CREATING REALISTIC CHARACTERS
by Joan Kilby

How do you create realistic characters who make a story come alive, and keep the reader turning the pages? The key is to make them unique. Just as all people are individuals, so too should your hero and heroine be different from every other hero and heroine you've ever read about. Unique means characters so real the reader will suspend disbelief and imagine she's reading about living, breathing human beings.

A HEROINE (OR HERO) IS BORN

Whether the initial idea for your character is sparked by an acquaintance, a popular actor, or straight from your imagination, your task is to develop that character into a three dimensional individual who is right for the story you want to tell. People are the product of their genetics, their upbringing, and a lifetime of experiences. So where do you start when creating a character?

A screenwriting technique that also works for romance is to assign your heroine three or four dominant 'characteristics'; for example, moody, optimistic, generous, capricious, honest, etc. Every scene she's in should illustrate one or more of these characteristics through dialogue, internal monologue, and body language. To each of the dominant characteristics add associated personality traits and behaviours until you end up with a heroine who is multifaceted and complex, and easily differentiated from all your the other story characters.

Show your heroine's character in her physical surroundings, her attitude toward life, her relationships with other people, and by her behaviour. Showing the little things as well as the big lends an aura of 'reality'. Small details, like a penchant for peanut butter or a tendency to procrastinate, turn a character into a person, and give them color and life. Like body language tags, 'personality tags' (eg, a phobia, a pet peeve, a guilty pleasure, secret indulgence, compulsive action) that are unique to your character give her added depth, and make her more human and well-rounded.

GROUND YOUR CHARACTER IN A UNIQUE SETTING

Give your characters a place of their own, whether it be their home or work place, where their personality can be expressed in the things they surround themselves with. The type of furniture, artwork, flowers, books, music, etc, they choose shows the reader what type of person they are. Are they a neatness fanatic or someone who lives in a continual state of clutter? Maybe their hobby is photography and their walls are covered in photos they've taken and developed themselves. Even the subjects of those photos—portraits or landscapes, says something about the character.

Significant details introduced into the story in a natural fashion build an image of a real person in the reader's mind. For example, if your heroine's favourite color is blue, then show the reader the delft tiles, the royal blue sugar bowl, the peacock blue dress, etc.

Don't overload your story to the point where trivialities obscure important events, but the judicious use of small details can make the difference between 'telling' and 'showing'. A repeat mention later in the book of a significant detail or behaviour gives resonance to your work, and makes the reader feel as if she's participating in the onward flow of your characters' lives.

Traits to emphasize are those which drive the plot or strongly affect the relationship between the hero and heroine. If a certain characteristic plays a big role in the story, it needs to be properly set up. Who can forget the moment when Indiana Jones was dropped into that pit of writhing serpents? We feel his terror. The scene has impact because we've been primed early on with references to his deathly fear of snakes.

Likewise, if you want your heroine to be impulsive, don't just have her kiss the hero at an inappropriate moment. First show her being impulsive in areas that have nothing to do with him, such as buying a cocktail dress when what she needs is a new business suit. Then when she does kiss the hero out of the blue, your reader will say, yeah, that's just the sort of thing she would do.

Just as a baby doesn't spring from his mother's womb with a fully-fledged adult personality, so too, do your characters need to grow and develop. This will only happen with time and words written. As they move through the story, encountering set-backs, triumphs and ultimately reaching their goal(s), your characters will become more rounded personalities, and you will get to know them better. You may therefore need to go back to your early chapters and rewrite passages, feeding in ideas, objects and events that pertain to your character and illustrate her evolving personality.

CHARACTER AND PLOTTING

We all know our characters must grow during the course of the story and we diligently work these changes into the plot. But if characters are going to evolve you must first establish the status quo.

The opening of a book is the true first turning point. Something major has happened to change the lives of your characters. Something that causes them to be thrown together. You, as author, must know what their lives were like in the lead up to Chapter One, and succinctly convey this to the reader as part of the set up. Your characters will react to the "happening" in a way that's consistent with their personalities, and from those initial reactions the course of the novel is set.

Know the ending before you begin. Knowing how they will have to change in order to live happily ever after will determine what aspects of their life history and personality traits you need to emphasize from the beginning.

When plotting your book, keep your characters' personality traits in the forefront of your mind, both to guide the direction of the story, and to devise scenes which will illustrate those traits. One of the three or four dominant characteristics should be a flaw, or weakness. Nothing too nasty that will make your heroine unsympathetic, but serious enough to cause her problems. If the flaw in her personality precipitates the black moment, your book will be that much stronger. Conversely, her main positive characteristic should be what eventually gets her out of hot water. The conflict thus becomes a test of her ability to overcome her inherent limitations under adverse circumstances—a true hero in the classic sense.

DEEP CHARACTERIZATION

Deep characterization involves getting right inside your character's head. To accurately portray a complex human being, you need to know how she's going to react to the trials and tribulations that come her way; and how that reaction will manifest itself in her behaviour. Then you need to show that to the reader.

Let's say your heroine had a traumatic experience in her past that prevents her from loving. Baldly stating that fact will not convince the reader the heroine is hurting badly enough to impede the most important event of her life—falling in love. Get inside your character's head. Relive her experience in minute detail of setting, atmosphere, emotion, etc. What does she remember? How does she feel? The deeper inside her point of view you are, the more intense, emotional and unique the experience will be.

Whether you describe the incident in flashback, dialogue or internal monologue, throw in small, significant details that bring a picture before the reader's mind. Make them the sort of things your character would notice, but not so off the wall no one else can relate. For example, if your heroine is afraid of spiders, it may be because the horrifying experience of being attacked in an old barn as a child is associated in her mind with the spider that crawled over her face afterward.

When you're deep in a character's POV, everything in that scene should be flavoured with their personality. Even exposition and narrative can be written in the character's "voice". For instance, if your hero is a laconic cowboy who rarely strings more than a few words together, switching to multisyllabic prose when going from dialogue to narrative will jar the reader into remembering it's only a book.

As much as you want the reader to know your characters, you don't want her to be able to predict what they'll do next. Subtext, or, what's going on below the surface, is a way to illustrate your characters' hidden complexities and keep the reader guessing. Everyone has contradictions between what they say and what they're really thinking. When your characters do too, they become more real to the reader.

TECHNIQUES TO HELP YOU DISCOVER HOW YOUR CHARACTERS THINK

When you're not sure how a character is going to react to a significant event in your story, or what path she/he should follow next, certain techniques can be used to explore their options, and dig for the why behind their actions without worrying about how to get through that difficult passage and onto the next plot point.

Begin by reminding yourself of the salient points of their life; their goals, motivations, conflicts and basic personality traits. This will give you ideas on which to expand. Put yourself in a relaxed, 'right' brain frame of mind with music, meditation, glass of wine, or whatever works for you. Then try some or all of the following techniques to get into your character's head.

Dreams: Dreams can be very telling of a person's deepest fears and desires. Imagine yourself as the heroine (or hero); asleep and dreaming. Using stream of consciousness writing, shut your eyes and start typing. Let the dream unfold inside your head without consciously trying to direct it, the way a real dream unfolds. Afterwards, analyse the dream from your heroine's point of view. Is it a frightening dream? Happy? Striving? Frustrated? Remember, mood is more important than events, and every 'person' in the dream can be interpreted as a different aspect of the one who is dreaming. Books on dream analysis can help you decipher your characters' dreams.

Character Interview: Imagine you've got the hero or heroine sitting in front of you and you can ask them anything you want whether it has to do with your story or not. Again, close your eyes when typing in their response to eliminate the intrusive 'observer' feeling as you watch the words come onto the page. Remember, the answers your characters don't give can be just as significant as the replies they do make, and give you, as the writer, clues to all sorts of things. What are they hiding? How do they see themselves? How do they want you (other people) to see them?

Tarot Cards: The symbolism inherent in Tarot cards can be used to probe the subconscious mind and give meaning to events in life. Similarly, they can awaken the inner voice of your characters.

The use of tarot cards to delve into your characters' minds can be approached two ways. You can imagine your hero or heroine sitting opposite you and then ask the cards an important life question for that character. Or, you can cast yourself in the role of the character and ask the question of the cards directly.

With either approach, bear in mind that the interpretation of the cards must be done with your character's life, background, goals and motivations firmly in mind. Whether you believe in the Tarot or not is immaterial. What matters is that the process will lead you to a deeper understanding of your character.

IN SUMMARY

Characterization is the single most important aspect of romance writing. Your hero and heroine are your story. Know your characters. Like your characters. Make them realistic. Put down on the page all their quirks and foibles; dreams and fears; events and emotions, from broken fingernails to acts of random kindness. When you've created characters so real you wish you could call them up on the phone, you can be sure your reader will keep thinking of them long after she's turned the last page.

©Joan Kilby