Character sketches: Part 1

How to bring your characters to life.

In some of my articles, I talk about choosing a point of view (POV) before you begin a story. Assuming you’ve chosen your POV, you will already be thinking about your characters. True, too, you may have been thinking about your characters before choosing your POV. The two go hand in hand, or word-for-word.

In order to flesh out your characters and give them some zing, it’s a good idea to make lists of attributes for each player in the plot. However thorough, you must then write scenes to fit each character. That is, each scene that you write when this character appears in the story should reveal what you planned for him or her when you made your list, and how you planned for them to act.

Of course as the story develops, any character may take on a different persona than you first imagined. That’s not a problem. Amending the original sketch will suffice, keeping in mind how the new character image affects all the other characters and the plot overall.

I’ve always been interested in how characters are set up in stories. It is no longer good enough to list features and attributes in paragraph or outline form, which seems like we’re looking at a person from head to toe and describing what we see. That’s vital, but characters do something while they act out who they are. Sometimes one thing they do can set up the reader’s impression of them for the entire story.

Here’s my list of traits for the minor character Randy Osborne in my paranormal Egyptian suspense novel, The Ka: Highly educated; Physical anthropologist; Works with biochemistry and genetics; Mama’s boy; Totally insecure; Sneaky; Secretive; Jealous; Always eating; Overweight; Short brown hair, greasy and matted; Wrinkled clothing; Kind of short; Embarrassing to be around; Obnoxious, to cover insecurities; Opinionated; Not very well liked; Dislikes Chione (the protagonist); Thorn in everyone’s side.

After you make your list, the next practice that will prove immensely productive would be to write a paragraph or two incorporating those characteristics. The first time each character shows up in the plot, you must incorporate some of the qualities or lack thereof that you’ve assigned to them.

You do not need to use all the attributes in one paragraph when the character makes his or her entrance. But use their habits and traits soon as possible to help round out that personality. If the story goes too far along without clueing your reader as to what they can expect from this character, the character will seem flat or unimportant.

Here is Randy’s character sketch from the novel:

“Everyone looked to Randy, who stood supported with a hand on the back of a chair, flagging a leg back and forth as if his underwear might be caught in the wrong place. Then he lifted the leg a couple of times in a last ditch effort to end his discomfort. His personal habits were reason for a good snicker among the tight knit team, who could politely ridicule one another, then laugh. At times, criticism from any of them seemed all in jest, a way this group of high-strung colleagues dealt with stress.

“At other times, Randy’s behavior was repulsive. He seemed to take great pleasure in eating all the time and, thanks to his mother packing his lunch, he always had an ample supply nearby to pick at. His continual weight gain and lack of personal hygiene turned people off. He always looked sweaty and wrinkled, with matted hair. No one relished the idea of sharing a tent with him in the heat of the desert. Finally, he reached behind himself and gave the seat of his pants a tug. Not the kind of professional posture one would expect from a Physical Anthropologist who worked with genetics and biochemistry.”

This is similar to the paragraph I wrote soon after making the list of attributes for Randy. When I got to the part in the story where I wanted to show him in action and give the reader the full blast of what they could expect from him, I was shocked to find I had already written what I needed!

This paragraph appears soon as Randy appears in the story. We know full well what to expect from him as the story proceeds.

Readers know that all characters go through what is called a character arc. That’s when the character starts out as one persona and then changes to another before the end of the story. Sort of like the good-guy-gone-bad or vice-versa. Randy goes through a shocking metamorphosis but, well… I think I’ll leave that for the article on character arcs.

• Mary Deal can be contacted through her mega-website writeanygenre.com, which is a valuable resource for writers in both creative and business writing.