[baragh]

The last dastardly project of mine had a bunch of characters that helped to propel the plot. I rewrote the evil bloodsucker four times before having an epiphany relating to my fantasy world that would force me to shelve this particular project for later. :mad:

Now that I've spent some time developing the epiphany, which was basically just a theme overhaul on the fantasy setting of mine, I've been trying to dive back into another project that works with the new revisions. However, I'm beating my head against a wall trying to come up with compelling characters. It was the characters in my last project that allowed me to progress as easily as I did, as compared to multiple projects before that in which I was more plot-oriented and did not actually get much done.

So, recognizing the importance of compelling characters, I have an "innocent, ignorant" viewpoint character that just seems flat, a couple of other flat characters, one antagonist that is actually fairly well developed, and a vague group of third party antagonists.

The part that's frustrating me is just the difficulty in coming up with characters and then developing them - I can't seem to link whatever ease I had with my last project that allowed me to spawn characters as needed and then allow them to compel the plot. I had thought about using the one antagonist character that I've been able to develop as the viewpoint character, but he also doesn't seem appropriate for it thanks to his odd motives and greater depth of "story knowledge" than most characters.

So, after venting, the point of starting this thread is to ask: How do you people wrap your heads around character creation and development?

[kmtolan]

I'll just tell you how I created my main character - who isn't even human.

1. Premise. What happens when an ordinary individual suddenly is thrust forward as a pivotal part in history? What happens to their family? Their friends? How would it be if Americans took the arrogance I witnessed overseas to a new level and viewed seemingly less advanced alien cultures with the same contempt?

Automatically the story revolves around character, with the story becoming a catalyst. This is good. Looks like the character will have to be alien, cause that's where the action seems to be headed.

2. Background. What world will the character live in? What are the norms of the time? What needs changing, and why? What kind of culture are we dealing with. What do they look like?

This means a lot of world building in my case, but much of the angst my character goes through must be expressed through this culture.

3. Marketing (yeah...that). A female protagonist in SF was rare, and I needed to stand out. So, make the MC female and keep her young to appeal to the kids coming out of High School.

4. Being a guy, I'm going to be a bit hobbled dealing with the female point of view, so lets make the girl military and aggressive to help over the bumps not covered by my wife smacking me in the head. I want the character as unique as possible, so make her unique inside her culture as well. Female fighters are rare, and she is also of mixed heritage.

5. So what bothers a young girl heading toward maturity? What are her initial motivations. Her appearance is going to take center stage, as well as a lack of love interest. Start the story, and throw in some heavy catalyst to drive her toward trouble. Guilt works. Guilt really works. Give her friends - a sidekick she can talk her troubles out with. Add in parents - a dominating father and comforting mother with her own issues.

6. The story unfolds, and has her breaking taboos left and right. Here is where I do the "If this person does/says this, then this other person will do/say that" sort of thing. Characters both act and react, and given my character's age, she won't always be right. Decisions are rarely made with emotions kept in check, and actions usually mean reflection and more decisions afterwards. Friends and family will react, give advice, or even condemn.

Case in point, I have daughter and birth-mother meeting for the first time. Mother is a headstrong and ambitious political leader who wants to keep daughter's birth a secret shame. Daughter has no interest in meeting mother (in fact, doesn't even know she's out there), but mother finds out anyway where daughter is. So what to do? Mother heads out to where daughter is holed up - and brings a pistol. No, this isn't going to be all hugs and kisses, and sets up a very tense relationship between the two. Motivations on either side aren't necessarily evil - mother believes she's being setup and intends to chase daughter off. Daughter is military and will only view this as an attempt on her life, painting a far more severe impression of her birth-mother than she should.

Whew.

Finally, we apply writing mechanics. A real problem with character-driven novels is "talking heads" syndrome. Two people in a room talking. So in one scene I decide that daughter is going to take mother up for a plane ride and confront her over some issue. Ah, but plane has been flown, and since it uses batteries, it has to be charged up. This can be done literally by hand, as main character has bio-electric abilities. Mother does not...or does she? Intrigued, mother puts her hands around charging handle out of curiosity and generates a charge. OOPS - a family secret is out! Now more for mother and daughter to talk about. Yeah, I came up with this on the fly - the result of one thing leading to another.

That's how I wrap my head around characters. I get inside both protagonist and antagonist. They are people, with all the same drives and fears as anyone else. Even the evil folks don't generally wake up in the morning, curl their mustaches, and decide to make life **** for some ranch girl. There's usually more to it than that. When you are writing in-depth characters, there'd better be.

Kerry

[robotosaur]

If you've got a plot/premise but no characters, then the easiest thing to do is work backwards. How does Plot Point A happen and why? What motivations need to be present to get to Plot Point B? What person or people would cause those things to happen?

If, for example, you want to keep your naive viewpoint character, then start asking questions about why they're innocent, how they would react when faced with situations outside their world experience, etc. Don't just give them adjectives and call it a personality; let their actions and motivations shape them. People are complex and contradictory. Characters should be too.

[RedMage]

Perhaps I'm being dense, but I'm not sure I understand which project you're working on. I'm confused because, well, why can't you use the same characters you had before? Theme overhaul, yes. Big, important, enormous change. I've not yet had the experience of changing the overall theme of a story.

On characters: My wip is nearly the same situation as yours. Well developed main antagonist, cadre of lesser antagonists who are also well developed, a group of protagonists who variously developed and vague, and an MC who in the beginning is utterly flat too. I've described this elsewhere, but I spent 2 years trying to figure out the MC in the beginning with out going anywhere.

The two opposing sides in my story almost never interact directly. So when trying to develop one of the minor antagonists, I really had to search for the reason that he was an antagonist. He enters the story early and it begins like this--

1) The MC the son of a high ranking military officer, the general (the antagonist) throws the MC out of the camp when his father dies on some mysterious foreign mission. MC is left to fend for himself in the depth of winter and should, by rights, die of exposure.

Now, why did the general do this? That's what I really need to know. Did he have something against the MC? The MC is just a child, barely a teenager, and worked in the quartermaster's office as a clerk because, honestly, what else can he do in a military camp? (No, I wasn't going to make him work in the kitchens--he actually liked his work and was very good at it.) So there is no malicious intent toward the MC directly. Must be something else. The father, perhaps?

That is the only reasonable explanation in this situation. Ok, but why? Well, the general is a noble and is arrogant as all ****. The MC's father was not a noble, he did not rise through the ranks because of his name but on the strength of his merits and had attained the very highest position a common-born man could in the military. (Perhaps I should point out that this is a fantasy, not a scifi.) Alright, but does that really explain the animosity? No, it doesn't. So what happened?

2) From other characters' backstories I know there was a big war almost 20 years before this. The king went off to war and took most of his army with him. This is important because the army also serves as a police force as the kingdom is a city-state. MC's father a new recruit at that time, he stayed behind with other green soldiers to continue to defend the city in the army's absence. The general, on the other hand, went off to war (he wasn't a general at that time) and did not prove himself at all. In the army's absence, the green recruits really had to grow up, really fast. MC's father did so and became a leader of these men and, through his leadership, was able to hold the city together until the king and his army returned.

Alright, there we have it. An arrogant noble who believes himself to be one thing but really is not is jealous of a common-born man who is all the things that he wants to be but cannot bring himself to be. This jealousy and anger only growing over time as both men rise in the ranks (again, the general because of his name, MC's father because of his actions) it culminates in the general hurting the MC's father through those he loves. And, when the general finally turns his sights on father himself, he finds that it is not enough to get rid of him but that he must also get rid of all memory of him. That means getting rid of the MC. Yet, he cannot kill a child. Therefore he simply throws him out of the fort and expects nature to take its course. Nature doesn't and this will come back to haunt him.

Basically, I try to think Who, What, When and Why. And, if your characters are really flat, or are just flakes, then perhaps that is how they are meant to be at this point. A friend gave me that advice and, as soon as I heard it, I knew that it was right.

If certain characters aren't coming out how you want them to, maybe it's because they aren't meant to. At least, not at that point in the story.

[ShellyS]

FWIW, my main characters are riffs on TV characters I love, being that I got my writing start with fanfic, back when I was a kid and didn't know what fanfic was!

In essence, I look at what appeals to me about certain characters -- and usually, they're the supporting characters on shows I want to see more of -- and I build that into my characters. I also like to give my characters angsty backgrounds. For supporting characters, I like to give them quirks that won't annoy or take over.

[baragh]

Thanks for input, all.

If you've got a plot/premise but no characters, then the easiest thing to do is work backwards. How does Plot Point A happen and why? What motivations need to be present to get to Plot Point B? What person or people would cause those things to happen?


That is what I used to do when I was more plot oriented - I used to plan out as much of the plot as I could without actually writing the book, and then I'd start writing and the planned plot would end up getting tossed out the window thanks to the more interesting motivations of characters. I guess I'm trying to avoid the useless planning by being more character oriented in this project, but maybe the useless planning is an essential step for my process, after all. :o

Perhaps I'm being dense, but I'm not sure I understand which project you're working on. I'm confused because, well, why can't you use the same characters you had before? Theme overhaul, yes. Big, important, enormous change. I've not yet had the experience of changing the overall theme of a story.


To clarify, I am talking about two different stories in my OP. The reason being my theme revision was more applicable to the setting rather than just the one story, so that story became obsolete as an "introduction" to my setting. And then my frustrations regarding character creation/development are coming with the second project, in the same setting that I will be using continuously.

[KatG]

Okay, so, if I'm following this right, you started out trying to be a plotter. Then you found out that you were less of a plotter and more of a character off the cuff man and you created these characters which led to a story. But then you realized that the world wasn't supporting the themes and ideas that were coming up and the world -- and perhaps the original story and characters? -- would have to be scrapped and a different, altered world be built. But since you'd built setting and plot from your characters, now that you have a setting, you're having to work backwards to characters, which your brain doesn't want to do. Do I have that right?

I would suggest that if the theme was the epiphany and shaped the new setting, that you work from theme. You can ask "who do I need" as has been proposed for that particular theme, to show off the thematic aspects of the world setting. To develop those maybe vague character ideas, you can try mapping out the emotional terrain: figure out what is the emotional core of each character -- what is the thing that is at the heart of the character -- anger, longing for love, confusion, etc. Then map out what that character with that emotional core most loves, hates, fears, what causes him or her pain, what limits the character and what is important to the character. You can do this for characters you've already started to design, like the antagonist, and you can do it for new ones. It was a useful exercise for the classes I used to teach because it does cause authors to look at the characters as full story people, rather than just as devices in the story, and for you, from what you've said, that's important. As you can see, the other writers in talking about their characters are in part talking about that emotional terrain.

Another thing you can try is to trick your brain into doing what it did before. You have your antagonist, you don't want him to be the viewpoint character, so have a viewpoint character interacting with the antagonist. Just try a scene where there is dialogue. Doing this is asking your right brain to come up with an image, a character voice and lots of details, which the right brain usually likes to do, and your left brain to edit very quickly, and people may pop up in response to your request that you need a person in the narrative. And from those interactions, plot may grow or develop from what you already have. Keep in mind the theme that you are working from when you do it.

[hippokrene]

So, after venting, the point of starting this thread is to ask: How do you people wrap your heads around character creation and development?

They spring from my head fully formed.

It's the trip from my thoughts to the paper that the damage happens.

[Ramirez]

If the characters aren't interesting the plot won't matter, it won't go anywhere, it won't interest anyone. Don't try too hard to purposely make the characters unique, different, or interesting. Create a collaboration with your world. Figure out what characters are worth noting in this world, what characters it can spit out that would be of enough worth to entertain a reader. They don't need to be good people. They don't need to be talented. They can be good willed and talented, but it is not necessary. They need to breathe, they need to become tangible. You should be able to fantasize about your characters and picture them in all sorts of situations, either in their world or as they would exist in reality. You need to feel them and think about them so much that you will dream about them. You need to see them for everything they are, you need to picture them not for their hair, eyes, and height, but for the lines on their faces, the freckles on their chest, the hair on their feet. You need to feel them not for their anger problems, leadership skills, or morals, but for their love of all things monkey related, their favorite food, and their love of cold weather.

[PeteMC]

They spring from my head fully formed.


This. I wait for the characters to show up, then let them tell me the story while I wirite it down.