Creating Memorable Characters, Part One

Yesterday I blogged (at great length) about "Boston Legal," touching on the writing that fuels the show as much as the acting. The writers have created truly different and fascinating characters--fascinating, because their quirks arise from who they are, not from some stuff a writer decided his character should be composed of to make the character "interesting".

For example, Alan Shore's sex addiction arises from specific happenings in his background that push him toward the intimacy of sex, even as he runs from any associated emotional intimacy. In one episode, he describes lovingly--there is no other proper adverb--to a sex therapist how his mother used to have him stand still so that she could hem his clothing. Something about the physical closeness of his mother, combined with her caring for him by fixing his pants--brings great emotional and, yes, sexual longing in him. We get the idea that his mother often was not loving, often did not care for him, and... perhaps was, at times, sexually abusive of him. And Alan loved the abuse, because it meant she touched him, even though it damaged him permanently.

This is powerful stuff.

When you create characters, not only do they need to be grounded in real human attributes, emotions, personal history, and so on, they need to be larger than life, especially if they are primary characters (heroes/heroines) in your story. They have to have some quality that sets them apart from every other character in the story, some quality (or qualities) that enable them to overcome obstacles and change over the course of the story. And a character has to change--a hero/heroine who remained the same, start to finish, would have no dramatic tension. The story would be flat and perhaps even the dreaded "b" word (boring).

Inadequate character development is often what keeps me from enjoying some best-sellers that have a fantastic plot, but cardboard characters. I'm not going to diss any specific book. But, if you can tell an amazing story and have fascinating characters, then you will sell your book (assuming you have mastered the basic skills of writing--spelling, grammar, logical construction, etc.).

I originally started this post with the intention of writing about a television show that has become a guilty pleasure for me: Ice Road Truckers, shown Sundays at 10 PM Eastern on The History Channel. Who knew that there was a road composed of ice in far northern Canada, and who knew that, sixty days every year, truckers race to provide supplies to remote mining operations by driving hundreds of miles across huge lakes covered with ice?

I'll save Ice Road Truckers for my next post, which will address learning how to create better characters and stories by A, being curious about lots of different things in the world, and B, studying real people and their lives in order to create characters that are completely, humanly, real, yet still have that larger-than-life characteristic.

Barrie