Continuing from Part 1 of Character Sketches, let’s give your main characters the types of strong personalities that will fit your story.
Your hero or heroine must be the strongest character in the plot. Perhaps you have a mental image of a person you’d like to have as the star in one of your stories.
From that mental image, the picture you see in your mind, build a character. She or he will probably be your protagonist.
Some of you have written short stories and have a favorite character you’ve already built. Sometimes you can make that short story character fit into a novel length book.
However, the technique presented here works best if you start fresh with a character about which you know nothing. Then you’re less likely to follow the plot line of the other story already written.
To begin, just have a sort of feel for a person and start simply by listing physical attributes: age, color of eyes, skin tone, hair color and any other physical details you feel you wish the person to have.
At this point, do not list anything like the fact that the lady changes hair color frequently, or has a nail biting neurosis. This has little to do with establishing the basics of physical image.
If something extra does appear while creating the character, like seeing the character act out a scene, then your Muse is beginning to feed you details of a story you have yet to consciously realize. How exciting is that? If this extra information may be pertinent later in your story, make a separate list of added details as something you may include later.
When finished listing the basics of physical attributes, give the person just enough of a life so that you know what makes your character unique.
∫ What does she or he do for a living?
∫ How many other family members?
∫ What other relatives share this character’s life and how does your character interact with them?
∫ What are her or his best personality attributes, or worst ones?
∫ What secrets does your character hide?
An example: If you give your character habits like a facial tic, or nail biting, try to conjure why she or he has it? Is it the result of some repressed emotion? Is it from some shock long ago? How does this unnerving habit affect people presently in the character’s life? What crisis from her past does she have to work through to eliminate the tic? Who’s involved?
All of this needs to be incorporated into the story to develop your character. If nothing like this comes to mind for your character, don’t worry. Something else is on the way!
I really like the part about the secrets. Most people have things they wouldn’t want the world to know. If you were to draw it out of them, you’d probably find some shocking information, juicy tidbits around which to build your plot, around which to motivate your character.
See where this is going? By the time you’ve got the first character established, you will have introduced us to other people in his or her life.
Next, choose one of those secondary people and build another character sketch. It doesn’t have to be a love-interest either. The next character can be a public figure the main character tries to emulate, or someone who has been stalking her, or a neighbor, or….
Follow this procedure for each character whether or not they immediately interact with the main character. Something in the creation will tell you how to bring this person together with your main character and the others.
Finally, your characters will tell you a story as you create them. Begin to write about how these people interact. You’ve had a story in mind that you’ve always wanted to write. By the time you get this far, you will know where your story is going!
Trust the process. You will have conjured something important to say about these people, their lives and their impact on one another and the outcome.
Ultimately, you may not use most of the information you pack into your character sketches.
However, because you have taken the time to build your characters, you will know how they react in all the circumstances presented in your plot. A morally upstanding person reacts one way to a certain occurrence; a frivolous person reacts in a completely different manner to the same situation.
You will know these people because in building character sketches you unknowingly create their morals, ethics and motivations, which will surely spice up your plot.
• Mary Deal is the author of four suspense/thrillers. She can be contacted through her website at writeranygenre.com.
