Writer's Workshop #11: Making Characters Matter · 6:08am Feb 6th, 2015
Hey, everypony! Let's talk about characters for a bit. You can have an awesome plot, a thought-provoking message, and a beautiful setting, but without some interesting characters to inhabit all three of those things, your story will fall flat. Your readers will set the story to the side and say, "You know, it's a cool story, but it just doesn't really grip me, you know?" I call this "emotional investment," and it's critically important towards the immersion readers feel when they read a good story. So how do we create emotional investment? Basically, there are two fronts to this: the objective and the subjective. The objective is probably the easier to write, but the subjective is what will really make your characters feel alive. Let's get deeper to see what I mean.
First, to demonstrate the objective, consider this experiment. Think about your circle of friends (or coworkers or multiple personalities or whatever). When you guys go and do stuff together, is there usually one person who is the most proactive towards choosing where you'll go? Is there one person who's always very logical and controlled, and another who's the zany life of the party? Is there someone who always tries to be nice and support everyone else's choices, and someone else who's more negative and critical? The truth is, we all come at the world from different places, and we each have our own personalities. When we get together into groups, we fall into these common roles as our personalities best match. For example, I'm usually very kind and helpful to everyone. When arguments sprout up, I'll jump back and forth and say, "You know, that is a good point" for both sides. My friend Connor, on the other hand, is the proactive guy. He's just a natural leader; he can't help but take the reins, just like I can't help but be nice and helpful whenever the opportunity arises.
Your characters should be the same way. They should feel like they naturally occupy a role as they try to achieve (or prevent) the story's goal. And what's more, they generally shouldn't change: the helpful character shouldn't stop helping, the trickster character shouldn't stop being tricky, and the proactive character shouldn't stop being proactive. This will make them feel consistent and effective in their placement. You can be as poetic and artsy as you want, but if the characters don't feel like they have significant roles in the story, then your readers will totally forget that they exist, and all that prose will go to waste. Here's something else that this helps: once you've got your characters locked into these roles, the conflicts in the story will arise naturally. The stern, logical character and the bubbly, emotional character will immediately rub each other the wrong way, simply because they are so different. Why do you think Twilight and Pinkie Pie have so many interactions together? A brash, proactive character will always butt heads with a weak, conflict-avoidant character. You know, just like Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. And a character who's always helping others and keeping them on the straight and narrow will always resent the character who gets in the way and represents things that seem unhelpful. Gee, doesn't that sound like Applejack and Rarity? (See, the writers know what they're doing!)
"But AP!" you might say. "If I just shove my characters into these roles, won't they feel like boring chess pieces?" Not at all! This is where your writing chops come in. These character archetypes show up all over the place, but each character feels a little different from the others thanks to what gets emphasized and what little quirks the characters have. When you write your own logical character, what will you do differently from, say, Twilight? Maybe instead of a teacher who's always willing to dive into a lecture, your logical character is a huge narcissist who waves his superior rational mind in everyone else's faces. Or maybe instead of being obsessive and tidy, your character is incredibly picky and refuses to so much as look at anything unless it meets her standards of sensibility. See? There's actually a lot of ground to cover just for one archetype. And there are eight of them! That's not even getting into what I said before about using conflicting characters to your advantage. The relationship between Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy is so interesting partly because, well, they're stuck with each other. They've known each other since flight school, so although they may have very different ideas of how to take on challenges, they still stand up for each other. So they have different ways of acting, but they value the same thing: their friendship. They're not 100% different after all, are they?
But all this pales in comparison to the subjective part of making characters. Every character should have their own little subjective experience in the world; that will give them the quirks and traits that make them feel unique. But even more important is this: the readers must have an emotional foothold into the story. Doesn't matter if your story is in first-, second-, or third-person perspective. When we read a story, we want to project ourselves into the lives of the characters, and to do that, we need an in. This is the Main Character. (Dun dun! Capital letters!) Whatever the Main Character feels, we feel. Whatever the Main Character learns, we learn. Whatever the Main Character believes, we believe. So when you write the story, you need to have instances where the Main Character feels things, learns things, and believes things in order that we can immerse even deeper into the story. This is what makes stories interesting, what makes them stories rather than just accounts of what happened. Think about something like "Winter Wrap-up." On its own, a story about a bumbling unicorn who can't get a job isn't terribly interesting. But we care deeply about Twilight and her quest because we know how much she is suffering as a result of her inability to fit in. We worry as she worries, fight as she fights, and cheer as she cheers. And why do we do that? Because of the tears in her eyes after Applejack yells at her. Because of the plaintive timbre in the lines, "I wanna belong, so I must do my best today!" Because of the desperate eagerness before each task and the horrible crash afterwards. Those emotional undertones are what make that episode so spectacular.
Now and then, you may hear the term "character moment" for a small little scene that gives us insight into what a character is like. Those are certainly great, but these character moments can be woven into the main narrative, too. None of those scenes I just mentioned are removed from the action; they're part and parcel with it. Your Main Character's emotional situation is so critically important that it should bleed through everything in the story. You need to understand what makes your Main Character tick so that the story can get right into their face about it. If your Main Character struggles with confidence, give them scenes which shatter that confidence. (See "Sonic Rainboom.") If your Main Character is fighting to stay rational amid a sea of irrationality, force them into situations where their rationality can't save them. (See "Bridle Gossip.")
And that brings me to something I almost guarantee you've never heard of (other than on my front page): the Influence Character. Why is the Influence Character so important? Because they represent that very force that pushes against them. If we are the Main Character, if we feel their emotions, then the Influence Character is the one that pushes against us, makes us feel different emotions. Thus they are practically just as important as the Main Character if you think about it. In "Sonic Rainboom," we need Rainbow Dash, but we also need Rarity pushing against her. In "Bridle Gossip," we need Twilight's skepticism, but we also need Zecora challenging her with impossibilities. In almost any episode you care to name, there is always one character we empathize with and one who challenges us. You know why? Because that interplay, that relationship, is what brings readers into the story. I can't overstress this enough. If your story does have an Influence Character, your readers will feel driven, challenged, and invested. If it doesn't, your story's dead in the water.
So in summary, here are the four things you need to make a character feel alive: narrative impact, emotional weight, dramatic conflict, and meaningful relationships. If your characters don't feel like they're getting all the way there, consider whether something's been lost in the telling. When in doubt, give them another character to bounce off of, to see how they react. Maybe they'll argue over how to get to the goal of the story (narrative impact). Maybe we'll start to empathize with their way of thinking (emotional weight). Maybe we'll see them get challenged and struggle with something eating away at them (dramatic conflict). Or maybe we'll get a little character moment that shows how these two work together (meaningful relationship). Remember, friendship is magic. Interactions are the most powerful thing we have.
Another excellent workshop!
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Thanks for sharing this.
I danced around a bit with the eight roles I'm talking about, but let me be a little clear what they are. If you want, you can think of them as "voices," like the "voice of reason." The eight roles I'm talking about are:
Voice of action: Character is proactive, pursues goals, leads others.
Voice of dissent: Character is reactive, avoids conflict, tries to make people change their minds.
Voice of conscience: Character actively provides assistance, guides and protects, is a moral guardian.
Voice of distraction: Character actively gets in the way, tempts and tricks, holds people back.
Voice of reason: Character is logical, cool and collected, advocates for control and sanity.
Voice of emotion: Character is emotional, energetic and free, advocates for freedom and expression.
Voice of support: Character passively provides moral support, believes in others, is optimistic.
Voice of disbelief: Character passively provides criticism, rejects others, is pessimistic.
Other common roles can generally be folded into one of these eight.