We’ve all heard the phrase, “the hero’s journey.” Much has been written about the steps in this journey and the nature of the hero himself. What is usually assumed is that the “hero” is an elemental character who possesses certain essential attributes. In fact, there are four truly essential attributes of the stereotypical hero…
1. He is the Protagonist
2. He is the Main Character
3. He is the Central Character
4. He is a Good Guy
Traditional writing theory uses these terms more or less interchangeably. But we are using them as descriptors of completely different attributes that make up the stereotypical “Hero.”
It really isn’t important what we names we use. What is important is that there are four distinct qualities that are combined to create a hero. So, if you use any of these terms in a different way, that’s fine. For our purposes, we need to (at least temporarily) agree on a common vocabulary so we can efficiently discuss the attributes themselves.
So, throughout this article we shall assume that the following definitions hold true:
The Protagonist is the Prime Mover in the plot – the chief driver toward the story’s overall goal.
The Main Character is the most empathetic character – the one with whom the audience most closely identifies; the character the story seems to be about.
The Central Character is the most prominent character – the one who stands out most strongly among the players.
The Good Guy is the moral standard bearer – the character whose intent is to do the right thing.
Putting it all together then, a hero drives the story forward, represents the audience position in the story, it the most prominent character, and tries to do the right thing.
Typical heroes include Dr. Richard Kimble in The Fugitive, Harry Potter, Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs, and Erin Brockavich.
Many writers are taught that they need to have a hero. Problem is, heroes in stories should be just about as rare as they are in real life. They do occur; they just aren’t the only option.
Now for the fun part…
These four heroic attributes aren’t necessarily tied together. In fact, they can be swapped for other attributes, distributed among several characters and even put together in different ways!
For example, suppose we change one attribute and create a character with the following four qualities:
1. Protagonist
2. Main Character
3. Central Character
4. Bad Guy
Now we have the typical anti-hero (in the popular vernacular). Such a character would drive the plot forward, represent the audience position in the story, be the most prominent, but represent a negative moral outlook.
Let’s try one more combination:
1. Antagonist
2. Main Character
3. Central Character
4. Good Guy
In this case, we have a character who is trying to prevent the story’s goal, represents the audience position in the story, is the most prominent, and tries to do the right thing.
James Bond is such a character. He did not instigate an effort; he is responding to an effort begun by the villain! In almost every Bond story, the villain is actually the driver of the plot – the proactive one – the Protagonist by definition, while James Bond is perpetually reactive, trying to put an end to the evil scheme.
In a future tip we’ll take apart the stereotypical “Villain” and see what he is made of!
As trite as it might seem, ask yourself “What would a story be without characters?” The answer can help you get a grip on exactly what characters really do in a story, and therefore how to build them effectively.
Although it is possible to write without the use of characters, it is not easy. Characters represent our drives, our essential human qualities. So a story without characters would be a story that did not describe or explore anything that might be considered a motivation. For most writers, such a story would not provide the opportunity to completely fulfill their own motivations for writing.
For example, we might consider the following poem:
Rain, rain, go away.
Come again another day.
Are there characters in this short verse? Is the rain a character?
To some readers the poem might be a simple invocation for the rain to leave. To other readers, the rain may seem to be stubborn, thoughtless, or inconsiderate. Of course we would need to read more to know for certain.
Suppose we wrote the sentence, “The rain danced on the sidewalk in celebration of being reunited with the earth.”
Now we are definitely assigning human qualities to the rain. Without doubt, the rain has become a character. Characters do not have to be people; they can also be places or things. In fact, anything that can be imbued with motivation can be a character.
So, a fantasy story might incorporate a talking book. An action story might employ a killer wolverine. And a horror story might conjure up the vengeful smoke from a log that was cut from a sentient tree and burned in a fireplace.
When we come to a story we either already have some ideas for a character or characters we would like to use, or we will likely soon find the need for some. But how can we come up with these characters, or how can we develop the rough characters we already have?
Coming up with characters is as simple as looking to our subject matter and asking ourselves who might be expected to be involved. But that only creates the expected characters – predictable and uninteresting. Making these characters intriguing, unusual, and memorable is a different task altogether. But first things first, let us look to our subject matter and see what characters suggest themselves. (If you like, try this with you own story as we go.)
Example:
Suppose all we know about our story is that we want to write an adventure about some jungle ruins and a curse. What characters immediately suggest themselves?
Jungle Guide, Head Porter, Archaeologist, Bush Pilot, Treasure Hunter
What other characters might seem consistent with the subject?
Missionary, Native Shaman, Local Military Governor, Rebel Leader, Mercenary
How about other characters that would not seem overly out of place?
Night Club Singer, Tourist, Plantation Owner
And perhaps some less likely characters?
Performers in a Traveling Circus (Trapeze Artist, Juggler, Acrobat, Clown)
We could, of course, go on and on. The point is, we can come up with a whole population of characters just by picking the vocations of those we might expect or at least accept as not inconsistent with the subject matter. Now these characters might seem quite ordinary at first glance, but that is only because we know nothing about them. I promised you a trick to use that would make ordinary characters intriguing, and now is the time to try it.
Of course, we probably don’t need that many characters in our story, so for this example let’s pick only one character from each of the four groups above: Bush Pilot, Mercenary, Night Club Singer, Clown.
First we’ll assign a gender to each. Let’s have two male and two female characters. Well pick the Bush Pilot and the Mercenary as male and the Night Club Singer and the Clown as female.
Now, picture these characters in your mind: a male Bush Pilot, a male Mercenary, a female Night Club Singer, and a female Clown. Since we all have our own life experiences and expectations, you should be able to visualize each character in your mind in at least some initial ways.
The Bush Pilot might be scruffy, the Mercenary bare-armed and muscular. The Night Club Singer well worn but done up glamorously, and the Clown a mousy thing.
Now that we have these typical images of these typical characters in our minds, let’s shake things up a bit to make them less ordinary. We’ll make the Bush Pilot and the Mercenary female and the Night Club Singer and Clown male.
What does this do to our mental images? How does it change how we feel about these characters? The Bush Pilot could still be scruffy, but a scruffy woman looks a lot different than a scruffy man. Or is she scruffy? Perhaps she is quite prim in contrast to the land in which she practices her profession. Since female bush pilots are more rare, we might begin to ask ourselves how she came to have this job. And, of course, this would start to develop her back-story.
How about the female Mercenary? Still muscular, or more the brainy type? What’s her back story? The Night Club Singer might be something of a lounge lizard type in a polyester leisure suit. And the male Clown could be sad like Emit Kelly, sleazy like Crusty the Clown, or evil like Pennywise the Clown in Stephen King’s “It.”
The key to this trick is that our own preconceptions add far more material to our mental images than the actual information we are given – so far only vocation and gender.
Due to this subconscious initiative, our characters are starting to get a little more intriguing, just by adding and mixing genders. What happens if we throw another variable into the mix, say, age? Let’s pick four ages arbitrarily: 35, 53, 82, and 7. Now let’s assign them to the characters.
We have a female Bush Pilot (35), a female Mercenary (53), a male Night Club Singer (82), and a male Clown (7). How does the addition of age change your mental images?
What if we mix it up again? Let’s make the Bush Pilot 7 years old, the Mercenary 82, the Night Club Singer 53, and the Clown 35. What do you picture now?
It would be hard for a writer not to find something interesting to say about a seven-year-old female Bush Pilot or an eighty-two year old female Mercenary.
What we’ve just discovered is that the best way to break out of your own mind and its cliché creations is to simply mix and match a few attributes. Suddenly your characters take on a life of their own and suggest all kinds of interesting back-stories, attitudes, and mannerisms.
Now consider that we have only been playing with three attributes. In fact, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of attributes from which we might select. These might include educational level, race, disabilities, exceptional abilities, special skills, hobbies, religious affiliation, family ties, prejudices, unusual eating habits, sexual preference, and on and on. And each of these can be initially assigned in typical fashion, then mixed and matched. Using this simple technique, anyone can create truly intriguing and memorable characters.
Perhaps the most interesting thing in all of this is that we have become so wrapped up in these fascinating people that we have completely forgotten about structure! In fact, we don’t even know who is the Hero, Protagonist, or Main Character!
Many authors come to a story realizing they need some sort of central character and then try to decide what kind or person he or she should be from scratch. But it is far easier to first build a cast of characters that really excite you (as we did above) and then ask yourself which one you would like to be the central character.
So, imagine…. What would this story be like if we chose the seven-year-old female Bush Pilot as the Hero. How about the eighty-two year old female Mercenary? Can you picture the 53-year-old male Night Club Singer as Hero, or the thirty-five year old male Clown?
And how would things change depending upon who we pick as the Villain or Antagonist? In fact, by choosing one of these characters as the Hero and another as Villain it will begin to suggest what might happen in the plot, just as picking the subject matter suggested our initial characters. Writer’s block never has to happen. Not when you are armed with this technique to spur your passions.
“My favorite creative writing book is ‘Setting’ by Jack Bickham. Use of setting as primary with characters, plot, theme, mood, etc derived from it and interacting with it seems of particular value in science fiction. Where would Deep Space 9 be without deep space and a space station! Setting is certainly the cauldron of my imagination.
So how can I best approach things this way with Dramatica? Do you have any examples where setting has been created as a character?
Can I have two antagonists, for example, one a person and the other a setting?”
My Reply:
In fact, the Antagonist in a story can be a person, place or thing – any entity that can fulfill the dramatic function of the Antagonist.
First, look at the movie “Jaws.” The Antagonist is the shark. The mayor is the Contagonist.
Next consider the 1950s movie with Spencer Tracy and Robert Wagner called, “The Mountain.” Tracy plays an aging mountain climber whose nemesis is the huge mountain that looms over his home and nearly killed him years ago. He hasn’t climbed since. The mountain claims new victims in a plane crash.
Tracy is the only one qualified to lead an expedition to rescue them. Wagner, his nephew, wants to rob the plane of its valuables and slyly convinces Tracy to lead the expedition on humanitarian grounds. The mountain is the Antagonist and Wagner is the Contagonist.
In the movie, “Aliens” (the second film in the series), the Aliens themselves are the “Group Antagonist” and the Contagonist is Burke, the company man.
In the movie, “The Old Man & the Sea.” Anthony Quinn is the Protagonist, the Great Fish is the Antagonist, and the Sea is the Contagonist.
In a short story called, “The Wind,” which appeared in an anthology released by Alfred Hitchcock, the wind itself it the Antagonist, having sentience and stalking down and eventually killing an explorer who accidentally stumbled upon the knowledge that the winds of the world are alive.
These examples illustrate that all of the dramatic functions (such as Protagonist, Antagonist, and Contagonist) need to be represented, but can easily be carried by a person, place, or thing. Still, there is only one Antagonist, and the other negative force is usually the Contagonist.
There are two exceptions to the “rule” that there should be only one Antagonist. One is when the Antagonist is a group, as in the “Aliens” example above, or with an angry mob or the Empire in Start Wars. The other is when the function of the Antagonist is “handed off” from one player to another when the first player dies or moves out of the plot.
A hand-off is different than a group insofar as the group is fulfilling the same dramatic function at the same time as if it were a single entity, but the hand-off characters fulfill the function in turn, each carrying forward the next part of the job like runners in a relay race.
Although the hand-off is often done with Obstacle characters (i.e. the ghosts in “A Christmas Carol or the argument about the power of the Lost Ark made to Indiana Jones in the first movie by both his boss at the university (Brody) and his companion/protector, Sulla), hand-offs are seldom done with Antagonists for reasons I’ll outline in a moment.
This is because Obstacle characters are each carrying the next part of linear argument regarding value standards and/or worldviews, but the Antagonist represents a consistent force. It is much harder for an audience to shift its feelings from one Antagonist to another, than to “listen” to one character pick up the moral argument from another.
In summary, it is best to have only one Antagonist, but that character can easily be a person, place or thing (including setting).
Although it is possible to write without the use of characters, it is not easy. Characters represent our drives, our essential human qualities. So a story without characters would be a story that did not describe or explore anything that might be considered a motivation. For most writers, such a story would not provide the opportunity to completely fulfill their own motivations for writing.
For example, we might consider the following poem:
Rain, rain, go away.
Come again another day.
Are there characters in this short verse? Is the rain a character?
To some readers the poem might be a simple invocation for the rain to leave. To other readers, the rain may seem to be stubborn, thoughtless, or inconsiderate. Of course we would need to read more to know for certain.
Suppose we wrote the sentence, “The rain danced on the sidewalk in celebration of being reunited with the earth.”
Now we are definitely assigning human qualities to the rain. Without doubt, the rain has become a character. Characters do not have to be people; they can also be places or things. In fact, anything that can be imbued with motivation can be a character.
So, a fantasy story might incorporate a talking book. An action story might employ a killer wolverine. And a horror story might conjure up the vengeful smoke from a log that was cut from a sentient tree and burned in a fireplace.
When we come to a story we either already have some ideas for a character or characters we would like to use, or we will likely soon find the need for some. But how can we come up with these characters, or how can we develop the rough characters we already have?
Coming up with characters is as simple as looking to our subject matter and asking ourselves who might be expected to be involved. But that only creates the expected characters – predictable and uninteresting. Making these characters intriguing, unusual, and memorable is a different task altogether. But first things first, let us look to our subject matter and see what characters suggest themselves. (If you like, try this with you own story as we go.)
Example:
Suppose all we know about our story is that we want to write an adventure about some jungle ruins and a curse. What characters immediately suggest themselves?
Jungle Guide, Head Porter, Archeologist, Bush Pilot, Treasure Hunter
What other characters might seem consistent with the subject?
Missionary, Native Shaman, Local Military Governor, Rebel Leader, Mercenary
How about other characters that would not seem overly out of place?
Night Club Singer, Tourist, Plantation Owner
And perhaps some less likely characters?
Performers in a Traveling Circus (Trapeze Artist, Juggler, Acrobat, Clown)
We could, of course, go on and on. The point is, we can come up with a whole population of characters just by picking the vocations of those we might expect or at least accept as not inconsistent with the subject matter. Now these characters might seem quite ordinary at first glance, but that is only because we know nothing about them. I promised you a trick to use that would make ordinary characters intriguing, and now is the time to try it.
Of course, we probably don’t need that many characters in our story, so for this example let’s pick only one character from each of the four groups above: Bush Pilot, Mercenary, Night Club Singer, Clown.
First we’ll assign a gender to each. Let’s have two male and two female characters. Well pick the Bush Pilot and the Mercenary as male and the Night Club Singer and the Clown as female.
Now, picture these characters in your mind: a male Bush Pilot, a male Mercenary, a female Night Club Singer, and a female Clown. Since we all have our own life experiences and expectations, you should be able to visualize each character in your mind in at least some initial ways.
The Bush Pilot might be scruffy, the Mercenary bare-armed and muscular. The Night Club Singer well worn but done up glamorously, and the Clown a mousy thing.
Now that we have these typical images of these typical characters in our minds, let’s shake things up a bit to make them less ordinary. We’ll make the Bush Pilot and the Mercenary female and the Night Club Singer and Clown male.
What does this do to our mental images? How does it change how we feel about these characters? The Bush Pilot could still be scruffy, but a scruffy woman looks a lot different than a scruffy man. Or is she scruffy? Perhaps she is quite prim in contrast to the land in which she practices her profession. Since female bush pilots are more rare, we might begin to ask ourselves how she came to have this job. And, of course, this would start to develop her back-story.
How about the female Mercenary? Still muscular, or more the brainy type? What’s her back story? The Night Club Singer might be something of a lounge lizard type in a polyester leisure suit. And the male Clown could be sad like Emit Kelly, sleazy like Crusty the Clown, or evil like Pennywise the Clown in Stephen King’s “It.”
The key to this trick is that our own preconceptions add far more material to our mental images than the actual information we are given – so far only vocation and gender.
Due to this subconscious initiative, our characters are starting to get a little more intriguing, just by adding and mixing genders. What happens if we throw another variable into the mix, say, age? Let’s pick four ages arbitrarily: 35, 53, 82, and 7. Now let’s assign them to the characters.
We have a female Bush Pilot (35), a female Mercenary (53), a male Night Club Singer (82), and a male Clown (7). How does the addition of age change your mental images?
What if we mix it up again? Let’s make the Bush Pilot 7 years old, the Mercenary 82, the Night Club Singer 53, and the Clown 35. What do you picture now?
It would be hard for a writer not to find something interesting to say about a seven-year-old female Bush Pilot or an eighty-two year old female Mercenary.
What we’ve just discovered is that the best way to break out of your own mind and its cliché creations is to simply mix and match a few attributes. Suddenly your characters take on a life of their own and suggest all kinds of interesting back-stories, attitudes, and mannerisms.
Now consider that we have only been playing with three attributes. In fact, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of attributes from which we might select. These might include educational level, race, disabilities, exceptional abilities, special skills, hobbies, religious affiliation, family ties, prejudices, unusual eating habits, sexual preference, and on and on. And each of these can be initially assigned in typical fashion, then mixed and matched. Using this simple technique, anyone can create truly intriguing and memorable characters.
Perhaps the most interesting thing in all of this is that we have become so wrapped up in these fascinating people that we have completely forgotten about structure! In fact, we don’t even know who is the Hero, Protagonist, or Main Character!
Many authors come to a story realizing they need some sort of central character and then try to decide what kind or person he or she should be from scratch. But it is far easier to first build a cast of characters that really excite you (as we did above) and then ask yourself which one you would like to be the central character.
So, imagine…. What would this story be like if we chose the seven-year-old female Bush Pilot as the Hero. How about the eighty-two year old female Mercenary? Can you picture the 53-year-old male Night Club Singer as Hero, or the thirty-five year old male Clown?
And how would things change depending upon who we pick as the Villain or Antagonist? In fact, by choosing one of these characters as the Hero and another as Villain it will begin to suggest what might happen in the plot, just as picking the subject matter suggested our initial characters. Writer’s block never has to happen. Not when you are armed with this technique to spur your passions.
There’s only one main character in a story. Why? Because a story is about the group experience of trying to achieve a goal. When people come together around a common issue in the real world, they quickly self-organize so that one becomes the Voice of Reason and another the Resident Skeptic, for example.
In essence, each “character” in a group endeavor takes as his job one of the major attributes we all have within our own minds. In this way, the group benefits from having specialists to look into each point of view exclusively, which provides greater insight to the group than if we were all acting as individuals, each trying to see the problem from all angles at once, as we do with personal problems.
And so, the group takes on the nature of a group mind in which our primary attributes are represented by people. In fiction, this group mind is called a Story Mind, and each of the people are the archetypes. This forms the basis of narrative structure.
But who is the main character among all of these? In real life, one of the archetypes will emerge as the leader who represents the identity of the group, such as a the CEO of a company, the team leader in sports, or the President of the United States.
Those who are part of the group assume the mantle of that identity, and the leader is the personification of the group mind’s sense of itself. In fiction, that character is the main character, for it is through his or her perspective that the readers or audience experience the story in the first person.
This main character may or may not be the protagonist. The protagonist is the archetype who represents our initiative – the drive to affect change. Every group mind has one. But that person is not always the leader. The leader is the spirit of the group, the protagonist may be his principal operative.
And so it is in fiction. Any of the archetypes might be the leader. So that leader might be the antagonist, for example, trying to maintain the status quo and prevent change. Or it might be the reason archetype who insists that all decisions are based on logic.
Still, though the leader may be any archetype, there will only be one avatar for the group’s sense of self, one main character in the story mind. For, just as in our own individual minds, we think therefore we are. There is only one voice inside that is our identity, our sense of self, who we are. (Unless, of course, we are mentally ill, just as a group mind might be dysfunctional in the real world if it has more than one identity – more than one voice that speaks for the group or tries to define the feel and essence of the group.
So, in your own stories, be sure you only have one main character. But if you want to write about other characters in your story and see how it looks through their eyes, create a sub-story around that character that doesn’t involve the others. Then, you can populate it with people such as his family or his religious group, and his personal story will allow you to stand in his shoes in that regard.
Be certain, however, that you do do not confuse your readers or audience by writing your sub story in such a way that this sub main character is mistaken for the overall main character, as this would create a dysfunctional story.
Still, it is important to develop the individual natures of every character so the readers or audience can identify with them more easily as being like real people. And this prevents your story from being about just one person surrounded by an army of automatons.
After all, each of us is the main character in our own personal narrative.
In this article, we’ll first take a quick look at the origins of the concept of fictional characters, then outline some practical techniques for creating compelling characters from thin air.
Where Do Characters Come From?
When we speak of characters from a structural standpoint, there are very specific guidelines that determine what is a character and what is not. But when we think of characters in every day life, they are simply anything that has a personality, from your Great Aunt Bertha (though some might argue the point) to the car that never starts when you’re really late.
Looking back through time, it is easy to understand how early humans would assume that other humans like themselves would have similar feelings, thoughts, and drives. Even other species exhibit emotions and make decisions, as when one confronts a bear face to face and watches it decide whether to take you on or find easier pickings (a personal experience from my recent hike on the John Muir trail!)
But even the weather seems to have a personality by virtue of its capricious nature. That’s why they call the wind Mariah, why there is a god of Thunder, and why the Spanish say Hace Color, when it is hot, which literally means, “It makes heat.”
So while, structurally, to be a character an entity must intend to alter the course of events, in the realm of storytelling a character is anything that possesses human emotions. In short, structural characters must have heads, storytelling characters must have hearts. When you put the two together you have entities who involve themselves in the plot, and involve us in themselves.
Where Can We Get Some?
When writing a story, then, from whence can we get our characters? Well, for the moment lets assume we have no plot. In fact, we have no theme, no genre – we don’t even have any particular subject matter we want to talk about. Nothing. We have absolutely nothing and we want to create some characters out of “think” air.
Try starting with a name. Not a name like “Joe” or “Sally” but something that opens the door to further development like “Muttering Murdock” or “Susan the Stilt.” Often coming up with a nickname or even a derogatory name one child might call another is a great way to establish a character’s heart.
What can we say about Muttering Murdock? The best way to develop a character (or for that matter, any aspect of your story) is to start with loose thread and then ask questions. So, for ol’ Muttering Murdock, the name is the loose end just hanging out there for us to pull. We might ask, “Why does Murdock Mutter?” (That’s obvious, of course!) But what else might we ask? Is Murdock a human being? Is Murdock male or female? How old is Murdock? What attributes describe Murdock’s physical traits? How smart is Murdock? Does Murdock have any talents? What about hobbies, education, religious affiliation? And so on, and so on….
We don’t need to know the answers to these questions, we just have to ask them.
Why Does Murdock Mutter?
Next you want to shift modes. Take each question, one at a time, and think up all the different answers you can for each one. For example:
Why does Murdock Mutter?
1. Because he has a physical deformity for the lips.
2. Because he talks to himself, lost in his own world due to the untimely death of his parents, right in front of his eyes.
3. Because he feels he can’t hold his own with anyone face to face, so he makes all his comments so low that no one can hear, giving him the last word in his own mind.
4. Because he is lost in thought about truly deep and complex issues, so he is merely talking to himself. No one ever knows that he is a genius because he never speaks clearly enough to be understood.
You get the idea. You just pull out all the stops and be creative. See, that’s the key. If you try to come up with a character from scratch, well good luck. But if you pick an arbitrary name, it can’t help but generate a number of questions. If you aren’t trying to come up with the one perfect answer to each question, you can let your Muse roam far and wide. Without constraints, you’ll be amazed at the odd variety of potential answers she brings back!
Aging Murdock
Let’s try another question from our Murdock list:
How old is Murdock?
1. 18
2. 5
3. 86
4. 37
That was easy, wasn’t it. But now, think of Murdock in your mind…. Picture Murdock as an 18 year old, a 5 year old, an 86 year old, and at 37. Changes the whole image, doesn’t it! You see, with a name like Muttering Murdock, we can’t help but come up with a mental image right off the bat. It’s like telling someone, “Whatever you do, don’t picture a pink elephant in your mind.” Very hard not to.
The mind is a creative instrument just waiting to be played. It has to be to survive. The world is a jumble of objects, energies, and entities. Our minds must make sense of it all. And to do this, we quite automatically seek patterns. When a pattern is incomplete, we fill it in out of personal experience until we find a better match.
So, when you first heard the name, “Muttering Murdock,” you probably pictured someone who was in your mind already a certain gender, a certain age, and a certain race. You may have even seen Murdock’s face, or Murdock’s size, shape, hair color, or even imagined Murdock’s voice!
Give Murdock a Job!
Now ask one more question about Murdock – What is his or her vocation? Try out a number of alternatives: a school teacher, a mercenary, a priest, a cop, a sanitary engineer, a pre-school drop-out, a retired linesman. Every potential occupation again alters our mental image of Murdock and makes us feel just a little bit differently about that character.
Interesting thing, though. We haven’t even asked ourselves what kind of a person Murdock is. Is this character funny? Is he or she a practical joker? Does he or she socialize, or is the character a loner? Is Murdock quick to temper or long suffering? Forgiving, or carry a grudge? Thoughtful or a snap judge? Dogmatic or pragmatic? Pleasant or slimy of spirit?
Again, each question leads to a number of possible answers. By trying them in different combinations, we can create any number of interesting people with which to populate a story.
As we said at the beginning of the Murdock example, this is just one way to create characters if you don’t even have a story idea yet. But there are more! In our next lesson we’ll explore more of these methods.
Study Exercises: Reverse Engineering Characters
1. Pick a favorite book, movie, or stage play. Make a list of all the principal characters.
2. For each character, list all the key bits of information the author reveals about that character, as if you were writing a dossier.
3. Do a personality study of each character, as if you were a criminal profiler or a psychologist.
4. For each item you have noted in your dossier and profile, create a question that would have resulted in that item as an answer. In other words, play the TV game Jeopardy. Take an item you wrote about a character like, “Hagrid is a large man, so big he must be part giant.” Then, create a question to which that item would be an answer, for example, “What is this character’s physical size?”
5. Arrange all the questions you have reverse engineered in an organized list to be used in the Writing Exercises.
Writing Exercises: Creating Characters
1. Arbitrarily create a character name.
2. Use your list of questions from the Study exercises to ask information about this character.
3. Come up with at least three different answers for each of the questions.
4. Pick one answer for each question to create a character profile.
5. Read over the list and get a feel for your new character. Then, swap out some of the answers (character attributes) that you included in the profile for alternative answers you originally didn’t use.
6. Keep swapping out attributes until you arrive at a character you really have a feel for.
Tools for Creating Characters
You can easily build character in my StoryWeaver software. All of the techniques outlined above (and many more) have been incorporated into a step-by-step interactive pathway for building your characters, plot, theme and genre.
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For a structural approach to building characters, nothing is more powerful or detailed that Dramatica Pro. You’ll learn and then apply techniques for ensuring all structural attributes are present, breaking down archetypes into their component parts and reassembling them into more interesting characters, ensuring all character relationships are explored and fully developed. Try Dramatica for 90 days, and if it doesn’t suit your writing style, return it for a full refund.
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Some stories introduce characters as people and then let the reader/audience discover their roles and relationships afterward. This tends to help an audience identify with the characters.
Other stories put roles first, so that we know about the person by their function and/or job, then get closer to them as the act progresses. This tends to make the reader/audience pigeon-hole the characters by stereotype, and then draw them into learning more about the actual people behind the masks.
Finally, there are stories that introduce character relationships, either situational, structural, or emotional, at the beginning. This causes the audience to see the problems among the characters but not take sides as strongly until they can learn about the people on each side of the relationship, and the roles that constrain them.
Of course, you do not have to treat these introductions equally for all characters and relationships. For example, you might introduce on character as a person, then introduce their relationship with another character, then divulge the constraints the other character is under due to role, then revel the other character as a person.
This approach would initially cast sympathy (or derision) at the first character, temper it by showing a relationship with which he or she must contend, then temper that relationship by showing the constraints of the other character, and finally humanize that other character so a true objective balance can be formed by the reader/audience.
Don’t forget that first impressions stick in our minds, and it is much easier to judge someone initially than to change that judgment later. Use this trait of audiences to quickly identify important characters up front, or to put their complete situations later, thereby forcing the reader/audience to reconsider its attitudes, and thereby learn and grow.
No matter what approach you take, you have the opportunity to weave a complex experience for your reader/audience, blending factual, logistic information about your characters with the reader/audience emotional experience in discovering this information.
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A writer just asked, “Can I make my main character an Antagonist instead of the Protagonist?”
My reply:
The main character is the one through whose eyes the reader or audience experiences the story. It is the one around whom the personal issue or problem of the story seems to revolve. The main character is, essentially, the “first person” point of view in the story. It is through them we most passionately experience the story first hand by identifying with them.
Protagonist and antagonist are not point of view characters but are character functions. The protagonist is the one who is the prime mover of the effort to achieve the goal. The antagonist is all about preventing the protagonist from achieving the goal. In our own minds, protagonist represents our initiative – the motivation to affect change. Antagonist is our reticence – the motivation to maintain the status quo, or at least to return to it.
So, any character in a story can be the main character, not just protagonist or antagonist. it could be a by stander, simply providing a passionate point of view on the plot, just as if the story were a football game, the main character doesn’t have to be the quarterback (protagonist) or opposing quarterback (antagonist) but could be the half back or any of the linesmen, or ever then water boy. But, whomever is your main character, it is they who grapple with the underlying moral issue of the story, it is they who are brought to a point where they must either stick by their guns or change their ways in regard to some philosophical or moral point of view or manner. It is the main character who must make a leap of faith. And, their connection to the story at large is that as a result of their decision on the central message issue, either the protagonist or antagonist will succeed.
When you select one of your players as a protagonist and also as the main character you get the stereotypical hero – a character who grapples with the moral issue, represents the reader/audience point of view, and is also leading the charge in the logistics of the plot. But, the main character can be anyone. For example, in most James Bond movies, Bond is a main character antagonist – not a protagonist – because it is the villain who is affecting change due due their evil scheme, making them the protagonist, and it is Bond who seeks to prevent that change or return things to the status quo, even though we see things through Bond’s eyes, making him the main character with whom the reader/audience identifies. And what of Bond doing the other main character job of grappling with a moral issue? In a few movies he does, but the moral issue is actually a personal battle over what is proper between the main character and the influence character who represents the opposing moral viewpoint. They thrash out the message of the story between them, independent of whether either of them is a protagonist or antagonist. So, in bond films, he almost always remains steadfast on that issue, while it is the influence character who is changed in their moral point of view by Bond’s intransigence.
In the Dramatica software, you can assign the main character view and Influence character view to any of your characters in the Build Characters window.
One of my writing students just asked, “What do I need to develop about a character’s background story even though that character is not the main character?”
My reply:
For characters other than the main character, a background story is more about how they came to be where and who they are today. No development of personal issues is needed. But, a story can be enhanced by giving each of the principal characters a true back story, even if it is sketchy, showing that each character has his own path that created a central potential for change within them. Then, as main character in their own sub story, each character may change (or not) in regard to their personal issue, adding interest and detail to the work as a whole. In addition, characters may be so wrapped up in their personal stories that they will choose to act against their type in the main story because of strong personal needs. For example, in the original Star Wars movie, Han Solo agrees to help rescue the princess from the detention block. This is completely against his character type (the skeptic) in the movie as a whole (out for himself, doesn’t believe in the force, etc.). Why? because Luke says, “She’s rich…” and Han needs to pay back Jabba the Hut to get the bounty hunters off his back – his personal sub-story.
To summarize – characters other than the main character need only a thin description of how they came to be who and what they are when the story begins, and this can be dropped as additional interesting exposition to humanize them over the flow of the story. But giving them a complete sub-story, even if loosely drawn, will show how their motivations were developed, providing reasons for the drives they exhibit in the story and also giving them the opportunity to grow and change.
Of all your cast, there is one very special player: the Main Character. Your Main Character is the one your story seems to be about – the one with whom your readers most identify – in short, the single most important character in your novel.
You probably already know who your Main Character is. If, so, you’ll find this step opens opportunities to avoid stereotyping him or her. If you haven’t yet selected your Main Character, this step will help you choose one from your cast list.
First, your Main Character is not necessarily your protagonist. While the protagonist is the prime mover of the effort to achieve the story goal, the Main Character is the one who grapples with an inner dilemma, personal issue or has some aspect of his or her belief system come under attack.
Most writers combine these two functions into a single player (a hero) who is both protagonist and Main Character in order to position their readers right at the heart of the action, as in the Harry Potter series.
Still, there are good reasons for not always blending the two. In the book and movie To Kill A Mockingbird, the protagonist is Atticus – a southern lawyer trying to acquit a young black man wrongly accused of rape. That is the basic plot of the story.
But the Main Character is Atticus’ young daughter, Scout. While the overall story is about the trial, that is really just a background to Scout’s experiences as we see prejudice through her eyes – a child’s eyes.
In this way, the author (Dee Harper) distances us from the incorruptible Atticus so that we do not feel all self-righteous. And, by making Scout effectively prejudiced against Boo Radley (the scary “boogie man” who lives down the street), we see how easily we can all become prejudiced by fearing what we really know nothing about.
In the end, Boo turns out to be Scout’s secret protector, and the story’s message about both the evils and ease of prejudice is made.
Your story may be best suited to center around a typical hero, especially if it is an action story or physical journey story. But if you are writing more of an exploration novel in which the plot unfolds as a background against which a personal journey of self-discovery or a resolution of personal demons is told, then separating your Main Character from the protagonist (and the heart of the action) may serve you better.
Armed with this understanding, review the cast you have chosen for your novel. If you have already selected a Main Character, see if they are a hero who is also the protagonist, driving the action. If so, consider splitting those functions into two players to see if it might enhance your story for your readers. If you have already set up a separate Main Character and protagonist, consider combining them into a hero, to see if that might streamline your story.
If you have not yet chosen a Main Character and/or a protagonist, review your cast list to see if one player would best do both jobs or if one would better drive the plot and the other would better carry the message.
When you have made your choices, write a brief paragraph about your Main Character and/or protagonist to explain how those two functions are satisfied by your chosen character or characters.
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Although it is possible to write without the use of characters, it is not easy. Characters represent our drives, our essential human qualities. So a story without characters would be a story that did not describe or explore anything that might be considered a motivation. For most writers, such a story would not provide the opportunity to completely fulfill their own motivations for writing.
There’s only one main character in a story. Why? Because a story is about the group experience of trying to achieve a goal. When people come together around a common issue in the real world, they quickly self-organize so that one becomes the Voice of Reason and another the Resident Skeptic, for example.
In this article, we’ll first take a quick look at the origins of the concept of fictional characters, then outline some practical techniques for creating compelling characters from thin air.
Some stories introduce characters as people and then let the reader/audience discover their roles and relationships afterward. This tends to help an audience identify with the characters.
