Write UP North 2024: Characters

 

In our last post we looked at how to start a story by thinking of where it should take place. When you introduce a new scene into your story, you should always take a little time to describe it so your reader can visualise, in their mind, where your main character is (and create their very own home film of the story).

Bringing in characters can add to this. You only need one, but most stories will have at least two. Without a character, nothing of interest will happen in your story.

Characters – usually people but it can also be animals, toys, robots or aliens - are the driving force of any story.  Their story can be told via their thoughts, memories and interactions with others.

You are human and your readers are human too. Readers like to know what happens to another person, whether they be heroic and super brilliant or whether they are just a normal everyday person, who they can identify with or look up to. Perhaps this character is placed into an extraordinary position.

Whatever happens in your story, you want your readers to connect with your characters, especially the main one (and called the protagonist).

Having a multi layered main character with a personality and fully formed emotions can make your story more believable, drive the story along and make it unique. 

There are lots of different ways to think of a main character in terms of their looks and personality.

Base the main character on yourself

Here, you can add your own experiences, thoughts, ideas, personality, identity and individuality and background to the character.

Some of my characters have elements of my personality in them, such as a bit self- doubt (especially at the start) and clumsiness. This is called being an author surrogate.

Example: Michael Crichton’s character of Ian Malcolm (played by Jeff Goldblum) in the film Jurassic Park is used to express Crichton’s own views on the flaws and immorality of the Park.

Example: Ernest Hemingway wrote about real life events that he had experienced, and which are overlaid with a façade of fiction. The characters will have fictitious names but are based on real people. This type of book is called a “roman a clef”.

Using yourself as the basis for a character can make your story seem more authentic.

Add extra dimensions to your characters from other people you know / famous people.

Sometimes you need to borrow things such as looks, personality and individuality from others.

Example: Ian Fleming used much of himself for James Bond however used two real life people he worked with to form the main and daring part of the spy.

Be careful not to offend anyone living!

Source a Character from literature, tales and legends

As an example we have previously looked at, Helen Fielding borrowed the personality of Elizabeth Bennett when forming her character of Bridget Jones (she also borrowed some of the plot as well!)

Showing, and telling, a Character in your story

In a rough sort of way there are two stages. Firstly, when you introduce a character, you need to explain what they physically look like. This helps your reader build a mental picture in their head and helps continue the motion picture of the story in their imagination.

Sometimes what people look like, what they wear and how they hold themselves can give an indication of their background and personality.

Secondly, you need to show what their personality, their characteristics, and attributes and so on are like.

Writers are all different in how they approach this – there is no right or wrong answer. A good way of doing this is to think about show not tell. When you physically describe what a character looks like think about the following things:

 

·      Can you age them e.g., do they have grey hair or come straight from school? ·      Use colour to describe things like skin, hair, clothes, eyes and so on. ·      Mention any specific features such as glasses; a scar; freckles; tall or short. ·      Are they a person with physical disabilities or a visual impairment. ·      Say what style their hair is e.g. a bob, long, curly, messy. ·      Think of other senses such as smell and sound e.g. she wore perfume, he stank of BO, he had a high pitched accent. ·      Anything else? E.g. wearing headphones, jewellery, tattoos?

Some authors show you what their characters look like in great detail so you can really picture them well. Others use quite cryptic clues to help.

Always remember this, from your description, your readers will visit their memory to help form a picture. Therefore, they may not see the exact same character as you do in your mind when you wrote the story.

Let’s look at some literary examples.

Literary Example One: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.

Can you picture Scrooge well from this description (or do you see the actor in your favourite film version?)

Literary Example Two: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon She also said that I should describe people in the story by mentioning one or two details about them, so that people could make a picture of them in their head. Which is why I wrote about Mr Jeavon’s shoes with all the holes in them and the policeman who looked as if he had two mice in his nose.

Can you picture Mr Jeavon's and the policeman? There is little to go on and the details provided are a little bit cryptic. Please note these two characters are very minor ones and little or no description is really needed. 

Mentioning that they look like someone

You can, when describing a character, say they look like someone who your reader will hopefully know and therefore, instantaneously, they will picture this character perfectly. However, this is not advised:

• 1.   The person you use to help describe them may no longer be famous in years to come and
• 2.   Your reader may transfer that famous person’s characteristics etc. onto your own character which could be detrimental to the whole story.

Literary Example: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

“All tall, fat medical student, big as Sidney Greenstreet, lounged nearby.”

 

How to describe your main character when writing in the First Person

So far, all the examples above have referred to characters where the author has written in third person or are characters described by the protagonist themselves.

In the first person it can be a little harder to start off with a description, and, dependent on your character’s personality, they may not give a true description of themselves either through vanity or through embarrassment (although this can also help you work their personality out).

Literary Example: Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier “What do you think of Monte Carlo, or don’t you think of it at all?” he said. This including of me in the conversation found me at my worst, the raw ex-schoolgirl, red-elbowed and lanky haired, and I said something obvious and idiotic about the place being artificial.

 

There are other ways to do this, your character can check themselves in the mirror, or see themselves as they walk past a car or through a conversation with someone else.

Default Mode

There is no fine line as to how much detail you should go into. In a short story try and not waste too much time on describing your characters (and later on in this course, we will look at getting into the “action” as soon as possible).

Too little description however can lead your readers to make their own assumptions on what characters looks like and what their personality is. I call this default mode. They will simply reach into their minds and find someone they think matches the character in your story: real; imagined or (in)famous.

They could get this totally wrong which will not add to their enjoyment of the story. Remember, it is your story; try and get readers seeing things as close to how you do.

On this note, it is also important that you can see your character(s) in your imagination as this helps you develop them and see the home film / movie yourself.

Delving Deeper

So far we have looked at how to physically show what a character looks like.

However, the most important part of any person is who they really are in terms of, for example, their personality, identity and individuality.

This is an example of telling readers what someone is like.

Literary Example: Scrooge from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens “Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.

Showing what a character’s personality is like can really help a reader understand or bond with them especially if there are any similarities between them.

There are several ways of doing this:

1. 1.   Let them have a conversation (dialogue) with someone.
2. 2.   Let their thoughts pour onto the page as they go about their life.
3. 3.   Put them into a situation early on where their character (or lack of) comes to the fore.

Showing Personality through dialogue

Compare how Dickens tells and shows what Scrooge’s is like by looking at the extract above and the following conversation.

“At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.” “Are there no prisons?” “Plenty of prisons.” “And the Union workhouses,” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?” “Both very busy, sir.” “Those who are badly off must go there.” “Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.” “If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

 

Showing Personality through thoughts

Literary Example Six: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York. I’m stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that’s all there was to read about in the papers – goggle eyed headlines staring up at me on every street corner and at the fusty, peanut swelling mouth of every subway. It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive all along your nerves.

 

Literary Example Seven: Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier I remember well that plate of ham and tongue. It was dry, unappetising, cut in a wedge from the outside, but I had not the courage to refuse it. We ate in silence, for Mrs. Van Hopper liked to concentrate on food, and I could tell by the way the sauce ran down her chin that her dish of ravioli pleased her.

 

Emotions

Showing emotions is an exceptionally effective way of making your story more realistic and your main character more likeable and connectable to your readers. Even if characters are attacked by sharks or travel deep in outer space, showing emotions will help your readers connect to them.

Take time with your characters. As the story forms in your mind and as you begin to write, they can become closer to you in a way where you understand them better which will help make their actions, their decisions, and their conversations more believable.

Characters should develop as stories push on e.g., they can become more confident or more sympathetic. This is a common occurrence in stories and is called a character arc.