Hey, you're a real character

How do you create someone who feels real?

Photo by Shengpengpeng Cai on Unsplash

In the double shelves of all the craft books I own there’s a lot written about character—as in, how to create them. A lot of books suggest those bio sheets, you know the ones: name, age, hair colour, favourite Broadway musical. Now, I’m not going to say those are useless, but yeah, I’m going to say those are useless. Those bio sheets feel more like I’m filling out a police report than creating a flesh and blood human with desires, secrets, and an actual life.

And don’t get me started on a certain social media hashtag group (cough, cough, #writingcommunity) that loves to post inane questions like: What is your MC’s favourite sandwich? If they liked mustard, what kind? What does your main character think of death and why does it haunt him every single day of his mortal life?
Um, wait. I kinda like that last one.

But no. Creating characters doesn’t come from filling out spreadsheets, or compiling likes and dislikes, or god help us all, mood boards. (Sorry, getting ranty.) So Craig, if you know so fucking much, how do you create strong, authentic characters?

Uh… I dunno.

No, no, wait. I do have some thoughts. I think the single best thing I’ve ever read about character was from George Saunders (quelle surprise). In an interview, that I can’t find, he talked about taking a character and applying pressure to them. I recall there was an illustration in the article of a thumb being pushed down on a little person. Note: this may be some sort of fever dream, and Saunders never ever said this. But I don’t care, the image and the concept has stuck with me.

As a bred in the bone pantser, characters appear in my stories, and I sort of just follow them around. I observe them doing stuff, not just thinking about stuff. This hold especially true for those “standing at the sink and thinking about stuff” stories. You know the ones. Where some character is gazing out at a horizon, preferably with a huge rack of ominous clouds, and thinking about… well… stuff. I’m not super big on the whole “show don’t tell” thing. But in this case I am. A character needs to get the hell out of the kitchen, forget about those clouds, and go do something. I suggest saving a cat.

But yes, back to Saunders. Characters start to reveal themselves when they are in peril. I’m thinking a lot about characters in Jonathan Franzen novels, especially his latest one Crossroads. Each of these superbly drawn characters is thrown into a pressure cooker of life—both in their past, but more importantly in the present. The main character, a pastor of an evangelical church in the 70s, experiences pressure from a new, younger and hipper pastor who connects much better with the kids. As relationships get more and more strained, and the pastor does some cringeworthy stuff, he becomes more and more real. I had to put the book down at moments when the tension got too much. And this wasn’t a gunfight, it was just two characters in a room talking.

Franzen. I hate this guy. He’s just too good.

Franzen is brilliant at character. I say the “main character” in Crossroads, but really it is full of main characters. The pastor’s wife in particular. She has a secret before-life than when it begins to be revealed… well, again, I had to put the book down.

In interviews, Franzen has talked about how the people in his novels become real to him—and it isn’t by filling out some character sheets. His process involves a lot of thinking, and note-taking, for months, if not years. And then he sits down and just writes the damn thing. And it’s brilliant. I hate him. But in a good way.

There are those characters who arrive, like Venus stepping out of Botticelli’s half-shell, fully formed and ready to go. In Correction Line, this was the character of Lawrence, and then in Surf City Acid Drop, Mostly Harold. Both of these very strong characters showed up and I had to wrestle with them so they didn’t take over the whole damn book. Plus, both were so fun to write, that the other characters in the book were starting to get pissed off at me. The more recent one for me was Sheriff Sam Galliard in Manistique. She walked into the diner in the first scene and I immediately knew who she was.

These characters are gifts from the writing gods, and they don’t come along very often—not for me anyway. I have learned to just thank the gods, maybe sacrifice a goat, and move on. But moreover it is in those tough, pressure-cooker situations that I find out what a character is about. Sometimes this happens in a first draft, but often it is in editing.

A note on basing characters on people. I really don’t do it much. I think. Or if I do, I’m not really aware of it. There was a fair bit of that in Fall in One Day, which is the most autobiographical of my novels. But even there, characters merged, amalgamated, or started as someone I knew and then in the writing became someone else. There’s a set of twins in that novel that were definitely based on someone I grew up with. And if these actual twins ever read the novel (wherever they are now), they might think “Hey, that’s us.” But in truth, it’s not. They might have started that way, but then they became someone else… especially when I applied some pressure.

So what have we learned Craig? You never did tell us your main character’s fave sandwich. (Okay dammit, it’s a rueben! With extra kraut! Get off my back). But for reals, character comes out of “listening”. I know that sounds way too freaky-deaky-new agey, but that’s how it goes for me. I do listen to how my characters talk, and as I write them, I observe their actions. I try to consider deeply, what is your reaction here? But again, this is more in the editing process. In the flow of a first draft, I will just let it rip. I suggest you do the same.

Oh, and finally, there are times when I want a character to think about stuff. Showing an interior world is important, yet I need to be careful to not overdo it. As I write Luke Fischer over a series of now three books (yes, I’m working on it!), I do dip into Luke’s mind to see what he thinks about things.

A shot from a reader of Luke One and Two… Three is coming, dammit!

Here’s an example from near the end of Surf City Acid Drop. Don’t worry, no spoilers. Here is Luke under pressure. He’s in the middle of a fire fight, and he literally runs for the bushes. While in there he thinks about… what else? Shuffling off this mortal coil.

More shots had me diving for the bush. I fought through the tangled vines. The brush tore at my skin, flecks of blood on my shirt. The weakness in my so-called plan revealed itself. I was hung up in the vines, it bound me like living rope that tightened the more I tried to free myself. 

I waited for Cynth’s goons to find me. I hoped they would end it quick. A few more shots were fired. Heavy steps on the road. Damn, just when I finally figured out what the hell was going on, and who was paying who. What's a guy supposed to think about before the end? Mrs. Charmer? Or the one who I left behind when—

I’ll leave it there for now. Leave me a note here, or on the twitter-box, on how you create characters. Or maybe some memorable characters in fiction—and why you think they are that way.

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