Character in Fiction Writing

General Principles to Remember

Characters are people: complex, round. They’re not types, so be careful not to oversimplify them.

Characters are people. Be compassionate towards them.

Characters are full of desires, yearnings. They want things, sometimes concrete things, but also deep, abstract things they can’t put into words.

Characters do things. True, sometimes things are done to them, but at some point they have to become active. And since they’re human beings, they sometimes make mistakes, make wrong decisions, jump to conclusions.

Characters do the things they do because they are who they are, although sometimes they’ll do something “out of character,” which can be really interesting.

Character is plot; plot is character.

Useful questions: Why this character? Why this point of view? Why today? What’s really going on with this character, in this story? What’s the real story here? What is the conflict? Does the character change during the story? Does he or she have an epiphany?

Sources for Characters

Imagination: people who are purely imaginary and perhaps created from situation, people from paintings, poems, essays, other stories (there may be copyright issues)

Real life: you, people you know, people you’ve seen, people in photos or songs or portraits, names in the phonebook. Make sure you fictionalize.

Ways to Work Characterization Into Your Stories

Summary-type description (telling)

Descriptive details worked into scenes (showing)---physical details, actions, speech, interactions with other characters, possessions, thoughts, etc.

This gentleman, in the times when he had nothing to do---as was the case for most of the year---gave himself up to the reading of books of knight errantry; which he loved and enjoyed so much that he almost entirely forgot his hunting, and even the care of his estate. [. . .] He so buried himself in his books that he spent the nights reading from twilight till daybreak and the days from dawn till dark; and so from little sleep and much reading, his brain dried up and he lost his wits.

---Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote

She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right.

---Joyce Carol Oates, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”

Anders couldn’t get to the bank until just before it closed, so of course the line was endless and he got stuck behind two women whose loud, stupid conversation put him in a murderous temper. He was never in the best of tempers, anyway, Anders---a book critic known for the weary, elegant savagery with which he dispatched almost everything he reviewed.

---Tobias Wolff, “Bullet in the Brain”

Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn. He cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as a Jew at Princeton. There was a certain inner comfort in knowing he could knock down anybody who was snooty to him, although, being very shy and a thoroughly nice boy, he never fought except in the gym.

---Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

My sister’s voice was like mountain water in a silver pitcher; the clear blue beauty of it cools you and lifts you up beyond your heat, beyond your body. After we went to see La Traviata, when she was fourteen and I was twelve, she elbowed me in the parking lot and said, “Check this out.” And she opened her mouth unnaturally wide and her voice came out, so crystalline and bright that all the departing operagoers stood frozen by their cars, unable to take out their keys or open their doors until she had finished, and then they cheered like hell. [. . . ]That’s what I like to remember, and that’s the story I told to all of her therapists.

---Amy Bloom, “Silver Water”

At a meeting at Pepe Lou’s, Anders, our trusted leader, solemnly declared Liv the newest member of Lords of Sludge. Max took the news calmly, grunting slightly and never pausing in his consumption of tater tots with ketchup. Max’s English skills were rather poor and he rarely said anything anyway. I thought I detected a slight scowl on the face of Stefan, beneath the facial hair that had been spreading and spreading since the day we first met until it covered his entire face, from just below the eyes to the top of his collar. I found this facial hair very werewolf-like and antisocial and approved of it vigorously. As for myself, I sat silently, chewing iceberg lettuce with Russian dressing, rehearsing in my head all the reasons why Liv could not join the band and plotting a scathing delivery for my objections.

---Stacey Richter, “Goal 666”

                I’d been working in the emergency room for about three weeks, I guess. This was in 1973, before the summer ended. With nothing to do on the overnight shift but batch the insurance reports from the daytime shifts, I just started wandering around, over to the coronary-care unit, down to the cafeteria, et cetera, looking for Georgie, the orderly, a pretty good friend of mine. He often stole pills from the cabinets.

                He was running over the tiled floor of the operating room with a mop. “Are you still doing that?” I said.

                “Jesus, there’s a lot of blood here,” he complained.

                “Where?” The floor looked clean enough to me.

                “What the hell were they doing in here?” he asked me.

                “They were performing surgery, Georgie,” I told him.

                “There’s so much goop inside of us, man,” he said, “and it all wants to get out.” He leaned his mop against a cabinet.

                “What are you crying for?” I didn’t understand. He stood still, raised both arms slowly behind his head, and tightened his ponytail. Then he grabbed the mop and started making broad random arcs with it, trembling and weeping and moving all around the place really fast. “What am I crying for?” he said. “Jesus. Wow, oh boy, perfect.”

---Denis Johnson, “Emergency”