If you’re going to create great characters for your stories, you will need to know a lot about them. Perhaps not too much, as we discussed in the previous lesson, but you need to know a great deal. In fact, characters are like icebergs. Often only the tips of characters are visible to the readers, but the part beneath the surface gives each character weight, stability.
Getting to know characters is part of the creation phase,
and often much of this work is done before the actual writing of the story.
Bear in mind, though, that some writers prefer just to start writing and see
where the characters lead them, and that is fine too.
Very experienced writers can often do their
"homework" intuitively as they write their stories. Either way, at
some point the writer does need to know
the characters well.
Aspects of Characters
Aspects of Characters
A highly effective method for getting to know your
characters is to construct character profiles.
You do this simply by thinking up and, perhaps writing down, all sorts of
information about your characters. For instance:
Physical
What are your character’s physical traits? Logically enough, it
helps the readers to have a picture of someone they will be spending time with.
You can’t judge a book by its cover, but physicality can affect who someone is. Do blondes have more fun? Not necessarily.
But if someone bleaches her hair Marilyn Monroe platinum, that says something
about her – about who she is and wants to be. Deformity undeniably affects the
personality of Hugo’s Hunchback.
Social
How about social influences? Even if you’re not a hard-core Freudian, you’d
probably agree that people are largely formed during infancy and childhood. If
your parents are both alcoholics, that will most likely affect you. If you grew
up poor in the South, you will be different than if you were raised rich on
Park Avenue. Religion deeply influences one’s outlook on life. Whether a
character is married or not and has kids or is childless: all help to form who
that individual is.
Personality
The personality is largely a function
of the prior two categories. (On the other hand, sometimes siblings are born
with very different personalities; nature trumps nurture.) Personality is where
the real action is, and it will affect most everything a character does in a
story.
In a moment, we’ll break these categories down even further.
But, for those of you who are thinking "Oh my gosh, I have to figure out
all of that for every single character?" – let’s take a slight detour.
Flat vs. Round
Characters
The fact is, you don’t have to devote the same amount of time
profiling every character in your stories.
Think of The Great
Gatsby. Some characters (Nick Carraway) appear on page after page of the
novel, while others show up less frequently (Meyer Wofshiem), and some barely
appear and are soon forgotten by the reader (the man who gives Nick directions
to West Egg). A story that spent an equal amount of attention on each of its
characters would either be very long or very superficial or very boring.
All told, there are two basic categories of characters in
the well-told story:
Flat
Characters
Flat characters are not really
distinguishable from the furniture, nor should they be. They do exactly what’s
expected of them (in the case mentioned above, giving Nick directions to his
house) and no more. In the words of the great English writer E.M. Forster (in
his book Aspects of the Novel), they
are "flat" – one-dimensional.
So don’t look to the West Egg
direction-giver, or most of the attendees at Gatsby’s parties, for richness or
complexity of character. Fitzgerald has kept these characters flat on purpose,
knowing that otherwise they would distract from the major characters. Most of
your very minor characters should be flat.
Round
Characters
Round characters, like most real
people, are complex. They have more than one dimension. Usually this results in
contradictions within these characters. In case you haven’t noticed, people
contradict themselves all the time. In fact, according to E.M. Forster, a
character is round if he or she can do something surprising, which you accept
and believe because the character is dimensional. A good guidepost when
characterizing.
You want the major characters in your
story to be round, dimensional, contradictory, and fully human.
Making Profile Lists
As you might imagine, flat characters are pretty easily
drawn. Just provide readers with the necessary and expected information, and
you’re done. A waiter takes orders, brings the food, leaves the check – period.
A grandfather is wise and kindly. A young stockbroker is ambitious and randy in
equal measure. In other words, if you know a character will be small, you don’t
need to spend a lot of effort profiling him or her.
When it comes to round characters, however, it’s often
helpful to create rather elaborate profiles for them. Some writers actually
make a list that they fill in with various traits of their characters. Here’s a
list that might work for you:
Physical Traits
Gender:
Age:
Ethnicity:
Height:
Body type:
Hair color:
Eye color:
Facial characteristics:
Athleticism:
Sociological Traits
Birthplace:
Parents:
Family:
Childhood:
Occupation:
Income:
Religion:
Politics:
Personality Traits
Habits:
Best qualities:
Worst faults:
Favorite foods:
Favorite vacation destinations:
Favorite sports:
Favorite movies/TV shows:
What makes him happy?
What makes him sad?
What makes him angry?
Who does he love most?
Who does he hate most?
What is he most proud of?
What is he most ashamed of?
What is his secret ambition?
What is his darkest secret?
Gatsby Profiled
Now, let’s construct a profile for Gatsby. Take note,
though, that this profile will only include information that is available to us
in the novel itself.
Name: Jay Gatsby (James Gatz)
Physical Traits
Gender: Male
Age: "a year or two over thirty"
Ethnicity: German-American
Height: ?
Body type: ?
Hair color: Unclear, though it is short and appears to be
trimmed every day; sometimes at parties women rub champagne into it
Eye color: ?
Facial characteristics: "tanned skin...drawn tight on
his face." Can smile "understandingly" and is "handsome to
look at."
Athleticism: Graceful – he has "resourcefulness of
movement" – but uncharacteristically awkward when he first meets Daisy.
Probably still fit from his days as a clam digger and salmon fisher, and then a
soldier.
Sociological Traits
Birthplace: North Dakota
Parents: Henry C. Gatz and unidentified mother
Family: "shiftless and unsuccessful farm people"
Childhood: Poor but highly ambitious (see schedule in Hopalong Cassidy book)
Occupation: Druggist (bootlegger), oilman?, investor
Income: Astronomical
Religion: Capitalism
Politics: Pragmatic
Personality Traits
Habits: Fidgeting, using language ("old sport")
that does not come naturally to him
Best qualities: His devotion to Daisy Buchanan, and his
optimism
Worst faults: His notion that anything can be bought, and
his naivete
Favorite foods: ?
Favorite vacation destinations: the capitals of Europe, so
he says
Favorite sports: Yachting, cricket (he’s holding a bat in
his Oxford photograph)
Favorite movies/TV shows: Unclear, though producers,
directors, and actors attend his parties
What makes him happy? Showing Daisy his shirts
What makes him sad? Looking across the water towards the
green light on Daisy’s dock
What makes him angry? The idea that Daisy has loved anyone
besides himself
Who does he love most? Daisy
Who does he hate most? Tom Buchanan
What is he most proud of? His material success
What is he most ashamed of? His humble beginnings
What is his secret ambition? To marry Daisy Buchanan
What is his darkest secret? Unclear – did he "kill a
man once"? Did he attend Oxford? In other words, his darkest secret is his
very identity
Notice that some of this material isn’t available to readers
until the final chapters. In many ways, Gatsby is like a puzzle and many of the
pieces don’t fall into place until the very end. For example, we learn some key
information about Gatsby when we meet his elderly father. And even more when we
see the boyhood schedule the father carries in his wallet. (The book’s preface
shows how the pieces of the puzzle appear, step by step.) But most likely
Fitzgerald knew most of this information all along, much of it even before he
began writing the story.
Notice also that not every question asked by our profile
form is answered in the pages of The
Great Gatsby. (It’s significant that some of the physical details have been
left out.) Fitzgerald only used what was necessary for the telling of his
story. You can bet, though, that Fitzgerald knew all of Gatsby’s facets; in
fact, he probably knew much, much more than he shares with us, choosing instead
to leave many details beneath the surface.
What About the
Mystery Woman?
Let’s go back to our Mystery Woman, the one at the bus stop.
If you were using her as a character in a story, you might end up revealing a
multitude of things about her until by story’s end she was, well ... an open
book. Or you might go the other route, keeping her largely a mystery throughout
the story.
In either case, you would benefit from knowing as much as
you can about her. Even if you don’t reveal much about her in the story, you
would be able to write her better, more fully, more believably if you, the
writer, knew who she really was.
Suppose you were to give her a name? How about – Maria
Rialto. Ah, the character has been christened. And already you are starting to
see her more specifically. Imagine how much better you would know her if you
could answer some or all of the questions on a profile list.
Constructing a profile is, in fact, a foolproof method for
getting to know your characters.
Discussion
After reading the lecture, try answering some or all of the
following:
1. Does the technique of making profiles
seem like it might be useful to you?
2. Would you rather just invent characters
as you write?
3. Which traits on the profile list do you
think will be the most illuminating? Can you think of any important traits that
were not included on the profile list?
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