Meeting Your Characters
I'm schizophrenic.
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. . .
. . .
Fooled you. I'm not schizophrenic, but I don't create characters, I meet them and get to know them. So sometimes I may look eerily like I've got voices in my head when I'm sitting at my keyboard, staring at the screen, and talking to an empty room. Who am I talking to?
My characters, of course.
Characters are one of the core aspects of a well-written novel. If they're flat and uninteresting, your novel will be too. If they're goofy and childish, the tone of your novel will be much more lighthearted than if everyone was being serious and talking about how they're all going to die. Characters are important, neglect them and your book will suffer. This is why I wanted to talk about them early on.
There are a few things you have to remember about each and every charrie, no matter how minor.
1. Characters are people too
2. There is no perfect character
3. They're all annoying little bastards sent from the devil to torment your muse. They may not always do what you want them to.
Let's start with number one:
Characters are People Too
Let's talk about how incredible that statement is. Your character - your brainchild, this insane, wonderful creation that has sprung from your demented mind is a person. Essentially, you do not always command every aspect about them. And more importantly, they will surprise you.
Respect your character, and they will respect you.
I don't care if your character is a four year old. I don't care if your character is a slimy, corrupt captain bent on ogling every woman he sees. What I mean by respect is this: you treat them as a person, a rounded, full person, who carries within them both the potential for great good, and great evil. I'm not saying that people aren't inherently evil, they are. But they weren't made that way. Therefore, they have both aspects inside of them - and so your characters, if you want realistic, must be as well. Your hero will have flaws and insecurities (not necessarily hubris), perhaps Tom likes to shoot off his mouth and lacks good judgement, perhaps Amelia is insecure about her looks and can't cook to save her life. The same goes for your villain. Even your villain will have that sweater he loves, that grandmother he dotes on, or a penchant for a certain color or way of dress.
They will have this whether you give them it or not. Also, they will have this whether you even know they do or not.
Quirks will emerge as the story goes on. Don't worry about fleshing out your characters in intimate, psychological detail. Don't worry if he has a whatsit-complex or try to write down every intimate detail of the articles of clothing he has in his closet or what the middle name of his best friend's sister's boyfriend is. All will be revealed in due time.
Start with the basics, the backstory, and at least one thing that makes your character unique. Is it a boy or a girl? Are they attractive, or not so? What do they do for a living? Who are their parents and how do they relate to them? How old are they? Who are their friends and lovers? Now, give them at least one good memory and one bad memory. Have they had their heart broken? Has somebody they loved died? Are they mortified about the fifth grade school play where they played the Happy Tulip or Bunny Number One? For unique traits, they could be physical, psychological, or habitual. Do they have ridiculously good-looking hair? What are they afraid of? Do they have that one mug that they always must use to drink their favorite beverage?
Again, don't worry about the details too much. I know, at least for myself, the more I play around the character, the more they begin to just write themselves. This brings me to point number two.
There Are No Perfect Characters
You cannot expect to get your character right the first time around. I can't stress this enough. Your character will morph and become more well-known with you as your book wears on, so for right now, what's important is for you to have enough information to get inside their head and spit some dialogue out on a page. I had to learn this the hard way with my character, Ultana. She began as merely a mentor, a fairly flat character that I didn't know very much about and who had been ridiculously difficult to find a name for. In the beginning she was a bit of a feminist, a bit of a warrior, a bit of a crochety, angry wife who couldn't really care less.
Well, I got 1/3 right.
She was an angry wife.
But the more I wrote with her and discovered her husband's personality, the more I understood why she was so angry in her first scene. How would you respond if you were the wife of an Irish Chieftain who you hadn't wanted to marry in the first place, who didn't love you, who downright smacked you around, and was constantly having affairs with other woman and then getting angry at you when you exchange looks with another man because heaven forbid you do the same?
Geez.
And suddenly Ultana bloomed into this strong-willed, wise woman with a penchant for crossbows who loved her daughter fiercely and was determined to stay faithful to her unfaithful husband and then, once I'd written oh, I don't know, half the book, I realized that she'd completely stolen center stage without even trying because she was just that admirable.
Her husband, O'Neill, was meant to be a 'meh' character that mildly annoyed you, not one that put you into a fit of rage because he was such a selfish, pig-headed prick to everyone around him. Suddenly, he had stolen center stage as well - as the main antagonist.
How's that for a turnabout?
These were characters that I had no intention of developing that literally developed themselves. So I'm telling you, don't worry, even if your characters aren't perfect now, they will turn into your babies who will steal your heart and center stage be absolutely fine in the end.
Characters May Not Obey You
So don't be a control freak. We writers are not gods, not even in our own little worlds. Characters will fall in love without asking. Characters who were meant to fall in love may develop a brother-sister relationship that was not supposed to be there. Villains may suddenly become relatable and heroes may suddenly become incorrigible.
Now, I'm not saying to go with the flow and let all your characters to all the work of creating a story, you'd have a mess then. What I am saying is don't constrict your story to the point where your characters are not acting like themselves, because that's no fun for anyone. If you start to hate your hero, it's up to you to be clever and throw some life-changing experiences his way so that you still get your happy ending that you wanted (or you can always kill him off and turn it into a tragedy, but that's not recommended because if he's that hate-able, nobody will care). If your villain becomes too like-able because of how he treats his grandmother - kill granny, then see how he reacts. Yeah, sure, you're sadistic and cruel, but it's for a good cause.
So what I'm basically saying is this: you both control the plot, you and your characters. It's a joint effort, you see. Characters will do what they want, but you have the last say because once you know them inside and out like you would your best friend, you can basically manipulate them so that the ending turns out the way you wanted it to.
Wow. Maybe I'm not schizophrenic... but I might be slightly psychotic.
The point of all of that being, don't be afraid to bend a little bit, but make sure you assert who's really in charge. Having characters is like raising kids (because I would totally know what that's like), you have to give them some leeway to make their own decisions and be their own person, because if you constrict them too much... well, you're going to end up with a really bad novel.
No pressure.
So seriously, get writing. What's your character like? Is he the antagonist or the protagonist? Climb inside their head and write some backstory, or throw them into a situation to see how they react. Relax, let go, it's okay to play around.
Writing a novel is basically just glorified make-believe anyway.
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