Do You Want to Know How to Make Characters for Your Writing?
There are all sorts of ways to make characters. But no matter what, a character with more than a few lines (e. g. the barista at a coffee shop where our heroes go to decompress) need a reason for existing. For any character which isn’t main, the questions tend to be:
- How does this character relate to the main character?
- Do they showcase them, make them look better or worse?
- Help them grow?
- Kick off the action (inciting incident)?
- Amp up the conflict?
- Work to facilitate exposition?
- Enable the ending (including HEA if appropriate)?
- Love interest? Or the one that got away?
- Bring the story to its climax/crisis?
Characters which don’t do at least one of these things need to be changed, nixed, or combined.
In my 2016 NaNo, for example, Devon and Alexander help drive plot and exposition and Devon in particular helps to facilitate the ending; Jake is the love interest; Frances and Bessie both showcase the MC; Johnny kicks off the inciting incident, etc.
Make Characters Believable
Too many quirks, and characters just plain will not feel real. Instead, they will feel like a mishmash of characteristics and foibles.
Also, too many perfect bits threaten to convert any character into the dreaded Mary Sue. So does an author insertion. Although you’d be hard-pressed to find books where the author doesn’t get into it in some way.
Long as things are imperfect.
But!
The reverse is also true. That is, if you make characters with so many flaws and horrid tragic backstories that they are just like the biblical Job, then those, too, are a form of Mary Sue. And don’t think for a minute that this is confined to just female characters and authors. There are a ton of Marty Stu characters out there as well.
Make Characters Better Than Mary Sue
Strive for a balance, if you can. Ask yourself: would this character be the kind of person I would just want to punch in the mouth for existing? If so, then you might have a Mary Sue on your hands.
I (for real) had a sorority sister who was kind of like this. Now, being unflappable is one thing. But this girl was cheerful and enthusiastic in the face of nearly anything. While, of course, the rest of us had problems and dreams and were imperfect.
So yes, Little Miss Perfect (or Mister Perfect) can absolutely exist in real life. But they are hardly the stuff of believable fiction. Even a character based on a real life Marty Stu should have some sort of flaw or issue. Or at least a comeuppance.
How Does the Character Relate to Your MC (Main Character)?
Let’s set aside how to make characters who are the focus for a moment. What are the sidekicks and side chicks like?
As noted above, they should have some sort of a point for the plot. But let’s distinguish a character with a purpose versus a fill-in character necessary but not important. Here’s an example.
In the second of the books in the first Obolonk trilogy (The Polymer Beat), and in the third (The Badge of Humanity), main character Peri Martin spends some time in the Washington Megalopolis on a few separate occasions.
In the second in particular, she hangs out with Greg Shapiro. Greg is a character who requires some depth. He serves a few purposes:
- Expository mouthpiece
- Ending enabler
But in the third book, Peri spends some time in a coffee shop. There is a barista there to take her order and make her coffee. But do we really care what the barista looks like? Not really. I think I just describe her as a young woman of Asian extraction. And that’s enough. Unless I had made it a self-serve place, the coffeehouse needed a barista. But that person could be anyone.
What if You Create Characters That Deserve a Promotion?
Side characters can be fun to write. You can pour a lot into them, and the stakes feel lower. They feel like a place where a writer can experiment. But sometimes they are so vital that they steal the show.
What happens when you realize the side character really should be the main one?
In Untrustworthy, that went down (a bit) in that Ixalla turned from an expository mouthpiece into a driver of the action and a facilitator of the ending. Frankly, I found I preferred writing her to Tathrelle, the actual main character.
Now, that book suffers from some head-hopping. I get the reader into Tathrelle’s head for the most part, but also into Ixalla’s at times. For me, the trick was to keep the balance tilted a lot more heavily toward Tathrelle’s point of view. It was only when I could not use Tathrelle that Ixalla’s POV came front and center.
Another instance is Trinity Hawthorne in Time Addicts. Trini isn’t much of a side character. But I realized I wanted to write a prequel to serve the entire Obolonk universe. And so, I turned to Trini to run that particular show.
Character Interactions and Intersections
When you use a method such as the snowflake, the intersections of characters is at the forefront of creation. I have also found that it helps me to avoid creating a character who is unmoored from the MC.
Make your side characters work for you!