I could not have maintained my passion for my first story, had I been forced to decide a list of “truths” about my hero before continuing to develop the plot. I don’t know if it’s a common issue, but I don’t find working with characters easy.

Control

The first time I wrote dialog, it felt invasive; as if I was forcing a stranger to say something. How rude!

I got over it. Get over it. Here are some tactics to try.

Make speaking a challenge, not a passtime

At first, I could only whisper suggestions at the character from across the room; I was that intimidated. So I stopped trying to force conversations and focused on drama; I only used words and responses to heighten the drama. Without braking to give characters a chance to speak, they had just time to spit out a few words.

In time, I developed confidence: coherant people populated the story, so much so that they not only spoke, they “took control” and their responses differed from what I’d planned. They weren’t as perfect or as wooden as they’d been to start and my hero grew as she faltered, like she does in this sequence from my story, Cookie and the Suit:

Thinking quickly, Dayton checked their luggage hadn’t cut loose (it hadn’t), nothing threatened to trap them in the plane, should they nose into the ground and flip (it didn’t), and there was no loose debris in the cockpit to become a projectile. What more can I do? She caught herself casting wildly about for heroic actions or pithy bon mots.  What did the crazy suit say? ‘Less is more.‘ Glad it dawned on her before she opened her mouth, she sat back and let herself be overwhelmed.

The acid-white light hung screaming in the sky, turbines moaned, Doppler zoomed, wind buffeted. She ignored the maelstrom. In the past few days, she’d been through explosions and collisions, heard shrieking metal, smelled burnt rubber and dodged explosive detritus. Watching Rein, she took note. Panic was not an option.  She distracted herself enough  that their impact on a secondary road crept up and shook her by surprise. Ah, Rein.  “Thank you for flying the friendly skies,” he ground out.   They lurched to a dead stop and bounced back onto the tail. Rein had cut the engines and Dayton realized the roaring silence that always seemed to follow these adventures signaled it was over.

Casually popping her door, she collapsed bonelessly to the ground below and retched. Equally calmly, she accepted a hankie from Rein, wiped her mouth and retrieved her luggage. Shaken and stirred but successfully standing, she said, “let’s make that meeting” and waited to see what new hell he’d lead her into.

It rained.

Empathy

The most important step for the development of my characters is to let myself fall in love with them. I’ve taken time to play – writing encounters with other characters or with random people on the street, colleages, maybe a waitress or bartender, to develop their responses until I can hear them speak, to watch them interact until I spot their idiosynchrasies: does he stutter when he lies? does she flip her hair when she don’t care?

Strengths

A great thing about empathy is that once I feel emphatic about how a character would react, I can start to articulate their strengths and goals.

Weaknesses

The rough part about empathizing is that it’s harder to impose a weakness – stupidity, arrogance, overblown empathy, narcissism, judginess – on your hero. To cripple your creation.  But if there are no weaknesses then there’s no internal element for them to overcome.

So kick a hole in your hero’s chest and give them room to breathe.

Background

Heritage

It’s tough (for me) to create someone whose day-to-day I haven’t observed or experienced, but there’s a danger: if your characters come from your own special culture (large corporation, farming family, political powerhouse, deeply religious), the realistic detail you take for granted might confuse your reader, who needs an introduction to the context.

For instance, if you grew up in a loud, large, passionate family, shouting matches may crop up frequently in your story – that’s okay, but at some point, you might be surprised to discover that casual readers from quieter backgrounds consider these passages disturbing or frightening.  It’s important to know – and instilling scenes with terror or passion or the warmth of family through your memories of a casual Saturday night is a terrific tool, once you know you have it!