5 Tips on Characterization

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1.  Character is action. Do you get that?  Characters DO things.  They don’t sit around and THINK about doing things.  They don’t sit around and have things DONE TO them.  They get up, take a proactive stance, and get stuff done.  A lot of young writers seem enchanted with exposition or description right off the bat, and spend pages and pages letting us know exactly what kind of black lace their werewolf vampire wears, and just how wickedly evil-looking the dragon they’re facing is, but I’ll be damned if they actually start fighting by the end of the first chapter.  Character is revealed through action.  I remember the exact moment when I had the revelation about this, while deconstructing Watership Down.  I remember asking myself to describe Hazel, and asking “How do we know he’s a good guy?”  My immediate answer was “Well, because he’s nice to his brother and ... holy crap!  That’s it! He’s nice to his brother!” By being a nice guy to his brother, Hazel’s character traits of generosity, patience, and diplomacy are revealed to the reader by SHOWING, not TELLING.  We are not TOLD that Hazel is kind and nice, we’re simply audience to his kind ACTIONS.  Got a jerk character?  Make them do something jerkass.  Got a cranky old man?  Make him complain about something.  Don’t TELL us he’s cranky.  Make him do something cranky and we’ll get the picture.  This very reason is why when young writers insist that their characters are awesome, the readers just see a whiner.  Because the biggest actions we see is them complaining about their parents grounding him from the Internetz again.  For pages.

2.  Character goals provide story stakes. Characters without goals that wander around aimlessly for pages on end might make your reader start wondering where the hell all this is going around page 50 or so.  Even if your character is a slacker pothead, he’s got to have desires and wants.  Those desires and wants have to be clear to the reader so we can root for him.  A character can have multiple goals, goals that change throughout the story, and major and minor goals.  Sometimes all of those in one story.  Since story is basically character+goals+obstacle=story, if you’re not giving us a goal, you’re missing a pretty big chunk of the equation.  This goes right back to Rule#1, mind you, you can’t TELL us what a goal is.  If someone gets up early every day to train for a marathon, we can discern that his goal is to win a marathon.  SHOW us the guy eating his Wheaties, tying his shoes, puffing along, and so on: we’ll get it, I promise.  Also, don’t make the mistake of a lot fanfiction writers: you have a guy spend time with his sister, thereby establishing that he has emotional stakes with his sister, and then when the villain drops by for a little blackmail he steals ... the hero’s mother.  You will completely strike out by doing this, because you’ve missed the emotional punch to the stakes established.  Yeah, we kinda get that mothers are important, because it’s a universal concept, but that’s our own experience doing the work the writer should have done.  And remember the adage “the reader owes nothing”, because we don’t have to be working this hard.  We could be watching TV or playing video games instead of reading your crap.

3.  Introduce a catalyst for best results. This in character form is often called a foil; a catalyst is an event that does the same thing: basically introducing a person or a situation with diametric goals or value systems to your main character.  This can sometimes be a villain or some other kind of antagonist, but it doesn’t have to be, it could just as easily be “Rocks fall, everyone dies, you’re the only one left.”  Half the fun in my writing is making a foil an ally or someone the hero has no choice but to put up with, because it introduces tension and keeps it going, page after page.  If you need an example, try The Odd Couple.  Or think kleptomaniac halfling traveling with a Lawful Stupid paladin.  Often foils can become “mirrors”,that is, versions of the same character who made different decisions in the past and became a different person for it.  (Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker, anyone?)  Introducing a catalyst allows you to test your character’s mettle, either providing him with the ultimate story obstacle or allowing him to “train” against it and change in time for the climax.  Knowing what your character values, fears, regrets, and takes the most pride in are prime grounds for crafting a foil. (Assuming you actually know what that is for your hero; most people don’t go that far, but they sure tell us what his hairstyle, dye job, and earrings array are.)  Character values are where the story begins; the foil or catalyst is where conflict begins, and conflict is what keeps us reading.  Stories like Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” is a very simple story full of conflict, just because it takes advantage of the character’s values (staying alive) versus an obstacle (he’s in the Arctic, his hands keep freezing and his dog is either a jerk or smarter than him.)  Remember that a catalyst or foil is defined by your character’s goals and values, so you can’t introduce a volcano to a Mary Sue and expect us to care.  Mary Sue values everything equally, even the coelacanth versus her best friend, and has no difficulty achieving her goals, ever.

4.  Know the difference between a protagonist and a flat character. A protagonist, by loose definition, is usually the character that changes the most throughout the story.  (The Great Gatsby notwithstanding, because Nick is the narrator but he is also the one that “learns the lesson” and changes at the end of the story; yet another example of how few rules in writing are written in stone.)  The protagonist goes from being wimpy, weak, and cowardly to being assertive, strong, and brave.  Or whatever.  But a protagonist has to have an arc, often called the inner and outer journey.  Change is a big part of your story equation; if you don’t have it, you’re missing a piece of your story.  (Or, as Joseph Campbell put it, the hero’s doomed to do it all over again until the lesson’s learned.)  A flat character is simply someone who has no arc.  They learn no great lesson and don’t particularly need to.  These can still be major players; they often take the Mentor, Threshold Guardian, or Trickster archetypes to impart wisdom to the hero in some way.  Characters can sometimes surprise you with who grabs control of the story, usually by demanding that theirs be the one that is told.  But characters who have potential for the biggest change are the most exciting; this is why Mary Sues grate so bad on the nerves.  They’re already perfect, so we know they can’t improve, but we’re stuck with the author TELLING us that no, no, watch!  It’ll be awesome!  Lack of a defined character arc is just asking for trouble.  I don’t know what lessons Eragon’s supposed to be learning, but his arc appears to consist of being a farm boy, to becoming a dragon rider, to turning into an elf, to experiencing fundamental vegetarianism, atheism, and a disturbing amount of sociopathy before somehow discovering that all things in moderation is the best philosophy. Don’t ask me how he got there, exactly; I just calls ‘em like I sees ‘em.

5. Details about a character should have some kind of story significance. The appearance of a character is kind of like how you should treat the weather in your books: tell us if the sun is shining or if it’s raining, and get on with it.  I see too many young authors describe their characters in painstaking detail, right down to the kind of jackets they wear, the music they’re listening to, and the significance of their bad boy tattoo.  If die-hard Twilight fans were capable of such complex thought, they would enumerate that everyone sees a character in their own way.  (Remember all that backlash against ol' Robert playing Edward, because he wasn't "handsome enough?"  Anyone who went to the theaters will tell you they heard someone say "My Edward was so much hotter."  And now I feel dirty for using a Twilight reference.)  The character is imagined the way the reader wants to see them, and regardless of how hard you try, it cannot be put into a box of meticulous description.  And then if you have a reader like me, aching with bitterness and frothing with loathing for all things written, I’m thinking “Does his hair mean something?  There’s no possible way his hair can mean something! But they’ve spent a paragraph on it!”  Another big no-no is Informed Ability in description, like “wise blue eyes” or “a pure beautiful voice”.  A lot of people will accuse this of being Mary Sue description; I can simply categorize it as something you should never do. It’s just stupid.  If someone’s eyes are blue and their voice is rough, that’s it.  You’re done.  If your character is wise or pure or someone thinks they’re beautiful, you better get back to Rule# 1 to make us believe it.  And last but not least, don’t dwell on something that has nothing to do with the story for pages and pages!  If you spend 10 pages talking about gymnastics and your character’s trial trying to overcome that last back handspring, and then she turns into a werewolf and has to face down an evil vampire, unless that back handspring has something to do with how she defeats him or some other story obstacle, you’ve just wasted my time.  A lot of new writers have the “Watch my character be AWESOME!” syndrome, while readers suffer from the same reaction you’d give to someone showing off a double-jointed thumb: “Okay.  That’s great.  Um, what’s the point of it, again?”  When that happens, the bus of connective causation has not only pulled out of the station, but the writer is hallucinating on the fumes it left behind.
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Detonatress's avatar
On number 5, is it ok to describe details if the point is to show that one character's appearance is the opposite of the other (their foil)? This being in addition to opposing personality traits that readers would get to know later on.