What do you think are the most important parts of a story? The plot? The details? The setting?
Wrong!
Think back to some of the most recent bestsellers- Twilight and the Harry Potter series, for example. The premise for those stories, when thought of on it's bare bones was not something wildly original. A vampire love story and a school for witches and wizards. Ideas that, most likely, had already been done in one form or the other. So what made that story memorable? It was the characters that were the life of the story, they gave the tale it's spark- much like the people in our lives give us excitement. How well would you remember Harry Potter's story if the Weasly family was absent from it, or Hermione? The devil is not in the details, it's in the characters.
So what makes a character great, you might ask? I think that question can best be explained by listeing what doesn't make a character realistic or memorable.
How to Kill A Good Character
Invunerability- No, I'm not talking about the Superman kind. I'm talking about a character that can have her entire family die in a car wreck, not shed a tear, and go on a date with her dream guy that afternoon. It's emotional vulnerability you want to see in your characters; everyone at some point in their lives has had a meltdown; a blow that hit so hard they just couldn't handle it. Your character should have that too. This makes he/she seems human, which is generally what you're going for.
Crazy Good Fighting Skills- We've all seen this character. It's that Sally Normal that starts off as a wimp in the beginning of the story, and then after a week of training is taking down hardened assassins. There's no way that would ever happen! The only way to even make you're character's fighting skills look even semi-natural is to give them a solid, believable back story that would logically prove that your character has these abilities.
Stupidity- Unless you're writing about a mentality disabled character, there is no way to pull this one off. After you place the bleeding gunshot victim in the middle of the room and you're cop doesn't realize it's murder, the reader is going to laugh in disbelief and throw the book out. That's an extreme example, but I'm sure you can think of at least one book you've reading in which you wanted to scream to the character the answer after at least two chapters of it being glaring obvious. Think of what clues would relate to the answer the least while still keeping the story interesting.
Over Explaining- When was the last time you stared at your wall for ten minutes and described what shade of blue it is? I'm going to take a wild guess and say never. So why should your character do the same thing? I have read a book before in which the author takes several paragraphs to explain that the homicide detective picked up the trash from the fast food she got (even though she knew the crime scene she was going to would be gory-see overly dramatic), and stepped out of the car to throw it away. Couldn't we do that in one sentence? I know what's it's like to throw trash away; I don't want to read about it.
Drama!- This isn't a soap opera, it's a novel, we don't want to see the character whine the whole book about something silly, or get way too serious about something flippant. For example, for the character to dramatically state that the cop was fueled only by coffee and determination, and it was the bloodiest crime scene he/she had ever scene, at the start of the book, would be laying it on a little thick. Put all the events in a realistic light as they would be handled in life, not fiction. Plus, when everything is super important, there isn't anything to build to, creating a bland taste throughout the entire novel.
So know you know what to avoid to keep your character from becoming snooze worthy. There are even more things you can do to fine tune your character, but this should be enough to avoid any fatal mistakes. So push on, and keep writing!
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A/N- I hope everyone enjoyed this! The article above is just a taste of what you'll find on my new writing advice blog, Kindling Inspiration. So if you like what you read, check it out at http://kindlingimagination.wordpress.com/
