You could argue that characters are the reason we write and/or read stories.
They are the actors in your story, and to write realistic characters, you need to observe real people who resemble your characters doing things.
I find it helpful to write a short one or two sentence character story arc for each character in your plot planner. If you discover you have characters without a strong story arc, merge them into other characters.
The same applies for walk-in characters who have nothing significant to do with the story and don’t serve any practical function.
Just because they’re funny and interesting doesn’t make them necessary. Merge their funny dialogue into more significant characters where suitable.
If you have lots of characters, try giving them names beginning with different letters of the alphabet.
This helps the reader keep the names in order as they read. Editors recommend this because it helps the reader keep track of all the characters. If you have multiple characters with names that begin with H, consider keeping the best name and change the others.
You can cut or transform any scenes where a character is doing something and thinking.
Brushing their hair and thinking. Looking in a mirror and thinking. Perched on a skyscraper in the darkness and thinking. This works best and film, but not so well and prose.
Turn their thoughts into a conversation for activity when possible. Greetings, daily routines, and other mundane activities are rarely needed in stories.
Establishing strong characterization in the beginning of your story is difficult, no doubt about it and an editor is looking for three things at this stage:
A clear visual, preferably created without excessive description, a sense of personality, in action/activities which characterize the character it is unwise to have more than one or two significant characters in your opening pages.
When we first meet your character, what are they doing? Is it something that embodies them, whether through duty, profession, identity, culture or passion?
Long-winded descriptions of physical traits – hair, eyes, skin, etc. — should be challenged and either cut (either in their entirety or included in smaller pieces later on in the story) or shortened.
Descriptions of psychological traits should be universally purged unless one character is describing another.
Instead of describing the character, focus on painting them through their actions. If your character is tall and athletic, show them running and having to duck a door instead of telling us that they have a tall, athletic build.
Brief descriptions can work if you need to have them, but should definitely be avoided at this stage.
Do your characters have individual patterns of speech?
Read the first line of dialogue each one of your characters speak aloud, and see if people sound the same. If they do, fix it. It’s even worse if they all sound like you.
Would you hear people talking like your characters on the street?
If someone said your character is lying to you in real life, what would you think of how they sounded?
If you’ve used adverbs to characterize characters, pick the adverb out into a demonstration of that characters nature.
I see this most often with the words “sarcastically” and “whining” because demonstrating sarcasm and cowardice requires more effort as a writer than, say, demonstrating niceness or toughness.
One of the harder questions to ask about your characters is “Are they interesting?” The definition of “interesting” is going to vary from author to author, but if you find that one or other of your characters seems to fall flat, work in some backgrounds and color to their lives.
Don’t be a Head Hopper
If you’re the kind of author who switches character points of view within paragraphs you have an awful lot of work to do.
Yes, some books have gotten through the gate with POV switching in the same paragraph or chapter – Dune comes to mind – but the style is somewhat outdated as of the 2000’s.
Multiple point of view switches within scenes or chapters is generally now only done by authors with some experience and contacts in the industry.
Newbie authors will not get away with it in their debut.
The main reason this technique is falling out of favor is that it confuses the reader, and the reader is not the person you want to confuse.
It makes it harder to develop significant empathetic rapport with the experiences of a particular character if they are always chopping and changing around.
Just like when you use short adverbial phrases to tell people things, head hopping is a lazy way of trying to show the reader everything in the scene.
If your story has multiple POV sections, you need to find some way to cleanly and efficiently describe them.
New chapters are the best way. Asterisks and spaces between paragraphs will do in a pinch, if you’re determined to switch characters within a single chapter.
There are plenty of ways to get insight into multiple characters within a single scene. You can reveal their minds through dialogue, action, brief exposition, and your head-character’s perspective on the activity around them.
Arguments can be good ways for characters to exchange information without switching to “he thought and then she thought“.
One POV error is the description of the characters actions, thoughts or perceptions while in the head of a particular character.
For example: “I racked my brain while massaging my skull with meaty, well-worn hands.” The first part of the sentence, “I racked my brain” is something I call “narrative distance”, the “massaging my skull with meaty, well-worn hands” is the main point of view error.
How do you know? Well, when you’re rubbing your face, Do you generally note that your hand is anything other than your hand?
Do you say it out loud?
I guess that you just rub your face or massage your scalp not really paying attention to whether your hand is meaty or not. You may, at some point, contemplate your hands for some reason, at which point you may know the relative meatiness or lack thereof.
But in the moment? No.
That’s the god-like narrator pointing his finger at the character and screaming “Look! He has thick hands!”
Does this sound like narrative imposition? That’s because it is. It’s specifically a form of narrative imposition that is common and very, very occasionally necessary to establish context in first person POV.
Another example would be where the POV character looks at a computer screen and the light gleams off the outside of their glasses or eyes in the description.
As a glasses wearer myself, I spend a lot of time in front of the computer. I can assure you that I cannot see my own eyes from the perspective of the monitor.
Now, if the POV character is watching something at the desktop and the light is reflecting off their glasses, then your protagonist may notice this depending on how observant and detail oriented they are. But, it might be more in character for them to be looking at the posters on the wall or the piranha swimming in a bowl next to their bed.
Write what the character is most likely to see.
Avoid Lazy Writing
Can you find the lazy writing in your draft before you give it to your editor?
Firstly, adverbs, adverbs, adverbs.
Adverbs indicate areas where you’re cheesing out and getting lazy. Anytime you spot those “-ly” words, think about whether or not you’re skipping over a scene.
If you have an activity where speed isn’t a factor then try to unpick it a little bit and see how it flows.
Dreams, fast forwards/time skips, hallucinations, sleep and unconsciousness also often indicate areas of laziness, unless they’re really relevant to the plot.
These can often be removed if they’re related to transitional periods and you’re trying to speed a journey.
Laziness is often found where there are drops in tension or suspense.
This isn’t the same as for example, cutting out the “Hello?” and “It’s me” transactions on a phone call.
Laziness that decreases suspense or things like the old: “And then he woke up!” Or the appearance of a god-like presence who descends from on high with the express purpose of bringing a scene or story to a close and who is never seen again.
By staying away from lazy writing and applying these principles to the characterization of your story, You’ll see a massive improvement.
Need editing or publishing help with your fiction story or memoir? I offer free consultation and personalized quotes. Let’s connect. Send me an email: griffinsmith74@gmail.com
