Creating Characters
A point of view I have expressed a lot across my articles and through Stories Across Borders episodes is that compelling characters are much more important for your story than complex worldbuilding or dramatic plots. But that does raise questions. What makes a good character? How do we create them?
Well, the first question is actually pretty easy to answer. There isn’t really a set definition for a good character. But, usually, the characters I find the most compelling are the ones that feel like people. They don’t have no inherently feel like realistic people, but they should have more to them than simply being a device to move the story forward. Good characters have desires, social connections, strengths and weaknesses and they have personalities. They should have quirks, habits and interests. Characters don’t have to be anywhere near as complex as real people, but any significant character - even a simple one - should have more to them than just filling a role in the narrative.
The next question then, is how do you make a character like this? In truth, there’s hardly any one set formula for how a writer creates their characters. But, I do have a few questions you can ask yourself while creating your characters that can give them more depth and make them more compelling as a result.
Who are they?
This is your starting point and should be the simplest question to answer. I don’t mean their name. I mean what is your character's role in this story? Are they your protagonist? Your main villain? The sidekick? How do they find themselves in that role?
Essentially, how does this character fit into your story concept and the broader narrative? Nothing specific, but enough to have a basic idea of who this is. Why they are a part of the narrative and how much depth needs to go into them going forward.
For example, let’s go back to an old character concept from a previous article. Jim is the protagonist of our hypothetical story about a bake-off competition regularly run in a community. The story will centre around him navigating the surprisingly competitive politics around this event.
What motivates them?
People don’t generally do things for no reason. Neither should characters. Consider what it is that is pushing your character to engage with the plot. It’s common for characters to get thrown into a situation and simply have survival be a motivation. But even this often develops to be more muli-faceted. Perhaps they want to help protect others. Maybe they want to expose a conspiracy. Perhaps they just want to get revenge on the people who put them in their situation to begin with.
Other times, characters involve themselves with the plot more actively. Maybe they have something to prove. Or perhaps they need to obtain something for personal reasons. Maybe they simply want to win.
A lot of the most compelling characters have multiple sources of motivation, both external and intrinsic. That is, motivation born from the actions of others or the world around them and motivation born from their own desires and personalities. What do they want and why?
Our character Jim wants to beat the old guard and win the bake-off, proving himself as a competent baker. His primary motivation is that he loves baking and wants to pursue it as a career, but his family are against it and believe he should do something else. He feels that if he can win, he can prove it is a viable option. After seeing how certain people are just handed wins because of politics, connections and convention, he gains additional motivation. He develops a personal rivalry with an older competitor who looks down on him and starts to want to win to beat them as well. He starts to want to put a stop to the politics, thinking it’s maybe a little silly for such a thing to be happening at such a mundane competition.
What kind of person are they?
This doesn’t need to be a complex psychological profile, but it’s a good idea to consider what the personality of your character is like. What differentiates them from other people? What traits and quirks do they have? What interests them? A lot of the time, we get invested in characters because of their personalities.
A character is most compelling when they have both strengths and flaws. This doesn’t just mean skills - although those certainly matter to a lot of stories- but it means their personality too. Even the most heroic characters will have flaws and even the lowest of the low will have something positive going for them. Frodo, like many heroes, makes the mistake of thinking he has to shoulder everything alone. Castlevania’s Dracula is fuelling the apocalypse, but he does so out of rage and grief at the death of his wife at the hands of humanity’s worst. He deeply loves his family.
Jim obviously loves to bake, but that can’t be his entire personality. He’s passionate person, but maybe this doesn’t extend to things that don’t interest him as much. He might be the sort to get angry when people don’t take his hobby seriously, but be a bit hypocritical in his disinterest for the things others care about. He’s also evidently pretty determined, maybe even obstinate. He’s got strong morals and believes in fairness. He doesn’t like the idea of people winning for things other than merit. Perhaps he’s not very socially graceful, he sounds like he wouldn’t be the most adept at navigating social situations.
Who are they connected to?
A character is always, in part, defined by their relationships with other characters. Having established relationships helps make a character feel more alive - like they existed before the story. A character’s relationships changing and growing helps make the story more kinetic and fuels character development.
Consider who the important people in your character's life are. What kind of relationships do they have with these people? Also consider how you expect these relationships to change and who will become more important to your character’s life later on.
Our friend Jim is the only child of a middle-class family. Both of his parents are ambitious and hard-working, they’re also social climbers. They know Jim’s a smart guy, so they view his potential for success as their own and push him towards careers that are more likely to make him a lot of money. Because of this they have a tense relationship with him. As Jim focuses more and more on the competition, which seems trivial and silly to them, their relationship sours further.
Jim, being a bit socially awkward, doesn’t have a lot of friends. But he’s good friends with a couple of twins he’s known most of his life. One of them encourages him to pursue his dreams. The other one is a bit more practical and points out that he doesn’t need to be a career baker to keep baking, but supports his choices regardless. Things get a bit tense between them as Jim focuses more on the competition and his own passions than those of his friends, but they’ll get through it by the end.
Irene is an elderly, widowed and abrasive competitor in the bake-off. Jim develops a one-sided rivalry with her when she is handed wins by the committee because her husband used to sponsor the event. In turn, she thinks Jim is a bit of an upstart and isn’t particularly nice to him. Over time, the unlikely pair actually develop a mutual respect and Irene will eventually evolve into a mentor figure for and will even help Jim secure work in a fancy establishment she inherited from her husband.
Where are they from?
People are a collection of experiences and characters should reflect that. If you want your world to feel lived in and your characters to feel like relatable people, they should have experiences from before the beginning of the story that have had an influence on their personality. Consider where and how they grew up and any major events in their lives from before the start of your story. You don’t need to write a comprehensive history, but you should have a good idea about why your character is who they are.
Jim hasn’t ever lived outside of the same patch of city. He’s grown up surrounded by the same people, the same viewpoints and the same pressures on all sides for the most part. However, his views have also been shaped by the internet and the wider perspective that it provides, leading to ideological clashes with his parents and surroundings.
He’s also grown up being pressured to climb socially, academically and financially. This had led to him becoming resentful and a bit rebellious, although he tries to keep that in check for his own sake. He very much wants to live his own life having been raised to live a different one.
What do they look like?
A lot of authors will tell you that a character’s appearance isn’t important. I’ve certainly heard the advice a few times. I don’t entirely disagree. It is less important than the rest of the things mentioned in this article. However, I don’t think it isn’t important at all.
A character’s appearance can have a sizable impact on how others perceive them and choose to interact with them. Similarly, their own personality and preferences might influence how a character chooses to look. A person with piercings, tattoos and messy, coloured hair conveys something different that a person in a pristine suit, with nearly cropped hair that looks almost too tidy. What these different looks mean will change from person to person too. Something more intrinsic like ethnicity will unfortunately have an impact on these things too. Some people just suck when it comes to these matters.
Jim chooses how he looks carefully. He tries to balance himself between looking respectable in the eyes of his parents and keeping up with trends to avoid being ridiculed by his peers. It’s not easy, but it matters to him. He only allows himself small rebellions that are easy to miss.
And there you have it, a simple guideline for how to add depth to a character. It’s hardly necessary to do this for a character who will only appear once, and briefly at that. But, for a more significant presence in your story, it will prove helpful to have these answers at the ready. You might not end up using them all overtly, but answering these questions can inform your decisions and make for a character that feels kinetic and alive - and a world that does too.
