Creating Complex
Characters
Dr. Barbara Henderson
Writer, Journalist and WA Tutor
Dr. Barbara Henderson is a published writer for adults and
children. She is a former journalist with a PhD in Creative Writing.
She is programme leader in creative writing for the Open College
of the Artsand an experienced tutor in writing and journalism.
Webinar Transcript
Let’s get into the purpose of this webinar: to talk about how to create memorable
characters. This, of all the writing skills you need to pick up, is the most important.
F. Scott Fitzgerald is credited with saying ‘Character is plot, plot is character.’ What
he means is this: you might have a fantastic idea for a story, full of exciting and
dramatic events.
But if your characters are ones that a reader doesn’t care about, then they won’t
stay with the story either. That’s not to say that your characters have to be loveable
or even likeable: only that the reader has to engage with them in some way and
truly care what happens to them and whether they will survive all the drama that
you are plotting.
That’s why we start our Beginners’ Course with an in-depth look at the central
character that you want to write about, getting you to answer some searching
questions to show how well you know them – and their potential for development
as the story progresses. When you start, you may not know the answer to all of
those questions, but that’s OK. You will get to know them. You may not use much of
the information and back story that you develop for your character – but that’s OK
too. This deep examination of your character will pay off, when it comes to creating
someone who’s rounded, fully developed and who matters to a reader.
To give you a clue – if you have a character in mind to write about, start asking
yourself what you know about them. About their family tree. About their childhood
and their earliest memories. About the things that scare them and the things that
bring them joy. Sometimes, these questions reveal some holes in their story and
that’s when you, the writer, have to make changes and ensure that everything
about your character is credible.
When I say credible – it doesn’t matter if you are writing a realistic or a fantasy
story. Your character may have a magical superpower or they may live in a
dystopian society a hundred years from now; they may be real people who lived
hundreds of years ago, like Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell – they may even be
animals, with anthropomorphic or human traits, like the rabbits in Watership Down
- but as characters, they still will have wants and desires and goals and fears, and
these are the things that will make them connect with a reader.
So it’s fine to have a great idea for a plot – but before you put pen to paper, or
finger to keyboard, the most important thing is to decide who that story is about.
And yes, that does mean knowing what they were like before Page 1 when the
story (or the events) start to happen. In any plot, the character’s internal struggle
drives the action, which then further provokes the struggle – back and forth – from
beginning to end, until you reach a conclusion.
It is the characters that will make your story matter and make it memorable.
If you can, get your hands on the RSC’s script version of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall
and Bring Up the Bodies, because at the beginning, the author writes a short
pen portrait of each character for the benefit of the actors who will play them. For
example, of Henry VIII, she explains:
“You are a charmer and have been charming people since you were a baby...Even
as a child you behaved more like a king that your elder brother did. Arthur was
dutiful and reserved, whereas you were left with the women, a bonny, boisterous
child, able to command attention. You were only ten when your brother married the
Spanish princess Katherine, but when you danced at the wedding, all eyes were on
you... You are religious, superstitious, vulnerable to panic.”
And of Anne Boleyn:
“Charm only thinly disguises your will to win. You are the most sophisticated woman
at Henry’s court, with polished manners and just the suggestion of a French accent.
Unlike your sister Mary, you have kept your name clean. …But you are (especially
as the story progresses) inclined to frayed nerves and shaking hands.”
These little pen portraits are quite a good model for you to follow when thinking
about your own characters, not to include in the finished manuscript, as it would
summarise too much, but to keep in your mind as you write their actions and their
thoughts as the story progresses.
You may also decide to describe your characters, physically, not just to help the
reader get a picture in their heads, but because sometimes, a clever physical
description can give away something about a character’s personality. Let me give
you some of my favourite examples from fiction:
“ His hair was wiry and gingerish and brushed backward from the temples. His skin
seemed to be pulled backward from the nose. There was something very slightly
odd about him, but it was difficult to say what it was. Perhaps it was that his eyes
didn’t seem to blink often enough and when you talked to him for any length of time
your eyes began involuntarily to water on his behalf. Perhaps it was that he smiled
slightly too broadly and gave people the unnerving impression that he was about
to go for their neck.”
This is from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins:
“Up close she looks about ten. She …stands tilted up on her toes with arms slightly
extended to her sides, as if ready to take wing at the slightest sound. It’s impossible
not to think of a bird.”
A Game of Thrones George R.R. Martin:
“Fifteen years past, when they had ridden forth to win a throne, the Lord of Storm’s
End had been clean-shaven, clear-eyed, and muscled like a maiden’s fantasy. Six
and a half feet tall, he towered over lesser men, and when he donned the armor
and the great antlered helmet of his house, he became a veritable giant. He’d had
a giant’s strength too, his weapon of choice a spiked iron warhammer that Ned
could scarcely lift. In those days, the smell of leather and blood had clung to him
like perfume...”
So you might like to think about your character’s physical appearance and how it
might reflect their personality. Here are some aspects to consider.
Tip:
Start thinking about your character’s physical appearance and what clues it might
give to their personality.
Gender – Age – Height – Weight – Ethnicity – Hair colour – Hair Length –
Facial – Hair Style – Eye Colour – Tattoos – Piercings – Makeup – Accessories –
Posture – Scars
When you are describing people, try to be interesting and original. Something to
avoid is the use of vague, abstract descriptive words, such as tall or beautiful or
handsome or ugly – these tell the reader very little. Instead, find little details about
your character’s appearance, such as the way they wear their hair, or the way they
smell or the locket they always wear or the shape of their teeth, and use these to
show, rather than tell, that these people are beautiful or handsome or ugly.
Let’s go back to that very profound F. Scott Fitzgerald quote ‘Character is plot, plot
is character’.
What’s going to happen to your character? The important things to remember are
that the plot comes about, usually, because of who your character is and what
they are like. It may be, at the beginning of the novel or short story, something
unexpected or unusual happens to them (they get a letter telling them they’re
actually a young wizard; they witness a crime and fear for their own safety; they
fall in love with the wrong person).
But whatever happens after that, happens because they are the way they are –
because of how they respond to the events that happen to them, because of the
choices only they would make. If Mr Darcy wasn’t a snob and Lizzie Bennett a little
bit stroppy, the plot of Pride and Prejudice would fall to pieces, because that’s
where the conflict lies. If Harry Potter wasn’t bereaved, bent on revenge and also
very brave, the series would have ended at book 1.
You may have read From Pitch to Publication by the late Carole Blake, a very
respected agent, which is something of a bible for new writers looking to have
their work accepted. She says that any synopsis should answer the following key
questions:
•Whose story is it?
•What do they want and what stops them getting it?
•H ow do they get it?
It’s all about the conflict – and that has to come because of who the character is
and how they beat their demons, whether those demons are real, like Voldemort in
Harry Potter, or whether they’re internal, such as a battle against depression.
So a key tip as you write is to ask that question about the main character: what
do they want? Love? Success? To solve a crime? And what is stopping them from
getting it? If you are clear about your answers, then you are clear about your plot.
As I said, at the beginning of every story is what’s sometimes called the Inciting
Incident – the thing that happens to set a character off on their journey. But
whatever happens at the end has to happen because of the character’s motivations
and actions – they have to make it happen.
It’s cheating to create an ending that has nothing to do with character – they win
the Lottery and all their problems are solved, or even worse, it was all a dream
anyway. So as you write, make sure your characters act in a way that’s consistent
with how they are. But they should also change and grow a little. By the end of the
novel, your main character will have done things that they never imagined; they
will know themselves better – and they will never be quite the same again.
Plot is character – character is plot.
I’m going to move on now to questions of voice. In the Beginners course and the
more advanced Constructing a Novel course, we look at the two aspects of this:
dialogue, or how your characters sound and narrative voice, which is all about
how the writer’s voice impacts on the telling of the story.
Sometimes, these are the same thing – look at The Curious Incident of the
Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, or Room by Emma Donoghue,
where strong, memorable first person narrators carry the story from beginning
to end. These sorts of narratives are sometimes called “noisy” – it doesn’t mean
they’re shouting but it does mean that a reader ‘hears’ their voice, very clearly,
as they read the story, and that it tends to stay with a reader long after they have
finished the book.
Tip:
Have a think about the writers whose style you love, or the character voices
that have stayed with you. What is it about them that made them unique and
memorable? Try to keep these strengths in mind – not to copy other writers, but to
learn from them.
What Mark Haddon and Emma Donoghue did is quite an advanced trick to pull
off, of course. You may prefer to write in the third person point of view – in other
words, he or she instead of I - and so your characters’ voices will be heard via
dialogue. That means it’s crucial to find them a distinctive voice.
The next time you’re in a public place, listen to how people chat to each other. How
do two very similar people – say, two teenage girls – talk to each other and how
would you tell one speaker from the other, just by listening? What are the subtle
differences in their speech patterns? Do they use slang, or dialect words?
As a writer, you have to walk the tightrope between making your dialogue sound
authentic, but also tidying up the way your characters speak. We often don’t finish
our sentences, or we repeat ourselves, or fill our speech with umms and errs and
meaningless words like ‘well’ or ‘so’. I used to work for BBC radio and we would
edit these words out of a recorded interview, whenever we could, because they are
time wasters. In fiction, a reader doesn’t need to see anything in your character’s
speech that doesn’t serve a purpose – to show character or drive on the plot.
A great tip is always to read your dialogue out loud. And be honest – does it sound
like something someone would say, or is it too formal and writer-ly? Can you say
your own dialogue, without tripping over your tongue or running out of breath?
Here’s another good exercise to try out. Think of someone you know, either
personally or someone perhaps on TV, who has some distinctive ways of speaking.
Maybe it’s a grandparent who has some colourful expressions or uses dialect
words, for example. Write a short passage in which they are ‘speaking’ to you.
See how it is possible to make speech distinctive, rhythmical and interesting.
Tip:
And finally on dialogue: it may sound a little dull, but it’s vital to learn how to
format it on the page. There are so many conventions on formatting dialogue that if
you ignore them, you can really confuse a reader about meaning and even about
who is speaking. So when you’re reading printed books – rather than e-books, as
the formatting sometimes goes awry – try to notice how the speech is set out – and
you can find formatting guidelines online, too.
All of these tips, of course, don’t just apply to your main character. I bet all of
us have read a book where the antagonist –or the baddie – is two-dimensional
and hard to believe - a pantomime villain. Or where the ‘best friend/confidante’
character feels like they’ve been written to a formula. But these days, readers are
very sophisticated. We no longer think that heroes are perfect or baddies are rotten
through and through. So we have to know them all well in all their faults and merits
- and by doing so, create believable people who readers remember long after
they’ve read the book.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with your characters. Some of my favourite books
have unreliable narrators, for example – we start by believing them as they tell a
story but gradually come to realise they are not all they seem.
For great examples of this, try Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin,
or E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars – one of the most famous is probably Nabokov’s
Lolita.
Or have a principal character who’s really hard to like, such as both the main
characters in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl or Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in Patrick
Suskind’s Perfume. We may not like them but we certainly remember them.
Try writing something from the point of view of someone who’s not telling the truth.
How does it feel? Does it give you some insights into their psyche and why they
might be lying?
It’s hard to say as much as I would like about creating character in a short
presentation. There is so much to think about. But I very much hope that I’ve given
you some inspiration and some ideas to try.
Our Courses
Creative Writing
for Beginners
Constructing
a Novel
www.thewritersacademy.co.uk
Further resources
For more creative writing resources, visit our blog or have a browse of The Writer’s
Toolbox.
Contact
For more information on The Writers’ Academy courses please visit our website:
www.thewritersacademy.co.uk
or email us at:
[email protected]
or call us on:
0044 (0)203 026 0810