CHARACTERS

 

Writing is about conflict, so don’t make your characters nice.

 

If someone becomes unruly on a train, upsetting the pensioner in the seat opposite you, a nice person might try to placate the person causing the fuss, perhaps with words of advice, or even try to reach out to them and understand the root cause of their anger. They might take the pensioner to the buffet car, out of harms way, and treat them to a hot chocolate. That’s what a nice person would do.

 

Who wants to read that story?

The story you want to read has the protagonist dragging the hoodlum to the carriage door, using his face to break the glass, then feeding him out of the broken window as the train slows into a long bend, the troublemaker last seen somersaulting down a grassy verge.

Nice characters are boring characters. The most successful characters are those who are interesting, flawed, exciting. Not necessarily people you’d want living next door, but they’re the people you want to see on the pages of the book you’re about to read.

One major tip: get a sidekick.

Every popular character has a sidekick. Even the ultimate loner, Jack Reacher, had a sidekick in each novel, that person being whoever needed rescuing from the local corrupt sheriff or dastardly villain in that book. As much as a loner Reacher is, he never acts truly alone. He does it with people, and on behalf of people.

The point of the sidekick is that allows the dialogue to explain the story, and if you do it right, it can also show your protagonist in the light you want them to be seen in. The Sherlock Holmes stories are told by Dr Watson, who explains the genius of Holmes to the reader. If Watson hadn’t been there, and all you had was Holmes telling us what he genius he is, it would be a book few people would want to read. No one likes a show-off.

Dialogue is a good way of fleshing out your characters. It can be a way of revealing their real emotions, the person inside the façade, particularly if the emotions don’t match the words.

For example, the tough cop is at the bar. It’s been a rough day, a body discovered. The younger cop joins him, asks him how he is, whether he wants to talk about what they’ve seen. The tough cop points at the television behind the bar and says, “I want to have a beer and watch the game. Get a beer and watch the game, or go home. Your choice.”

 

The reader knows that he isn’t miffed about having his enjoyment of the sporting event disturbed. He is affected by the events if the day but doesn’t want to confront it. He wants to hide from it, his own coping mechanism kicking in, which is to bury his feelings, although the reader knows that his real emotions will erupt at some point later, in a more destructive way. All that told in a few words of dialogue.

You can get to know a character best by what they don’t say, quite often, as opposed to what they do say.

Now you’ve named and decided on your character traits, what type of story do you write? Move on and find out.