Building Believable Characters

A month ago I received my first rejection from a literary agent.

“You write with charm but the story seems rather rambling, and you need a greater depth of characterisation.”

Thankfully I was more excited to hear something back from an agent than to be too disheartened. OK, I thought. This I can use.

So where did it go wrong?

• Inconsistencies in physical appearance (or rather, in my case, I didn’t have enough description to help the reader sketch out the protagonist)
• Telling not showing (over-reliance on internal monologue. There is a time and a place for it, but let the reader see and interpret action rather than getting stuck in a characters head for too long)
• Characters sound the same (why were two characters always saying ‘of course’? This was my voice, not theirs)

Putting it right

 

No one wants to spend an extended amount of time with characters who are flat, so how do you achieve greater depth of characterisation?

1) Biography: This is a simple one, but make sure you know:

Name

Age

Occupation

Siblings & extended family

Religion

Nationality

2) Physical appearance: Make a list of your characters defining features. You won’t use all of this, but you need to know. External features say something about the person underneath – for example, my main character Katharine is tall and spends her time hunched, as though trying to make herself smaller so she doesn’t stand out, apologising to the world for taking up that extra space. What mannerisms do your characters have?

3) Personality profiling: The Myers Briggs personality profile can be a useful tool to help pin specific traits on your character. For example, are they introverted or extroverted? Are they more likely to react to situations logically or emotionally? I have found this helpful when dealing with several characters as it really helps identify areas of difference.

4) Defining moments in their past: Did they have a difficult childhood? What makes them hate public speaking? Why are they afraid of cows?

5) Hopes and fears: What do they want from life? What are they most scared of and why? Being alone? Spiders?

6) Flaws: No one is perfect, and we believe in the character that has weaknesses just like us. We admire the one that accepts their flaws and takes a journey to make the best of them.

Some more tips!

Our histories are full with all the characters we will ever need, you just need to borrow some traits from one person and fuse them with the disassembled parts of someone else.

I recommend doing the above for a character you know from a TV show or book, or for someone you know (but never let them see it!). You’ll soon see that there are so many differences between people, and all you need to do is let your imagination (and memory) run wild.

A final word of warning:

Going through the analysis and creation of a character involves the process of reflecting and understanding yourself, so be prepared to face some home truths!