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Characters

We all have the same goal as fiction writers—we want to transport our readers inside the pages so that they feel like a part of the story. Characters are an extremely important part of making that happen. And characters don't just transport the readers; they drive the story, or at least mine do. In fact, I've learned to listen to them when they argue with me.

So how does one develop effective, memorable characters? To begin with, it might be helpful to examine what distinguishes an effective character from an ineffective one. In my experience, most writers like to read, so you can probably think of characters that are particularly memorable for you and also some that you didn't feel any connection with. Let's look at five potential traps that can lead to ineffective characters. You'll notice they are all connected, because one often leads to another, and some characters are guilty of all five: they're one dimensional, they're stereotypical, they're too perfect, they're inconsistent, or they're dull.

Five Traps

One-dimensional characters don't seem real. They're flat. You get one-dimensional characters when you don't devote enough time to character development. Of course, you should bear in mind that not every character deserves or merits equal development. All novels have their main characters and their secondary characters, and you can't develop each and every one of the secondary characters or your books will be thousands of pages long. It may be okay for a character to be one-dimensional if that character's role is not significant. But if it is significant, that character needs to be fleshed out and developed. For example, let's say there's a character in your book who is a detective, and he's married to a woman who is described as a Midwestern housewife. She may be described physically, but if all we know about her past, her personality, and her motivations is that she's a Midwestern housewife, that's not very much to go on. We only know that she can cook a pot roast. That character is going to fall off of the stage of our memories in a hurry, and we're not going to care what happens to her one way or another.

Stereotypical characters are uninteresting because they're not unique. It's important to note here that being stereotypical is not the same thing as being consistent. Your characters should behave in ways that are consistent with how you've developed them, but that's not the same thing as being stereotypical. Imagine all of the rich people in your stories are shallow, greedy, and uncaring. All of the wealthy women are tall and extravagantly dressed, and they've all had plastic surgery. Or imagine you're writing a fantasy story and all elves are haughty and all dwarfs are gruff, and they hate each other. Those are stereotypes. It's when a character breaks free of the stereotype that he or she becomes believable and memorable. Real people rarely act according to stereotypes in every respect. Everybody is unique in some way. You don't want your readers to think, Didn't I just see that character in so-and-so's work, only now he's got another name and brown hair? You want your characters to be uniquely memorable.

The too-perfect character tends to make your reader's eyes roll. Sometimes it's okay to have a character who is perfect in every way, especially if you're doing a parody. But perfection doesn't exist in real life, so it shouldn't usually exist in your writing. It's hard to empathize with a perfect person, because none of us is perfect. Everyone, no matter how noble, is flawed in some way. For example, an effective character might be someone who is heroic in almost every way—he's a good fighter, he's nice to look at, he rides well and shoots well, and he's brave and compassionate—but he's totally indecisive, so if he has to take command in a battle, everyone's going to die. It's much easier for readers to relate to someone with a flaw, because they can say, "Yes, that's just like my buddy Jeff. He's a great guy, but he can't make up his mind to save his life."

There's also a particular kind of too-perfect character that I refer to as the Mary Sue or Gary Stew character. This kind of character is the writer's idealized version of himself or herself. Usually this character comes from humble beginnings, achieves impossible goals, ends up saving the galaxy, and then dies in the arms of King Arthur after having become the first female knight of the roundtable. How is anyone going to relate to that except the author? The author is living out his or her fantasies. We all do that to some extent, but Mary Sue is the extreme version of that kind of wish fulfillment, and we need to be careful about it.