Character Creation

What Do You Really Have to Know About Characters Before You Start Writing

You’ve seen character sheets, no doubt, and if not, web search ‘character sheets for novel writing,’ and you’ll find thousands. You can buy them or find free ones. Some are short and to the point, others are lengthy with a lot of details. Nancy Kress has a terrific one in her book, Dynamic Characters.

Here’s a secret: I don’t use them.

Why not, you ask? They aren’t helpful to me.

And again with the why not? Because writing down their greatest fear or flaw or where they went to school or what’s their greatest loss or anything else is just too generic for me and the story I’m telling. Here are the things I want to know when I start writing. I’ll fill in a whole lot of other things as I go, but these are the basics I want to know before actually wiggling my fingers over the keyboard.

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1. name/gender/sexuality and is she single or not

2. appearance including how she dresses

3. job—how does she make money and survive? (This includes what can she afford). How does she like it?

4. where does she live and how is the place decorated?

5. family? friends? what are those relationships like?

6. how does she handle good and bad feelings? (i.e. what kind of attitude does she have?)

7. how does she handle obstacles?

8. magical powers (I write magic books) and how they    work and what their limits or costs are (if you write non-magical books, look at her specialized skills and knowledge).

9. idiosyncrasies/habits—verbal and physical

10. general personality: happy? morose? glass half full? pessimist? hopeful? easily annoyed?

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Ten things. That’s it.

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By filling out each of these items, you will obtain a much larger spectrum of information than you might realize. For instance, how a character dresses implies what she finds attractive, how much money she’s willing to spend on clothes and hair, how important looks are, whether she prefers comfort over appearance, how she walks, and how she carries herself. Does she dress differently in public than at home, differently at work than at the grocery store? What kind of pajamas does she wear or maybe she goes commando…?

Those things also give you insight into how she might choose what food she orders at a restaurant (in case she doesn’t want sauce dripping down her shirt) or if she has to wear makeup every time she leaves the house because she’s sure strangers are looking at her and judging. It might tell you she likes to be fit and so carries a gym bag in her car. You might discover she wears a hat in the sun and she likes to garden, but only grows food plants and never anything just decorative.

Her relationships will tell you how much she trusts people, how much effort she puts into relationships, how close or not close she is to others, and then by extension, does she have a support system? Is she totally independent? Is she a mooch? You might learn how she gets along with her neighbors or if she smiles and greets random strangers walking down the street. Her relationships might inform how she carries herself, possibly influence the clothes she wears. They might decide where she dines at work or if she goes to restaurants alone….

Idiosyncrasies and habits are incredibly personal and what they are and how they’ve developed really give you insight into your character. I have a character who never uses contractions. I have another character who gambles. I have another who speaks almost in all fragments. I have another who doesn’t cook and doesn’t have hardly any food in her house. I have a character who breaks the rules just to break them. I have a character who is claustrophobic.

I study people, looking for distinctive mannerisms, idiosyncrasies, and habits. You should too. Watch how people do things. Pay attention to their habits. Some people need the kitchen to be sparkling clean when they go to bed. Others don’t want to talk to anyone before their first cup of coffee. Some can’t stand to jog over the same route every day. Some hate the squeak of Styrofoam rubbing against itself. Some never eat leftovers. Some insist on throwing anything away the moment it reaches its expiration date.

I know people who: freeze cookies and won’t eat them any until they make a new batch to freeze; wear the same clothes for four or five days (except the underwear, thank fuck); take their shoes off when they get in the car it doesn’t get dirty. Then there’s the compulsive liar who never tells the truth and believes every lie is true, and the guy who can’t stand being alone and has to get on his cell phone whenever he’s alone in his car.

The little things people do help you to define and understand your characters. By giving them even just one specific habit, mannerism, quirk, or idiosyncrasy, you shape who they are so that they are individual. And of course these things will result in other defining behaviors.

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The point that I’m trying to make with this list is just this: traditional writing advice dictates what you need to know, and while some of those things are useful, many aren’t, because they aren’t specific to your story.

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Case in Point

One piece of advice is to know a character’s greatest fear. The problem for me is that characters are made up of a lot of fears. Which is the greatest at any given moment depends on context.

For example, if I’m bungee jumping (which, incidentally, would mean I’m possessed by demons because I will never willingly jump from a high point with a rubber band to keep me safe), my greatest fear is the bungee breaking and me dying painfully when my body pulverizes itself on the jagged rocks below. Yes, it’s dramatic. I’m a writer. I imagine horrible things for a living.

If I’m worried about my kid coming home late, my greatest fear is that he’s been in an accident, that he’s died, that he’s maimed… On the other hand, if I’m about to go on TV in front of a hundred million people, my greatest fear might be a zit. Or, if I’m finishing my dissertation, I’ll be terrified a fire will destroy it, and I’ll have to start all over. If I’m getting divorced, my greatest fear might be my family deciding I’m a failure or maybe it would be living alone forever.

Context matters. We all have “greatest” fears that change according to our situation.

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The Take Away

You don’t need to know all the things about your characters to get started. All you really need is enough information to make the characters predictable in what they will do when they run into conflict. This list of things gives me that. Maybe it will do the same for you, or maybe you will come up with your own list.