Creating Compelling Characters

Creating believable, fascinating characters lies at the heart of any great story.

Some genres, like action adventure, can fall prey to the idea that what happens with the plot is far more important than the characters, who act as mere agents to move the story along. Often there’s a whiff of backstory that offers a flimsy motivation for what the characters do, but there’s no intriguing exploration that provides a satisfying journey of discovery, development and resolution.

If characters haven’t been radically altered in some way as a result of what happens in the story, they can be 2-dimensional, stereotypical or even boring, and there’s no pay-off that resonates with the reader. Investing time to create compelling characters can make the difference between a reader following an escapist yarn to pass the time or becoming fully invested in a story where they genuinely care about the people in it, as well as find themselves profoundly affected by what they experience.

So, how to create characters that aren’t two-dimensional beings subjugated to the plot’s demands? Compelling characters evoke interest or admiration in an irresistible way. Their thoughts, actions and development propel the narrative forward as real people that readers connect with and empathise with.

Empathy is different from sympathy. Sympathy is akin to pathos - feeling pity, sorrow or concern for someone, which can certainly happen in stories. Whereas empathy is about understanding someone and sharing their emotions as if they were your own, even if there’s aspects you don’t particularly like about them, such as something they did in the past.

Think of Sherlock Holmes – a man who can be arrogant and manipulative, even callous at times. Emotionally detached, he’s disdainful of the world around him and its social norms. With his dependency on cocaine/morphine when bored and a tendency to self-isolate, he’s also unpredictable. However, with a brilliant intellect, exemplary powers of deduction and strong sense of justice, he’s a compelling character despite his flaws. The unique combination of his characteristics keep the page turning to discover what he does in response to pressure - both internal and external –  as events unfold, conflicts arise, and dangers increase. Above all, he is irresistible to a reader.

So, how does a writer create complicated and often contradictory people in a way that makes them as believable, vivid and memorable as someone like Sherlock?

There are two ways to illustrate who your characters are – ‘telling’ or ‘showing.’ As a writer, this is something you’ll hear and read about again and again because it’s a fundamental part of crafting your narrative.

Telling relies upon information being fed to the reader without subtext, suggestion or nuance. It can be a blunt tool that doesn’t allow the reader to create a picture in their mind of who a character is. A certain amount of telling is necessary, but as with setting, readers will visualise a character based on the specific clues the writer gives them. So, first of all, the details of your character's appearance and habits need to be significant and revealing.

We tend to read details about characters, just like we read people in real life. We make assumptions about them and their background based on their clothes, their accessories, how they wear their hair, how they laugh, their accents, their body language, their gestures and how they communicate with others.

For instance, having a slim main character with brown hair and blue eyes isn’t very interesting because it doesn’t really ‘show’ anything about them. But someone who has bright pink hair, or who only eats standing up, or who insists on carrying a large bag with them wherever they go, no matter what happens, is much more suggestive and allows the reader to create a 3-dimensional image of the character in their head.

Names are important too. They can offer subtle clues regarding who the character is. Lucy Honeychurch in Room with a View springs to mind. A young woman with a sheltered life of social conformity who embarks on a journey where she discovers passion and authentic love. The name Honeychurch evokes a combination of sweetness and adhering to social norms, while the name Lucy derives from the Latin for Lux, which symbolises hope, clarity, and illumination – all clues to who she is and the journey she will take. While the reader might not necessarily leap to the conclusion of what the name Honeychurch signifies, some part of their reading mind will absorb it and respond accordingly as the story unfolds, adding to the layers of meaning and depth of her character journey.

For me, pinning down a character’s name is an essential component of who I’m creating. I research etymologies, meanings and symbolism to ensure the name is perfect for what I’m trying to portray. This is where believability with names is as important as any other details. For instance, if you decide to call a character Butch, you might have a hard time convincing the reader that they’re a mild-mannered methodist vicar living in a rural parish! Unless you’re trying to subvert the form in some way of course...

It's no accident either that a lot of novels take their titles from the main character or some aspect of the character - David Copperfield, Don Quixote, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Jude the Obscure, Madam Bovary; or more recently, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, American Psycho, Carrie, Bridget Jones’s Diary and The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue.

Characters also need a reason for the way in which they behave. They need motivations, desires and goals because if your characters' reasons for their actions aren't plausible, they simply won't be convincing.

Characters need to be propelled by their desires - even if it's only catching the last bus home at the end of a night out. But most importantly of all, they need to grow and develop through the plot. Think of characters who go from being tortured by the past to accepting it and forgiving, or characters who feel worthless at the start of the story and end up feeling fulfilled.

There’s no end of detail you can pour into your characters, but it’s the specifics that you ‘show’ the reader which can reveal different layers that intrigue and establish a connection through empathy.

As Robert McKee writes in his marvellous book, Story:

‘The life story of each and every character offers encyclopaedic possibilities. The mark of a master is to select only a few moments but give us a lifetime.’

As always, I’d recommend taking a look at how other writers have chosen specific details to ‘show’ who their characters are. What makes them different from other characters in the story? How do they compare with other characters in similar stories?

One of my favourite literary characters is Sophie Fevvers, from Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus. Set in Victorian London, Fevvers is a sensational aerialist who claims she was hatched from an egg, like Helen of Troy, and can fly with real wings. American journalist, Jack Walser, is determined to uncover if she’s a fake, so he joins her circus for a wild magical tour from London to Siberia to find out.

Fevvers as a character leaps off the page from the start. She’s a blend of bawdiness, intelligence, gluttony, generosity, manipulation, myth, calculation and magic – a devastating and intriguing combination for both the reader and poor Walser. Larger than life, she’s full of contradictions that hint at who she really is and what her motivations truly are. Here’s just a few sentences I’ve picked out from the opening pages of her first meeting with him to give you an idea.

‘She’d popped the cork of a chilled magnum of champagne between her teeth.'

'This Helen launched a thousand quips, mostly on the lewd side.'

'At close quarters, and six feet two in her stockings, it must be said that she looked more like a dray mare than an angel. Off-stage, not much of the divine about her, unless there were gin palaces in heaven where she might preside behind the bar. Her face, broad and oval as a meat dish, had been thrown on a common wheel made out of coarse clay.'

'Oddly enough, in spite of the mess, which resembled the aftermath of an explosion in a corsetiere’s, Fevver’s dressing room was notable for its anonymity...Nothing to give her away. A star’s dressing-room, mean as a kitchen maid’s attic. The only bits of herself she’d impressed on her surroundings were those few blonde hairs striating the cake of Pears transparent soap in the cracked saucer.'

'Guffawed uproariously, slapped the marbly thigh on which her wrap fell open and flashed a pair of vast, blue, indecorous eyes, as if to dare him: Believe it or not!’

Delicious writing!

There’s so much more I could go into about character - way more than for a blog post. Like, how to know your characters so you can write effectively about them, or how to create a complex villain, or how to convey character through dialogue. So, I’ve only managed to cover the basics here and will come back to character in future posts.

If you want a more in-depth exploration about character, you might want to work through the new online creative writing workshop I’m building on how to write short stories, which covers the following:

• Story Message

• Theme

• Setting

• Character

• Point of View

• Dialogue

• Plot

• Tension/Conflict

• Mood/Atmosphere

• The Editing Process – Show Don’t Tell

So, keep an eye out for it. In the meantime, I hope this gives you some ideas to help with creating your compelling characters, and happy writing!