Dealing with characters

About common mistakes, character background, dialogue and allowing your readers to get to know your characters.

One of the most challenging aspects of creating a good work of fiction, particularly for beginners, is creating characters.  While actually thinking up characters is something anyone can do in their spare time, weaving them into a story and allowing different characters to interact in a natural way can be very tricky.

The trouble is that your readers understand people.  While they may be willing to accept that your emperor owns a flying carpet, or that they can travel through time on a whim, they won't accept it if your characters act contrary to all the rules of personal interaction.  And by the "rules", I don't mean that there is an etiquette to interacting with people, but simply that people naturally move and talk according to certain patterns, and readers are very good at spotting deviations from that pattern.  So abrupt changes of topic are unusual in conversation unless they're qualified somehow.  Similarly, people faced with life-or-death situations will generally react to them, and if they don't, your readers will want to know why.

1) Easy mistakes
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Many beginners believe that their characters can be simply names who do what is required by the story.  That would be the easiest case, but it doesn't tend to work very well.  As long as the characters are plot-driven rather than the plot being character-driven, the characters don't feel natural.  They might not act in a consistent manner, they may talk as though their one purpose is to move the story forward, which may be convenient but it certainly isn't natural.  And of course, you may introduce inconsistencies in the character -- so Jane, who was terrified by a fake spider in paragraph three happily places one out of the window in paragraph seven.

Another common problem for beginners is making characters real.  It's easy to like your character too much and try to make them perfect, but when new eyes read over it, it simply doesn't scan.  Nobody is perfect.  We all have flaws and weaknesses, and it's not for nothing that people say trials build character.  It works in fiction as well as in reality.  It'd be great to have a life in which you're good at everything, extra kind to all living things and so on, where you just glide through any task that's set in front of you, but it doesn't make for either a believable character or for a good story.  Life is hard, and we have things we're bad at: it's what makes life interesting.  And if there's one thing I look for in everything I read, it's interest.

2) Knowing your character: Skills and background
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It's always a good idea to know something about your character's background.  What do they know, what are they good at, what do they like and dislike, what do they value?  All these things give you a set of tools your character can use in a given situation.  They may be able to read a map, or be skilled at tying knots.  On the other hand, they might have a very poor sense of balance.  Each of these "skills" will change the way they deal with a given situation.  Imprisoned in a garden, an acrobat might leap the fence, a skilled thief may have a rope with him, while our clutz with poor balance may have to dig his way out with whatever comes to hand.

More important even than character skills, though, is the character's story.  *Each* character in your story has a story of their own, and as the writer, you must know a little of their story before you can truly understand them.  For smaller characters, only a little detail is required, a few words.  It may be "Frank, accountant, city-bred, allergic to aspirin", or perhaps "Yandale, sorceress and oracle, can fly and command the elements, dimensional traveller, works to start wars between ruling lords and procures herself employment on one side."

If knowing character skills gives your characters tools they can use, knowing character background gives them the motivation to use them.  Why would the tall stranger rush into the burning building?  What made Delia run away from home?  Why did Kai'tun agree to go on the quest?  The more detail you have about the background, the better you understand your characters and your story, and the more coherent and believable your characters become.  

The advantage of working out your character's story as early as possible is that you know your character well before you place them into tough situations.  You're also much less likely to introduce inconsistencies, such as Jane the part-arachnophobe.  It does take time and effort, but it is essential for major characters and worthwhile for minor characters.

3) Dialogue
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How the dialogue progresses in a story is very much driven by your characters, and is, in fact, the quickest and best way to introduce the reader to the characters.  Each character must converse in a fairly consistent and natural manner, and this is easier said than done.

How the character talks will depend on a number of things.

a ) the character background.  What is the character's accent?  Does he/she speak good English?  Is the character shy with strangers, or does he/she have a tendency to prattle?  If your character is middle or upper class, they may speak very properly, while lower class or poor characters are likely to have a strong accent or talk a lot of slang.

b ) the situation.  If you're talking to friends, you'll relax your guard a little, and the conversation is likely to be free-flowing.  With strangers or important people, you'll find you talk more formally, and what is said tends to be more on-topic.  Giving an important presentation, trying to communicate with someone hard-of-hearing or who speaks a foreign language, talking about very serious issues or trying to keep something secret: all these will change the way the conversation flows.

c ) the character's emotional state.  If you're over-awed by something, scared or under a lot of pressure, you'll talk differently.  Getting this right is a much better way of communicating emotional distress to the reader than stating the fact.  For example, compare 'Bill was frightened.  "What are you going to do?" he asked.' with '"Wh-what are you going to do?" gibbered Bill'.

d ) the plot.  It's no use trying to use 100% authentic conversations in fiction.  While it's true that dialogue must sound natural to be convicing, when speaking freely, people tend to drift away from the point, umm or er, stop sentences mid-flow, and all this makes for poor reading.  And it doesn't move the story forward.  It's up to the author to act as editor, picking out the sense and the important points of a conversation, while leaving out bits which are unnecessary or boring.

Getting dialogue right can be a delicate balancing act.  You should cut out as many bits of unnecessary detours as you can, because they can be boring and they don't tell the reader anything.  However, what's left has to hold together, has to be consistent with your characters, and has to sound natural.  It's tricky and it takes practice.

However, dialogue is the real way that readers get to know your character.  What they say, how they say it and what they leave out tells you a lot more about a person than any number of detailed descriptive paragraphs with the added advantage that it also keeps the story running.

4) Reader, allow me to introduce...
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You know your characters well.  You know who has a phobia of heights and why, and you know why it's so important for them to keep the doorstep clean on the last night of the year.  Now, you have to communicate that to the reader.

It's a bad idea to stick in a long paragraph containing everything you know about the character.  Descriptions should generally be short and potent.  Long paragraphs of character history can be dull, they interrupt the story, and worst of all, the reader forgets everything you told them almost instantly.

To illustrate that point, imagine you're at a party and a friend brings someone up to meet you.  They introduce them: "I'd like you to meet Mark.  he's a doctor, originally from Chicago but he moved to Wales when he was five.  His Mum was a doctor, but his dad was a plumber, and he's got two siblings, one living in Belgium and working for the American Ambassador to Belgium and the other who returned to the US and now lives in Texas.  His greatest ambition...." Be honest, you switched off, and by now you've forgotten his name, haven't you?  How much better would it be for someone to say, "This is Mark, who's Ray's cousin from the States."  Now you can have a nice long conversation during which Mark reveals a little about himself.

It's important to remember that the reader doesn't have to find out everything you know about your characters.  It's enough that *you* know it, so that if it ever becomes important or changes the character's motivation you can bring it into the story.  The golden rule is that a little detail at a time is best, and try to restrict it to what your readers need to know.  If they don't need to know that your character has an allergy to milk, why tell them?  It's just extra wordage detracting from the real point of the exercise: to tell a good story.

Finally
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It's a good idea to return to books or stories that you found particularly vivid.  Re-read them, paying attention to how the writer used language to tell you the story.  Notice how you reacted to their characters, and why, and how the writer allowed you to get to know the characters.

The best way to learn is, of course, to read lots of good fiction and keep writing...  
Comments and suggestions welcomed!