This Is Bad And You Should Feel Bad: Episode 5 - The Holy Trinity, Part 2

Creating and developing a character is probably the most insanely hard thing for a completely inexperienced writer to do. A character is a person, and we all know how complex people can be. There are so many elements, a lot of people don't know where to begin. Now, I'm one of the lucky ones who this came more naturally to, and by the time I started writing ponyfic, I'd already basically figured it out. However, years later, I would happen to read a compedium of advice on how to write good characters, which I thought did a damn good job of explaining how it's done if you don't already know.

With that in mind, I'd like to give some acknowledgements before this blog begins, and say that a lot of my advice here will be paraphrasing from one Mr. Perry. No, not John Perry (although you should be reading his blogs anyway), but David Perry, author of David Perry on Game Design. Yeah, not the most obvious source for good advice on writing characters, I know, but bear with me here.

If you read episode three, you'll already know how divide to characters by importance depending on their role, but once you've decided to start work on creating, for example, your hero, you'll need to start thinking of basic characteristics. David Perry singles out seven of the most central characteristics as the character's age, ethnicity, gender, economic status, social status, marital status, and name. Here, right away, we face an important choice in how we want to approach character creation. How much is fiction, and how much is reality?

When creating a character, it's natural for us to draw on personal experience. This is a double-edged sword in many respects.

If you put a lot of yourself into a character, then it may help you write them more realistically. If you write what you know, then what you write could be more genuine and true to life, potentially resulting in a more complex character and a greater nuance and understanding of that character and what they've been through. For example, if we're writing a story about what it's like to be on the receiving end of homophobia, a homosexual author who has indeed been on the receiving end of homophobia will obviously have a lot more insight than most.

However, the flipside to this is that by investing too much of yourself into a character, you lose objectivity. You develop a bias, and it affects your judgement as an author. An author must be able to use their characters as tools to create a story with. If you start thinking of them like real people because of the real people you see in those characters, then you'll start acting on those biases through your power as an author. A self-insert is so often a Mary Sue because the author can't treat themselves as mere characters, and are unwilling to put their insert through the conflict that a good story needs, instead preferring to keep the author insert generally happy, like they'd want to be. That shit can't ever happen, or you've already failed. If you're writing an epic adventure story and you realise that it'd be really poetic and fitting if the main character died at the end, you need to be able to kill them, which you won't do if they're a surrogate for your beloved real life sister whose tragic death you're still mourning.

Alternatively to this, you could get creative. If you write what's unfamiliar, then you give yourself greater freedom to act as an author within the best interests of the story, with the caveat that you'd better make damn sure you know what you're doing first.

When creating Second for Human, I made a conscious effort to do something different with him. Many HiE stories have protagonists between seventeen and twenty-five year old, because that's the age of most of the bronies who write those kinds of stories, and they write what's familiar. I did not want familiar. I explicitly wanted a character, and I put very little of myself in him by making him as different from me as possible. So subsequently, he's a far older character than me, with a whole lifetime of experiences already behind him, and I just had to put myself in his mindset and think creatively when in my writer's chair. It's more demanding to do, but I think it's worth it to produce the best story possible.

Once you've decided how you're going to approach character creation and came up with those seven central characteristics, then we need to start thinking about smaller ones. It's the little things that make us who we are, so let's think about that. Create a character with me right now in your head. Decide on their seven cental characteristics, and then as we go through this, answer my questions about them and fill in the details with me.

What does the character do as a job? Are they unemployed, self employed? Blue collar worker? Office job? Are they a bigwig suit working on a board of directors? What do they fear? What are they afraid of? What are their hobbies that they do in their spare time? Or what are their general activities? Where do they hang out, who do they associate with? Who are their friends? Do they have pets? What's their favourite food, or music, or form of entertainment? What about sexuality? What are their sexual preferences? How do they manage stress?

Then you can think about other things about them, like their usual emotional states and moods. Are they cheerful? Angry and bitter? Uncaring? Stoic?

Consider the situation that introduces them into the story. How do they meet the protagonist, or how do they make their entrance if they are the protagonist? First impressions count for a lot, and could determine much of the entire dynamic between two characters. What are the character's goals? They must have something they want to accomplish, whether they actually do or not. This motivation may be what drives them throughout the story. Consider how they will change over time trying to meet those goals, i.e. the character arc. They should ideally be different somehow when the story ends from how they were at the beginning (a vengeful man lets go of his hate, a naive young woman becomes world-wise and shrewd, an aging retiree gains a new lease on life, etc.)

Traits and quirks are something to think about too. Any of those? Maybe a character scratches their nose a lot, or has long hair and has to brush it out of their eyes routinely? Or maybe they have a weird way of walking? Real people have a lot of these sorts of traits. What about behavioural traits? Might they ask a lot of questions, as if distrustful of others? Yell and curse if they don't get what they want? Not react well to change? Or constantly lie about themselves to be appear better to others? Are there any speech traits? Stuttering? Fast or slow talking? Have a common word of expression, (think Big Mac's distinctive catchphrase)? Accents or dialect? And then there are action traits. Lighting up a pipe or cigarette when nervous, sweating profusely, drinking a lot, scratching, eyeing up attractive women, walking with a limp, all sorts.

Contrasting traits are the most interesting, like a tough and mean character afraid of spiders, or a brutal, evil character who has a soft spot for children or animals, or a magnificent performer who is shy and socially awkward off stage. Things like that. They make for interesting dynamics, and something that could be explored.

Flaws and limitations versus strengths is also important. Strengths and flaws could be emotional, physical, or in terms of skill or ability. When thinking of flaws, think back to fears. Indiana Jones has a major flaw in his extreme fear of snakes, that often pose an obstacle to him when he's raiding old ruins and tombs, while his strength comes in his tenacity and intelligence, and physical prowess that allow him to overcome traps or fight off his enemies.

Think about a character's religious or spiritual beliefs, or their morality. Their sense of humour, if they have any. Their relations with the other characters and how they interact with them. Do they have any special abilities or powers? What's their usual means of transportation? Think about their family background, particularly parents, siblings, grandparents, or anyone else they might be close to. The people closest to you often shape who you are, and you can often shed some insight into what makes a character who they are by exploring family background.

You should also give thought to the kind of story this character is in, and how the situation would affect them and that character's individual goals in relation to that setting. What story are you wanting to write about this character? Revenge? Self discovery? Identity issues? Stranger in a strange land? Romance? War time? Social drama or comedy? There's a million different ways a character could act in those stories depending on who the character is. Make sure the character matches the story and vice versa.

These are all things that can help in developing a character, because each of these things I've listed and made you think about can all affect who we are and how we behave in day to day life. A character who experiences or possesses all the qualities that you've decided about them from reading these paragraphs will act a certain way. Decide those details about their life, and follow them to their logical conclusion. A character abandoned by their parents at a young age for example might be very sympathetic to or protective of children, and this could be apparent in their interactions with them.

What's important to remember, though, is that though you've decided on all these background details about your character, you don't need to show them all or explain them all. What's truly important is that they're in your head. You visualise your character, and knowing all those details about them, you have the information in your head to write them a certain way. Your audience doesn't need to know a character's life story, but you, the author, know their life story, and you know exactly why they're doing everything that they do. You write your characters with depth that way.

This can come out in the most simple of ways. You have two characters, henchmen of the main bad guy, and they have to kill some woman for their boss. Even though these characters are minor, and the audience will never learn their backstories, I've decided in my head that one of them is a cold, professional type who doesn't care about morality, but that the other was once a good man who lost his way, and that he doesn't truly belong in this line of work. The audience will never learn the backstory of either of these men. They just appear in this one scene. But with those backstories in my head, I can build a dynamic and interesting relationship between these characters for their single scene, perhaps with the more moral of the two unable to watch as his partner does the job, or expressing mild contempt for him when he's not around.

If you do this with every character who gets a place of prominence in a scene, using this method of crafting an unseen complete profile which you use to inform the logical actions the character takes that we do see, then that character will be doing so in a way that feels natural, and every moment where they take an action that is informed by their character that you have fully formed in your head, the reader learns more about that character, gradually working out the details for themselves through the hints you provide. It makes a circle. They take certain actions because they are a complex character, and we learn about how complex a character they are through these actions. Great, isn't it?

Ideally, though, you want to keep it simple. There's this thing called a character diamond. This is a creation of David Perry's, I believe. A character diamond posits that you should be able to point to five distinctive traits about a character that will make them interesting (three if they are a minor character). Any less, and they might be considered a little flat. Any more than that and the reader is bored by the convolusion of it all.

Let's use Discord as an example of a five-point character, and break him down to get our diamond:

1. He is the Spirit of Chaos, and chaos defines much of his personality, especially his sense of humour.
2. Discord has great powers, which he frequently uses to either wreak havoc or amuse himself, but he has limits.
3. His body is a bizarre mishmash of a number of different creatures, representative of his chaotic nature.
4. He only rarely feels empathy, and as such, he can be very cruel and selfish depending on circumstances.
5. Discord is arrogant to the point of overconfidence, and is often humbled by a surprise defeat he didn't see coming.

As we can see, Discord fits neatly into five-point character diamond, being exactly as complex as his importance to FiM's story suggests he should be. However, it's very easy to overdo it, even for major characters. It's a rare character who can get away with having too many unique traits for five points to describe. This is why it's also good to avoid piling up those traits. Your OC doesn't need to be a half-pony hybrid and a long lost relative of one of the main six and the secret seventh Element of Harmony and cursed by an evil wizard. That way, Suedom lies.

I would talk more on the subject of how to not make a Mary Sue, but in all honesty, I don't think it's necessary. Just heed the advice I've already given to make your character complex and flawed, keep the character diamond in mind, make sure that they're not the centre of the universe and you don't have a bias towards them as an author, and just try not to be an idiot. Besides, I think too many writers nowadays are too worried about trying to not make Sues. They get so hung up on not being bad that they forget to try to be good. Don't be one of those people.

But writing good characters isn't always easy, and you can never hear enough good advice, so anyone who still has questions can feel free to ask me in the comments.

Comments

[Axz]

interesting stuff.

[StachePony]

Once again, I wish it were possible to favorite (or something) blog posts.