How to Write Fiction

Creating Characters Part 2 - Make Us Love or Hate Them

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Now that you've drafted a beautifully vague physical description of your character, it's time to bring them to life. The key to making an unforgettable character is to make them BELIEVABLE and RELATABLE. Your readers don't necessarily have to like the character, but they need to be able to connect with them on some emotional level whether that's through sympathy, admiration, attractiveness, or straight-up fear.

The Wonders of People-Watching

When writing becomes more than just a hobby, you begin to look at the entire world through the lenses of a writer. Little details that mere muggles miss, a good writer mentally catalogues as material for setting, mood, and character sketches. People-watching becomes more than just Wal-mart entertainment, it becomes research for your next great novel.

Good writers take notes on how people interact with the world and with each other. This can be done on strangers, but it is most often with people you know.

For Christmas, my husband bought me a coffee mug that says "Don't annoy the writer. She may put you in a book and kill you."

And it's true. The majority of all my characters are based off of real people or a mashup of several different people that I know. I use real-life information to create my CHARACTER SKETCH.

What is a character sketch?

A character sketch is a cheat sheet about who your character is. Some people do this mentally, but I highly recommend writing it down so you reference it as you write! Writing it down is particularly useful if you are writing a series. You'll want a cheat sheet to reference when you get to Book #8, trust me!

Scrivener (the writing program I use) has an excellent template for character sketches. Mine get very detailed. Here is some of the info you'll find on it:

Character Name:

Role in Story:

Physical Description:

Background:

Family Info:

Occupation:
Education:
Personality:

Habits/Mannerisms:
Quirks/Oddities:

Hobbies:

Internal Conflicts:

External Conflicts:

Notes:

All of these details give your character DEPTH.

Do you list out all of these details in your story? Probably not. But you will need them to create believable scenes with your characters. For example: Education can often affect how characters interact with each other. If your main character (MC) has a PhD in literature, they will likely have a distinct way of conversing with other characters. If your MC is a tire mechanic, he's probably not going to be able to deliver a lot of useful information if your story is about shoe shopping in Prague.

Quirks, habits, and hobbies are my favorite part of the list. Humans are creatures of habit. I get up every morning, brush my teeth, make my coffee with sweet cream, and spend at least a half an hour reading through social media before I talk to anyone. If that routine is interrupted, it can affect my whole day. Your characters are no different. And while you don't have to spell it out in every chapter, these little quirks make your character believable and relatable.

How do you incorporate it into your story?

NO-NO-NO info dumping. In real life, we get to know people gradually through situations, conversations, and how that person interacts with the world as you watch them. It should be the same in your novel. Do not dump your list of character traits onto your reader.

This is info-dumping:

Clara, a forty-two-year-old, part-time nurse, worked in the geriatric ward of the hospital because she couldn't handle the trauma of the ER. She had worked in the ER for her first four years in the profession, but her nerves couldn't handle it. Sudden deaths rattled her because her father was killed in a hunting accident in Montana when she was seven, and the experience stuck with her. In the geriatric unit, death was expected and often welcomed. So when she met Carl, an eighty-two-year-old Veteran, she was already prepared for him to die. But she never would have guessed that she might go with him.

Holy smokes... that's a lot of information for just a few sentences! Even though it sounds like it could be an interesting story, we just covered 36 years of Clara's life in one paragraph! This information would be much better served through slow revelation, like peeling back the onion of Clara's life. This is how you make a reader care about Clara. This is how you make them cry when Clara reaches her pending doom.

Just Say No to Info-Dumping

Where do you do your best people-watching?