Creating Convincing Characters for Your Fiction

Before you start writing your novel, take some time to get to know your characters. You’ll do a fair bit of writing now that won’t make it into the novel, but will fill out your characters and give them a feeling of depth.

First of all create their backstories. What’s happened to them up to the time we first meet them? What do they remember from their childhoods? (Some traumatic events might have shaped them even though they don’t remember them – they may even have to regain that memory as part of their progress through the novel.) Who in their family or the local community were they close to? Did they have any particular objects or places that meant something special to them? What about their adult life so far?

A man who has been married twice before – once to a woman who was desperately ill – will make a much more interesting character than a man with no past. When he next falls in love, how will his past experience colour his reactions? Will he be afraid to be hurt again? Worse, will all his friends assume the new woman will be ‘wife number three’, not giving him credit for his doubts and anxieties? Will he then feel alone and unsupported?

You may already have decided your character is rather cold and very self-contained. Ask how she came to be like that. Was she bullied? Did other children make fun of her ambitions or interests? Again, there’s a past story – your character won’t read as if she suddenly just started to exist.

You might not use all the backstory in the novel – but it will be there, in the background, enriching your work.

Now move on to the next stage. You’ve written about the reality of the character’s life. But we don’t all live in the present all the time – we daydream, plan, think about the past, worry about the future, sometimes even hallucinate. We all have imaginations and fantasies. Give your characters these dreams and fears. What is he most afraid of – his mother? fire? snakes? (I know someone who is afraid of pumpkins because when she was a child, she saw a serial with a giant pumpkin in it on television. On a rational level, she’s not afraid of pumpkins – she doesn’t run away from them in the supermarket – but she still has bad dreams about them. She’d definitely jump if trick-or-treaters brought a flaming pumpkin to her doorstep and she wasn’t expecting it.)

You might use one of these dreams in the novel. Then again, you might not. But again, you’ve deepened your knowledge of the character and they way he thinks about his world.

Lists can be another useful way of approaching your character. Just list everything he has in his suitcase or she has in her flat. Here are two lists – you’ll be surprised how much they tell you about the characters.

A forty year old journalist has in her living room;

three or four copies of the New Yorker; two copies of the Wall Street Journal, neatly folded

a china coffee mug with a Matisse design, and a tall chrome cafetiere

a Picasso print on the wall

a single Persian rug on the wooden parquet floor

an iPhone on the table

a very faded, beaten up Kermit the Frog puppet

A fifteen year old boy has in his bedroom:

A neat shoe rack with trainers, football boots, one pair of good formal shoes, and two pairs of ballet shoes

the computer, with post-its stuck to the screen – ‘practice’, ‘remember to buy Mum’s present’, ‘3 pm not 4!!!!’ – the screensaver’s on

CDs strewn around – Prodigy, Britney Spears, Tchaikowsky’s Nutcracker

clothes on the floor and the bedclothes thrown back

I’ve deliberately made the clues a bit heavy but you can get the gist – the woman is very controlled, very professional, probably fairly wealthy, but the old Kermit represents something very dear to her in her past that doesn’t quite gel with the professional image. I wonder what? As for the boy, he’s a typical teenager except for the ballet shoes  and the Nutcracker – typically untidy, but perhaps he has the discipline he needs to become a dancer? In both cases, there are conflicts there that you might be able to explore. And all that comes out of just making a list.

Another good way to get to know your characters, once you’re a little bit further along the way to writing, is to think about how other characters in the book see them. Start with their family and friends. Does the journalist’s best friend see her as a woman who has a wonderful lifestyle, someone to envy, or a bit of a loser whose glamorous image conceals a lack of real success? Does the boy’s mother really understand what he gets out of dancing – or has she pushed him into doing it? Or does she wish he would be a ‘normal’ kid and get into the football team?

Look for the little contradictions that we all have. For instance someone who is good at organising things for other people, but somehow can’t get a grip on their own life. (I trained as an accountant – and can’t ever seem to manage to get my tax return in on time!) Someone who is wise and compassionate but has one real blind spot – perhaps race, or overlooking the fact that they never let their partner get a word in edgeways. A character who has one or two tiny contradictions is always much more convincing than an all-out baddy, or a standard size good guy with wife, two kids and dog. (Perhaps the good guy has a secret he’s deeply ashamed of and can’t even admit to his wife – he’s a secret Trekkie and dresses up as Spock when he goes to conventions…)

And look for little mannerisms or phrases. I had a boss once who always used to shake his head sadly when he started a meeting. The first few times I thought it was bad news coming, till I realised it was just what he did – his way of lamenting the fact that we were all too busy and rarely had the chance to sit down and talk. Some people have a little phrase they come out with all the time – the Roman Emperor Augustus used to say ‘Quick as boiled asparagus’, which is memorable even after two thousand years! Someone else I know never uses the handle on a mug – they always hold the mug the wrong way round to avoid it.

Be careful when you’re using these mannerisms though. They can get very wearisome if you overdo it. (Then again, you might want your main character to get fed up with his father’s mannerisms…)

Finally, think of the qualities that you want your character to have, and then think of how they can embody those qualities in their actions. Suppose you have a character who is witty and ambitious, you might think of ways he can display his ambition (speaking up at a meeting, taking on a special project, spreading a rumour about one of his collegues) and do so in a witty way. You might also think that at one meeting, his desire to crack a joke gets him into trouble as his boss doesn’t find it funny – and he realises that he’ll have to be much more careful in future. You might also show him in the lift, thinking of opening phrases for his presentation – trying to make them funnier or more snappy, and then forgetting them when he realises that no one important has bothered to turn up.

If you’ve got to know your characters this well before you start writing, you should be able to make them come to life on the page – and they’re not going to be cardboard cut-outs, or predictable. Instead, they’ll be lively, life-like, and entertaining – and your readers will be engrossed in the details of their lives.