Clockwork’s Guide to Making a Character

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Clockwork’s guide to making a character.

 

There’s about three bazillion ways of making a character, this is some of what I use, if you use something else that’s fine.

 

Working Backwards Often Works.

So let’s say you really like a character from that one book you know the one. That character is amazing. You  wish they were in this story. Well it’s ok to break down what you like about said character and put them in your story. So to do this just write down a list of adjectives and descriptors that describe the character and breakdown why you like the character.

 

No really lets do this. Who’s your favorite character in any piece of fiction?

Now explain who they are without explaining anything entirely central to their setting. (Eg Don’t say they’re the emperor of fifth rome or a master light lancer or anything else like that.) Think Phrases that are 3 words or less.

 

-Examples

Sherlock holms: Deadpan Snarker, Drug issues, Observant, Bookworm, Super Sane Sidekick, Free Great Villain, Rough Personality.

 

Which parts do you like about the character? How do you think he could be improved? You might wind up thinking that this character might be perfect for a medical drama you’re working on. Change a few details, have Watson be molded into his character, maybe the name so it’s not obvious.

Besto Pesto Bamo

We have Dr House MD: Deadpan Snarker, Drug Problems, Observant, Bookworm, Sidekick was absorbed into the character, And the villain is misdiagnosed medical issues (cost him his leg), plus an incredibly rough personality that causes problems for him left and right. Now Sherlock Homes is in the public domain so they could get away with this a bit easier than normal. But it’s worth doing to break down what you actually like about characters and toy around with different problems and features for them, by the time you’ve edited them to fit your setting you might have something interesting on your hands. Good authors copy but great authors steal, the key is to make sure you take that amazing character to the chop shop. Rebuild them, give them a paint job, file down the serial number and you’re good to go. I think this metaphor may have gotten away from me a bit.

 

This trope is known as expy characters as well as composite characters.

 

Show don’t tell (yes everyone’s heard it a thousand times)

 

Before someone throws a tomato there is something to remember about show don’t tell when it comes to characterization. Just to rehash there are two forms of characterization: direct explicit and indirect or implicit. Direct involves a character world detail, the character themself or the very narrator explaining something about the character you’re attempting to describe. Indirect characterization involves using details provided by the author to let the readers infer from themselves what is going on. This is accomplished by appearance, actions, inner thoughts, and speaking with others, all things that writers should use more often than direct characterization. Honestly when was the last time someone asked you for your entire life history? It doesn’t happen, instead someone might notice an unusual topic or old scar and a bit more of this person is revealed as they might offhandedly mention something about having used to work as a mascot in an amusement park or that they train mice in their spare time. Things are alluded to in indirect characterization rather than spoken, however I’ve found something interesting in this topic.

 

Direct vs Indirect can be interesting. Hear me out, what if a character said something directly referring to another character and then something else contradicts that?

 

What about a character beating themselves up on the inside for botching a conversation? But when we see them talk to this person not much seems out of the ordinary.

 

How about when our character is told repeatedly not to trust this person but when they meet them they turn out to be perfectly normal.

 

What about when the narrator says something that the main character’s actions don’t fit? It may be a case of protagonist vs Narrator.

 

Most cases of Direct and Indirect being opposites tend to have if not great then at least interesting results.

 

I Am A Sarcastic Slideshow that Shouts Advice.

 

For making characters simple quickly and with just enough description that the reader gets a glimpse of without dragging on some people use the monty cook system. For this All we have to do is say they are an Adjective Noun that Verbs. This is quick and it’s easy to expand on if you wish to add more. Plenty of characters can be reduced to this and odds are you might be testing this out in your head right now. Let’s give some examples. (Note this is known as the Monty Cook or numbenra method)

 

I am a vengeful chef that sings opera.

 

I am a renegade scientist buying drugs.

 

I am a terrified frog defending my kids.

 

I am a depressed cop who’s getting too old for this $#!?

 

Then to introduce them to the story just lay out who they are in one or two sentences.

 

On the other side of the room was a dorky looking professor who was boisterously claiming dinosaurs had feathers.

 

The officer who pulled me over seemed like a twitchy rookie who couldn’t find something in one of his pockets.

 

I planted the bomb on some greasy janitor that was reading a pamphlet on how communism wasn’t all bad.

 

Nobody Is Normal.

I’d like to think of the last person you met who was completely and totally normal. Someone you could march through a physiatrist office and leave with a clean bill of mental stability. Or someone who you’ve known for a while who 100% in every way conformed to a stereotype.

Yea the list is probably a short one isn’t it.

 

Every person I’ve ever met have had some sort of interesting skill quirk or history that sets them apart. Nobody is normal, so why are your characters other than in the hopes of being relatable?  Give them something completely at random that ties into their personal history somehow. This might sound like a weird choice but think about every time you’ve spoken to someone in a dive bar and someone they turn out to be an expert on the french revolution. Or you’ve been talking to someone at work who can imitate looney tunes characters perfectly. Everyone has something to set them apart from a stereotype. People are bizarre, flawed with talents in unexpected places and that’s wonderful. There’s nothing wrong with starting with stock characters and stereotypes, ending with them though tends not to work well.

 

Ability Advantages and Accidents.

 

Everyone is good at at least one thing. Maybe it’s a talent, maybe they work hard for it, maybe it’s something obscure that no one else bothered to even consider learning it. Point is they have one or three things that they’re good at and are better at than other characters in the book. Everyone’s heard in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king, or if you’re a monty python fan in the world of supermen the bicycle repairman is the hero. So for major characters each one needs to have something or some combination of things they can do that pit them above everyone else. This can be incredibly niche but if it give the character an edge in some way it works.

 

So say you’ve got a crack team of troops about to parachute into an active combat site against mysterious enemies for even more mysterious motives. Other than being soldiers who are these people? What sets them apart? Are they all pawns who can do the exact same thing or are they more like other pieces on a chessboard each one moving and thinking slightly differently with different moves and limitations.

 

Now what are some ways of showing what people are good at? Lets have them try.

But not necessarily Succeed.

Pixar’s first rule of storytelling is that people appreciate characters more for trying than for success.

 

There’s plenty of examples of this but I can think of one that most people have heard of that knocks it out of the park. Out of everyone who liked which character better, Luke Skywalker or Han Solo? When you actually think about the movies Han fails often and he fails hard. His failures often cause him to get the protagonists in trouble or nearly killed. Han often makes mistakes or blunders by failing to lie to death star officers, going the wrong way in corridors, failing to repair his ship, or hack open a door. This actually makes us root for him though when he manages to dodge asteroids, out quickdraw bounty hunters and flying into a dogfight while remaining one of the only survivors. He’s not perfect and screws up but he’s good at what he does and people like him plenty more than if he just use “da force” to succeed at everything.

 

The other thing to consider is how this character is compared to what will be happening in the story. If a character is said to be one of the world’s best surgeons it doesn’t matter if they’ve just been kidnapped and forced to cage fight other random people for an unseen entitie’s amusement. Or is it, maybe through their time as a surgeon they’ve gotten to know weaknesses in the human body and can exploit that in their cage fighting. Or maybe a military man just got back from the front and is now having to navigate a world of social politics and snide remarks. Maybe this person is used to getting yelled at by superior officers and they’re better at handling backhanded compliments driving their opposition up the wall. As long as the

 

People Make Problem. 

 

How many characters out there are flawless? Maybe superman depending on who’s writing it.  Point is that a character needs to have problems, something relatable preferably but almost anything will work. This can be thought of as a flaw but it can also just be something that gets them in trouble from time to time.

 

A good example of this is Ned Stark from Game of Thrones, initially you may think that Ned Stark’s stance on doing the Right thing isn’t a problem or flaw at all. But when Ned Stark is later in the world of political backstabbing secrets and infidelity that makes up the Game of Thrones Ned’s Need to do the Right thing land him in hot water. And he was played By Sean Bean in the TV show so you can probably see where this is going.

Maybe this was an extreme example.

 

Pixar’s 6th Rule of Storytelling fits here: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

 

The Correct answer usually winds up being to have them neither stop directly in their path or breeze right through it. A character’s flaw often needs to be fine tuned to the situation to provide a curveball between them and what they want..

 

Protagonist Antagonists, Footagonists and the rare Brotagonists.

 

Protagonists are fairly recognizable. They’re not necessarily the hero but they are the character the audience is meant to be following and invested in. A good protagonist might be someone like Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter, but for someone abit less righteous image the Count of Monte Cristo or Walter White from breaking bad who’s outright evil by the end of the series. You don’t necessarily condone what they’re doing but you do syphophise with them and understand how they got in this mess.

Antagonists are meant to oppose the Protagonist. Any character that has their main goal conflict with the protagonist’s main goal can be considered an antagonist. They aren’t necessarily a villain or evil but the audience isn’t supposed to be rooting for them. They don’t have to be people either, it just makes things easier to be represented. Darth vader from star wars is just as much of an antagonist as the meteor is in Armageddon, one of them just happens to have a lot more personality. Antagonists can also be some kind of vague concept tying into the theme like the mysteries of the unknown in a Series of Unfortunate Events, or an internal struggle such as loss. We’re focusing more on characters here today but these things can be good to remember.

Foils are not made of aluminum, unless they’re robots. The term foil comes from the reflective surface underneath jewelry display cases, they’re meant to shine more light on the subject matter. This is also how they work in media, a foil shows what a character is good at as well as where his faults are. Whatever the character is the foil will be different and those differences will highlight what that character is. Probably the most famous foil is Han Solo or Draco Malfoy both highlight aspects of the protagonists like Luke’s wanting to do the right thing instead of just getting paid or Draco holding his family’s status above Harry an Orphan with a dead prodigus family who has to create a new family as he goes.

Deuteragonists are something I had to check the spelling of about three times. This is the secondary character not necessarily a sidekick but also not necessarily an antagonist either. The easiest way to sort out a Deuteragonist is by seeing who the story focuses on the second most, or the second most screen time. Dr watson or The Mother of Dragons might be a good example here. Their ideals don’t have to line up 100% of the time and they might be outright hostile to each other in parts of the book.

Tritagonist, the third most important in the book. Same line of thinking as deuteragonists except this time third in everything. This character can oftentimes work as a middle ground when the protagonist and deuteragonists have an altercation. Imagine Hank or Skylar as the Tritagonist from Breaking Bad, although my favorite example of this trope is Bernard from Yes Minister.

False Protagonist, a character that initially seems like the protagonist but soon the rug is swept out from under. A great way of subverting expectations in the book. From what I’ve seen the best examples include the false protagonist and real protagonists appearing in the first act of the story, while the real protagonist is developed gradually not taking up much of the spotlight. Or they could be killed quickly in the first ten pages before anyone gets too attached. The movie cube does this well.

Viewpoint Character. The character whose perspective we’re following, not necessarily the protagonist but always close to the meat of the story or viewing it from a third person’s perspective. Good examples include Nick Carraway from The Great Gatsby, stranger examples include half the people in House of Leaves.

 

Dynamic characters and thinking 4th Dimensionally.

 

For the vast majority of stories, characters need to change with a few exceptions that we’ll mention here. People are dynamic, they charge with time. We are all different from who we were two decades ago or two hours ago, though that change might simply be more annoyed by traffic. Characters change as well and in general the longer the work of fiction the more increased need for a character to change exists. Typically this will tie into their main goal, heroic flaw or problem in some way, but it could just as easily be a moral that the writer was trying to get across (typically found in sitcoms and older serialized works). INSERT THE CHARTS, sorry but from what I gather there have to be charts, there’s some worry of ancient doctrine. In short hero changes by there being an inciting incident, hero attempts to fix and fails, turning point, rising action, falling action. This is almost always how it goes down, if need be follow the hero’s journey.

The only noteworthy exception to not follow any kind of character arc would be serialized works such as Conan the Barbarian where every story he’s practically back to square one, and older broadcasts where reruns and recordings were never a guaranteed thing so every new episode had to return to the status quo. Luckily nowadays thanks to the internet people can read or view practically anything they want in the original intended order, so now this is less of a concern.

So tell me what you want, what you really really want.

 

Yes this joke had to be made.

But it is important, with few exceptions all characters need to want something or want to need. Quite often this will tie them to the main plot in some manner but it doesn’t necessarily have to. I recommend at least three goals for a character that drive them forwards, at least one long term and one short term, with maybe all the goals building off one another. But the reason for this is that if a roadblock appears in the story for the characters primary goal that they were focusing on said character could move to another if it’s totally impassable.

 

A great example of this is in the Princess Bride. Ignego Montoia dedicateds his life to vengance, seeking only justice for his father’s murder. He has trained his entire life, becoming one of the greatest swordsmen in the world. But even he admits that that’s mostly a side project and there’s not a lot of money in revenge. So in the meantime he trains, takes up shady mercenary jobs under Vizzini to get by, anooys Vizzini. Even once he makes sure that the man in black does not possess six fingers on his left hand, in a potentially fatal sword fight he helps the man in black, lets him catch his breath and even starts with his off hand so the fight isn’t over so fast. You could argue that this is out of honor or a sense of right and wrong, but I’d say it’s all so that he can become an even greater swordsman for his eventual encounter with the six fingered man.

 

Options Opinions and Oddities. 

 

There are plenty of minute details that make up a character. Things that the reader will likely never see but might infer, about a character or things you have written in your notes that will never see the light of day. But the reader needs to see something beyond what this character is good at, bad at, or how they’re not a traditional blank. There has to be at least one situation where something incredibly not important is happening and said character needs to make something out of the situation. What are the character’s inner thoughts when they hear people arguing about some random bit of trivia from world war two? Tacos vs Pizza? Here’s an example: which one’s the better band Queen or the Beetles? There aren’t really any wrong answers to these questions but all of them give insight as to who this person is and how they think. Put them in a room with no one else in it and what do they do that’s not related to any of their main goals? Do they sniff all the markers in the room? Whistle misremembered songs? Pull out a battered walkman and try to get the thing working?

 

Outlook Inlook and the general Book Look.

 

So you have all these details about a character that makes up who they are externally. The only way to judge a character is by their actions in any given situation, however understanding where these actions came from can be just as important. This is vital when having a story in first person and we’re reading a character’s thoughts as they make decisions, but it’s still needed in all characters especially when what a character thinks does not align with what a character does. We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behaviour, but in fiction this doesn’t have to be the case. A third person perspective can see a person’s face fall and shoulders shrug as soon as they’re away from person x, they can see hours of deliberation on what seems like a simple issue, they can see nervous tics, winces from botched speech, and emotion most people can’t pick up on. Not every person can be Sherlock Holmes in any encounter, picking up random clues about some schmuck from a conversation and realizing his mother never really loved him. But the wonderful thing about writing it yourself is that the details are there that you provide and it’s up to the reader if they wish to think deeper on it. The best example I can find for this is probably fight club, all the details were there and if you stop to tally them up, something important might be noticed and so much about his character is understood. Additionally, it’s the entire plot of the third part of the movie but on it’s own it’s such a great look into the main characters head.

 

This is also why I personally dislike Holden Caufeild in the Catcher in the Rye; his actions and inner thoughts make next to no sense to me that I grew frustrated with Holden.

 

A great example of this is Ciaphus Cain in my opinion (it’s blackadder in space). Cain is a heroic brave commander that leads people into battle in the worst conditions imaginable in situations where other soldiers are killed regularly for even thinking about retreat. On the inside Cain is a complete and utter coward, nearly every decision is made in an attempt to get away from the danger and not get shot for being a deserter. Somehow though he also seems to stumble into being a hero he doesn’t want to be and shoved into the front lines.

 

It’s your vote on if everyone gets a voice.

 

So we probably have a few characters in our head who we’ve been toiling around with seeing how they work. Now I’m not sure about any of you but I need to get someone’s name wrong at least three times before remembering it, and the same can apply to your characters. This isn’t a big problem with works that have smaller sets of characters that you can count on your hand, but as the number goes up confusion sets in. You may run into something I like to call the Game of Thrones problem, where absolutely nobody can keep anything straight. Now you could employ the Game of Thrones solution here and just start racking up dead characters until there’s a reasonable amount to memorize but that gets depressing quickly. The other solution is to give every character some sort of flag or characteristic to memorize them that gets brought up every time they enter the scene. Now most of us aren’t writing for television so we don’t have a gaggle of sound effects enter as someone goes into their apartment, but probably our most powerful tool is character voice.

Voice is determined by several things.

-Accent or where they grew up. Sergeant Shadwell or any token minority ever.

-Personality, their myers brigs test result, demeanor.

-World View, who do they interact with, how do they spend their time, are they a glass half full or glass half empty. Example Marvin the Depressed Android.

-Experience, were they in the military, do they play the sportball, were they a Shakespearean actor at some point? Well then they may have picked up some phrases and acronyms from that part of their life. Best source, hey shipwreck sailor to english translator.

 

Conflict is fun, let’s make some.

 

Odds are strong the person you’ll be creating is in story with some kind of challenge disaster or basic conflict, this is good. Now how does that relate to the character you wish to make. A word of advice, the larger the conflict and the harder it will be to avoid. Everyone will have some kind of opinion of a Tsunami wiping out the east coast because of the massive effect it would have on everyday life. If however your character is hanging out in south asia not really paying attention to the news then things become a bit more difficult. This problem can be considered more of a plot problem than a character problem, but at some during writing an author should probably ask themselves why is this character here and how are they tied to events. If you can’t think of something that can tie them to the plot or if no matter how you view this character they just don’t fit in no matter how well you’ve written them, then it’s time to kill your darlings.

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What do you think? How do you create characters?

Visit the discussion section of the KC Storytellers Meetup page (https://www.meetup.com/Kansas-City-Storytellers/discussions/) to discuss or leave a comment below.