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| I struggle with the concept of creating believable
characters. Can you give me some advice? |
Generally, you can achieve well-defined characters if you
create an ‘identity’ for each character. Some writers
go so far as to create a biography for each major character.
You may find that helpful, as well, but rather than mapping
out an entire life from birth to present day, it’s usually
sufficient to simply have a good idea of who your characters
are…how they talk, think, interact, and react. In other
words, know their personalities.
If your characters are real to you, chances are they will be
real to your reader, as well.
Characters in fiction range across a wide spectrum of possibilities
from FLAT to ROUND (as this range has been designated by E.M.
Forster). Flat characters are essentially one-dimensional—many
of the characters of Dickens, for instance. Since their scope
is limited, we can anticipate their reactions to the various
situations they confront. In the hands of skillful writers,
this is not a fault but a virtue. Such characters tend to be
vivid on the page—like line drawings—and because
of their predictability, they can be useful for comic effect.
Most characters in short stories are in fact relatively flat.
Generally speaking, the form hasn’t enough room to develop
complex beings.
Round characters, of course, tend toward the other end of the
range. They are more complicated in their potential, their reactions,
their thoughts and feelings, even, frequently, in their mannerisms.
For those reasons, it is more interesting to contemplate skillfully
conceived round characters—as in the case of those developed
by Henry James. For obvious reasons, the novel is the form with
the most potential for rounded characters.
Writers tend to differentiate between plot-driven literature
(genre or pop) and character-driven literature (literary), but
well-conceived and well-written characters belong in all fiction.
There’s no reason to short-change any reading experience.
EXERCISE:
Naomi, an 83-year-old woman is lost. She parked her car at the
mall, went in to do her shopping, and has been wandering around
the parking lot for twenty minutes, unable to find her car.
This is a not a minor event in her life. It may well signal
the final straw that breaks her independence. She’s been
forgetting a lot of things lately. She stops Kevin, a teenager
who’s meeting friends at the mall, and asks him to help
locate her car. Write two or three pages of this situation.
Take it anywhere you wish. But concentrate on making these two
characters as real as you possibly can. |
