the scene or mood (i.e. set the scene). They might be guardsmen, farmers, shoppers or schoolchildren. These characters might have a couple of lines, but generally they’re the same as movie extras.
In the next post I’ll go over how to build characters. I’ll mainly focus on generally building characters, but I will address a few specific issues to creating the different types of characters.
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