Anonymous asked: How do I actually recognize it when my characters are “flat” ?
Ask yourself the following questions
Can I imagine the character in my own head?
Would a reader be able to pick the character out in a lineup?
Can I quickly think of three words to describe the character?
Could a reader come up with three words to describe the character?
Do you know your character’s biographical details?
Do you know your character’s history and familial details?
Does your character have believable flaws?
Does your character have notable traits and mannerisms?
Does your character have hopes and dreams?
Does your character have a life goal before the story starts?
Does your character have a story goal and a believable motivation to achieve that goal?
Does your character have at least one complex relationship?
Could you describe at least one outfit or several items of clothing that your character commonly wears?
Do you know how your character would react to good and bad news?
Does your character have any verbal or vocal mannerisms or traits?
Do you know what your character would order at your favorite restaurant?
Does your character or their circumstances change in a meaningful way by the end of the story?
Does your character make mistakes?
Do you have some idea of what happens to your character after the story ends?
If you can honestly answer ‘yes’ to most of these questions, odds are good that you have a well-rounded character. However, if you answer ‘no’ to more than a few of these questions, you may need to try some character development exercises to flesh them out a bit further. 🙂
March 22, 2015: MASSIVE UPDATE. Greatly expanded descriptions for Stage 3 and 4, slightly expanded 5, and added examples of characters representative of each stage beneath each stages’ descriptions.
May 3, 2014: Slight change in pronouns.
April 24, 2014: This is the most recent update. The first half is unchanged. Differences begin from the “Let’s Review Each Stage" section.
Emotional Development
There are 5 stages to development and they are as follows:
Co-dependence
Counter Dependence
Group-dependence
Independence
Transcendence
All people move through their lives hopefully developing from one stage to the next. The ideal scenario is that you are dependent as a child, counter this dependence as a teen and young adult, become comfortable with shared responsibilities as a young adult/adult, shed your need for obligatory gestures to become truly independent (best stage for parenthood), then transcend and become greater than this. What that looks like I’m not too sure.
Unfortunately, many things in our lives can halt our development. A lot of these things come from early childhood experiences. Example: Abandonment. Your father could have ran out on you and never returned, or you could have been forgotten at Disneyland for a few hours. One will hurt you more than the other, but both can be sufficient to impair your ability to develop emotionally.
Abandonment is a form of betrayal and it instills in people a great anxiety, a fear that all future relationships will mimic this first betrayal. People who’ve been abandoned tend to hover around stage one or two. You’ve probably heard of them. Stage 1: The clingy, “crazy”, obsessed Significant Other that drives her potential mates away. Stage 2: The aloof, apathetic Significant Other that seems to “not care” when his mate learns he’s cheating on her. (For more on this and much more, try The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck).
At this point I’d like to say that a person can exhibit All Five Stages at the same time. People tend to revolve around a certain stage and this explains why perfectly reasonable people can suddenly commit terrible acts or why completely terrible people can say some enlightened words.
So, how would someone go about changing himself? Going up a stage? By the process known as “Grieving”.
Grieving is the process of releasing pain and pent up emotion. The reason that people remain stuck in stages is because they have yet to grieve. It requires that you search out what exactly caused your emotions to bottle up, confront it, and let it all come out in a torrent of emotional release. All the pain, all the misery, all the frustration and anxiety, let it out.
This is what Psychologists, i.e. therapists, are trained and paid to do. Help you search for what’s pained you, bring it to the surface, help you confront and release it without judgment.
Notably, this is a painful process. You will face inconvenient truths, shatter former god-like figures (e.g. your parents), and you will wallow in an ocean of your own misery, pain and frustration. But when you survive, and you will, you will feel a weight literally lifted off you. Seemingly, this weight is real, and it is made of pain, guilt, shame and frustration. It is the drag of depression. (I was diagnosed with Chronic Depression early March of year 2013).
And when this weight is lifted off you, your behavior will… tilt. Not change immediately, for it is usually a long process. I say tilt because the phenomena is called a “Pendulum swing”. See how stage 1 Co-Dependence is opposite to Stage 2 Counter Dependence? And stage 2 is opposite to stage 3? And stage 1 is similar to 3, while stage 2 is similar to 4? Emotional development is like the swinging of a pendulum. To develop properly, you need to swing between extremes so that you can gain the full understanding of each stage and understand why you can move beyond them. It is imperative that you do not attempt to skip a stage, because a) it’s impossible and b) you’ll miss the point.
And the point is this: emotional development is not a change in what you know. It is achange in how and why youfeel, no matter what you know. This is why married couples can argue so much despite being perfectly intelligent, rational people.
Stan can’t see why his wife doesn’t understand that he needs to work late to impress the boss and bring in more money for them. Mary can’t see why Stan can’t spend less overtime, especially considering she, too, has a job and would like to see him more. Are either of them stupider than the other? No, but they’ll call each other stupid for not understanding each other. Fact is, both of them have perfectly rational, reasonable arguments, but they will never understand each other because they exist on different emotional stages. A stage one person can never understand a stage two person just as how a one dimensional being can never comprehend a two dimensional one. Only people at stage 4 and 5 can begin to understand stage 1, 2, and 3.
So a lot of strife, a lot of mistreatment, murder and mayhem occur not from a lack of intelligence but from emotional immaturity.
Now how can someone restart his development? Start by thinking of something he’s been hiding. Something he’s been suppressing for a long, long time. Something he’s never told anyone, is so afraid to tell anyone because of how painful it would be to admit it, how shameful, how degrading. Then let it out to someone you can trust to listen without a) giving advice nor b) making judgment.
A psychologist would be the best place to start.
Let’s review each stage.
Co-Dependence
Counter Dependence
Group-dependence
Independence
Transcendence
Stage 1 Dependence is most prominent at the child age. Children are dependent on their parents for everything, and we expect them to be. But it becomes a problem when people cling to this stage in to adulthood.
It will be difficult for them to leave their parent’s house. If she can’t live with her parents, then she will find something else to cling to. It could be a hobby, and while hobbies are generally good, it will be bad if she’s using the hobby as a distraction rather than as a form of enjoyment. Substance abuse is very very common in stage 1 people. Drugs and alcohol help numb the suppressed pain. She will be distrustful of people, even her spouse and children because she can’t ever expect other people to be independent.
She will tend feel wrathfully angry and despair. She will tend to feel frustrated because nothing she does seems to fix things. She will feel ashamed because she’s failed to fix herself. She will tend to despair and she will tend to blame others for it. She will tend to be prone to violence and quick to judgment.
She will tend to see things in black and white. She will tend to never admit a mistake. She will tend to put others on pedestals, as well as herself. She will tend to think that when she is hurt by other people, those people hurt her intentionally.
A stage 1 individual has no boundary between herself and loved ones. If her child, or brother, or friend is hurt, she is hurt. An attack against someone she is dependent on is an attack on herself. Thus she will tend to be overprotective and suffocating, yet contradictorily violent and abusive.
A Stage 1 person is marked by Lack of Agency, i.e, she feels as though she has no control over her life, that she is at the whim and mercy of forces outside of her control. Thus she is always afraid that everything she loves and cares for could be at once whisked away, never to be felt nor seen again. There is no foundation except that which she can forcibly establish.
She will tend to obsess over Safety. Because she has no boundaries, she tends to feel constantly at threat from anything and anyone. All important things in life are matters of Life and Death to her.
S1 Examples: Steven during the
beginning portion of Steven Universe, Oliver Queen in season 1 of Arrow, Malcolm
Merlyn from Arrow, Darth Vader from Star Wars, Elsa from Frozen, Boromir when he tried to take the ring in
Lord of the Rings, Agatha Prenderghast, the zombies, and the townspeople from
Paranorman (“All you wanna do is
burn and murder stuff, burn and murder stuff.” I love that line),
Emmet during the beginning of and Bad Cop in The Lego Movie,
Stage 2 Counter dependence is something everyone should do as a teen
and young adult. It is when everyone figures out that they can have a will of
their own and can take responsibility for their own successes and mistakes. It
is rebellion and it is healthy. But it is a problem if someone carries it in to
adulthood.
A Stage two person tends to run from his problems. He is afraid of becoming
dependent again, so he challenges and fights and flees. He will leave the house
of his parents as soon as he can. He will distrust authority and challenge
authority’s values. He will want to reject everything about his authorities,
even if what he is rejecting is a good thing.
He will tend to be consumed with frustration and shame as his pent up
emotions hold him back. He will tend to obsess over not being his parents to
the point where his parents control him. Anything his parents say can make him
instantly upset, angry and sad. That is because he is still emotionally
dependent on them.
He will tend to be excessively logical. His rebellion causes him to express
a lot of counter-dependent emotion, good as well as harmful. If he is unable to
find a means to properly vent these emotions, and if the people in his life are
unable to help him relieve these emotions, he will tend to suppress them. He
will tend to seek out tools to aid his fight against authority. He will tend to
seek out mental techniques to combat the feeling of these suppressed emotions,
as well as techniques that allow him to conquer over others. Unfortunately for
him, the mental techniques he will find are inherently temporary. They do not
relieve emotional suppression, only mask it. They are to be used only a couple
of times during periods of great busyness, until one manages to get enough time
to properly Grieve. I know this from personal experience.
He will tend to obsess over Status and Achievement. Because he
is attempting to establish his own identity, he tends to try and demonstrate
his value. A very common way to do this is to make others feel less valuable.
All important things in life are matters of winning and losing. To him, all the
world’s a game and all are players and pawns.
S2 Examples: Amethyst from Steven
Universe, Jeff Winger, Britta Perry, Troy Barnes, and Annie Edison from season
1 of Community, virtually every character of significance in the movie Birdman,
Hugh Jackman’s character from Real Steel, Gru from Despicable Me, Tim Allen’s
character from Galaxy Quest, Darth Sidious from Star Wars, Hans from Frozen,
Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon, Tony Stark during the beginning of
Ironman, Aragorn until he finally comes to terms with his lineage and takes his
rightful place as king in Lord of the Rings, Scott Pilgrim and Romona Flowers
up until the end of the book series/movie, Wildstyle in The Lego Movie, Sterling
Archer from Archer,
Stage 3 Group-dependence Stage 3 is when you’re ready to start taking
on responsibilities. Everyone would hopefully reach this stage by 20s
adulthood. You are now OK with sharing burdens without feeling you are too
dependent on anybody. You are now OK with doing things independently because
you can trust people to support you. This sounds pretty good, but the major
problem with Group-dependent people is obligation and expectation.
Basically, a Stage 3 person is someone who takes on the burdens of others.
They are emotionally stronger than Stage 1 and 2 folk, so they won’t react as
strongly negative, but they still have a problem with grieving. They still
accumulate negative emotion.
A person who is Group-dependent tends to expect other people to be
Group-dependent. When a stage 3 person does something as a favor to you, she will
want you to return that favor but she will “understand” if you don’t
return it. A stage 1 person might force you, guilt you, threaten you, ignore
you if you don’t return the favor. A stage 3 person will tend to not, but she
will still feel hurt over it. She will accumulate negative emotion.
When I put “understand” in quotations, I mean she is able to more
capably process what is going on emotionally and logically in the head of the
person giving them grief, and in “understanding” they are more
capable of compromising and sharing responsibility. But they take in a bit more
than they can handle each time. They do a little more work than they should,
stretch themselves a little farther than they should. Because they don’t fully
know their limits yet; knowing your limits fully comes at Stage 4.
She will grow frustrated that nobody does what is expected of them. She
will be able to cope with their “weaknesses” and “failures”
for a lot longer than a Stage 1 or 2 person, but she will tend to vent her
accumulated negative emotion in a way that doesn’t help other people to grow as
well they could. She will tend towards using guilt, disappointment, expectation
and obligation to attend to the “weaknesses” of others, not because
she desires to punish them but because these are the primary yet inefficient
ways she can release negative emotion; she doesn’t really understand how else
she can help.
Since she does not understand Stage 1
and 2 people, she will tend not to give them mercy when they betray her
expectations too much. When they do, she will tend to either yell at them or
abandon them. She will think, “They are not worth my time”. She will become
resentful. If the blame is on herself, then she may yell and abandon herself.
What does it mean to abandon oneself? It means to belittle one’s self value,
i.e. she will suffer a Stage 2 identity crisis.
She will tend to grow cynical. She will tend to share only with people who
share with her. To her, what binds a group together is what each member does
for the group, and so she cannot allow herself to not do those things. The
group is her burden and she is the group’s burden. She needs to care and she
needs to be cared for. Thus she tends to be obsessed with notions of Obligation and Duty. While these notions of Obligation and Duty do not always
result in unhealthy behavior and feelings, they do inherently cause
difficulties that tend to harm one’s and others’ emotional development. Notably
she will have the most difficulty in handling Stage 2 people, as folks in Stage
2 will inherently desire to rebel against the obligations and duties a Stage 3
person conjures for herself and others.
A stage 3 person might have the tendency to say, “I am doing this for
your own good”, “You don’t know what you want”, “I don’t
want you making my same mistakes”.
Because a Stage 3 person is past Stage 2, they are no longer concerned with
their self-image; they are comfortable in their own skin. So they are
comfortable with their “Self”. The experiences they’ve accumulated
allow them to be Assured that what they understand about their
“Selves” is correct and good. But the mistake Stage 3 folks often
make is they tend to extend their personal experiences which apply only to them
on to others without bothering to see if their experiences actually do apply to
the lives of others.
“Because I’ve figured myself out to a pretty good extent, it feels
like its the case that everybody else just needs to do what I did to fix their
problems.”
They are Self-Assured. Certain that what applied to their lives naturally
applies to others. Stage 3 is when Emotion and Logic fuse. And what do we call
that fusion? Morality. Morality first emerges in Stage 3. Stage 3 is the
minimum stage a person should reach before they consider marriage.
S3 Examples: Pearl from Steven
Universe, Claire Dumphy from Modern Family, Javert from Les Miserables, Michael
from Arrested Development, Captain Cal from Lonesome Dove, Oliver Queen by
season 2 of Arrow, Tenzin from Legend of Korra, Obi-Wan Kenobi prior to fighting
Anakin in Star Wars, Hiccup by the end of How to Train Your Dragon 2, Tony
Stark during the rest of Ironman, Scott Pilgrim and Romona Flowers by the end
of the book series/movie, The Man Upstairs (Will Ferrell) in The Lego Movie, Lana
Kane from Archer, Valentine (the villain) from the movie Kingsman,
Stage 4 Independence
Not many people get to this stage. The characteristics that most describes this
kind of person is charitable, communicable, confident, and
collected. A truly independent person is someone who can give of himself
without feeling hurt when other people don’t give back. A person at Stage 4 has
come to fully understand his limits.
To understand your limits is to understand others. As you become more aware
of your own bubble, you begin to see the bubbles that surround others, and
being able to do so allows you to better predict their behavior, thought
process, and feelings. You begin to see what would irk them, plague them,
enliven them, inspire them. Stage 5 is when I imagine a person can not only see
these bubbles, but dive in to their depths, to really see and understand the
core of people.
A primary emotion of Stage 4 is Sorrow. Sorrow is a type of sadness, a type
that facilitates pain-free grieving. The higher the stages you
reach, the less painful grieving can become. Sorrow is Sadness
for the unfortunate circumstances that have allowed for trauma to arise. A
stage 4 person can have sorrow for the murdered and the murderer. The
persecuted and the persecutor. They understand at an emotional level the
bullying cycle, that the bullied often (though not always) become bullies
themselves to cope with the pain and trauma.
He can see why people act the way they do. He will tend to be able to
predict what people will say, do, and think next. He will take up burdens seemingly
on a whim and may drop those burdens just as quickly. He will offer up his
home, pick up hitchhikers and volunteer at soup kitchens without anyone knowing
he does, because he wants to. He will also choose not to offer up his home,
reject hitchhikers, and not volunteer even when there is social pressure to do
so. He will help people because he wants to, and he will not help people
because he wants to.
And most significantly, he will actually know what he genuinely wants in his
life because he fully understands his limits. Understanding his limits allows
him to see where he cannot go, and understanding where he cannot go allows him
to see where he can go, and that is
where he will go. Thus a Stage 4 person acquires an incredible degree of
Confidence due to being able to do things he precisely understands that he can
do.
This is a great stage to be at, but it does have some problems. For one,
people tend to get dependent on him. Two, He being sympathetic doesn’t mean he
understands what exactly he can do for them. His generosity could be insulting
to them if they are stage two. He can be frustrating to people in Stage 3. He
won’t mind if they are insulted, though, because that’s their problem,
not his. The greatest limitation of Stage 4 is that while he is able to predict
human behavior, he does not necessarily know what he needs to do to help
people. He tries his best, but that doesn’t mean he will necessarily do the
right thing.
Stage 4 is the ideal minimum stage for people to begin to raise children.
S4 Examples: Garnet from Steven
Universe, Augustus “Gus” McCrae from Lonesome Dove, what the human
boy Finn represents in The Lego Movie, Gandalf from Lord of the Rings,
Stage 5 Transcendence A stage 5 person is someone who has mastered Empathy.
Empathy is a step above sympathy. Sympathy is shared feelings. In the original
Greek, sympathy means sharing of pain. Empathy is beyond that, it is understanding.
A stage 5 person has complete access to the full range of her emotions. In
having access, she is less prone to ever being dominated by any particular
emotion, allowing her to freely choose which emotion, which mix of emotions, is
key to the situation at hand.
She can be sympathetic when someone needs her to be. But when the situation
calls for righteous anger, she can be righteous and angry. She can be forgiving
when she needs to be forgiving, stiff when she needs to be stiff. She can know
when to separate herself from others and when to sacrifice for others. She can
know when to punish, when to give mercy.
Interestingly, the more emotionally mature one is, the more one feels human,
smaller, limited, and less knowledgeable about the world and its inhabitants.
It is in acknowledging that she has increasingly less knowledge and
understanding that makes her more eager to learn, hence why Stage 5
folks can be some of the most learned people and yet sincerely feel that they
haven’t learned all too much.
So it is not the case that she actually knows for 100% certainty what
to do/how to act. Truthfully she merely acts to the best of her ability,
understanding the limitations of her own understanding. But in being
emotionally mature her actions tend to flow out in proper response to most any
situation. Sympathetic when she should be. Angry when she should be. Forgiving
when she should be.
She is Transcendent. Beyond human understanding because stage 1, 2, 3
and 4 cannot understand her. But she can understand all of them.
S5 Examples: Iroh from Avatar the
Last Airbender, Rose Quartz from Steven Universe, Vitruvius from The Lego Movie
(maybe), Mr. Rogers from real life (maybe),
This
tutorial is about acting for comics! It’s not a subject people talk about a lot, at least compared to art and writing, but I’d argue that great character acting is one of the reasons we fall in love with fictional characters… and horrible character acting is why we stop believing in the characters, the story, and possibly the creator?? Fortunately, learning to spot bad acting is an easy way to correct it in your own work.
I was maybe a little snarkier in this tut than I needed to, but we’re friends here, I don’t need to pretend with you that I love every work equally. What I really do love tho, is when people learn to turn their criticism into corrections, which is the whole point of making and sharing these tuts! I hope you enjoy it :] You
can also check out a bunch of human, monster, and alien crab acting in my own
comics The Meek and Mare Internum.
All of my tutorials are released in lower-res format to the public 6 months after
publication at the Shingworks Patreon. You can access the full tutorial archive, as well as nearly 1.5
years worth of bonus content, by becoming a Patron :] The recent tutorial is about Worldbuilding, so feel free to stop by~
and! thanks a ton in advance for not removing my text ❤
This is great!!
One of the big tells for me that a cartoonist is a novice is when they rely too heavily on manga/anime exaggerated expressions – we see this A LOT with first-time webcomics. Even if you love manga and want to create works with that visual language, notice how those exaggerated expressions are most effectively used to enhance a moment. They aren’t there to handle the bulk of the acting or to carry a scene. If you use them constantly for every expression, it becomes visually exhausting (and reads disingenuous), and also you have nowhere left to go if you want to use a goofy expression as a visual punch.
Anywho, I back Der-shing on patreon and she always has good and insightful tips from a valid perspective with lots of experience!
(Eventually I want to back all the women in webcomics on patreon, but… that is a story for another day.)
“I don’t like your main character. He’s kind of obnoxious.” my beta reader laughingly told me, after reading the first chapter of my novel.
On the surface, I looked like this:
Inside, I looked like this:
Aloud, I said “Oh, well, he’s kind of hard to understand. He changes by the end.”
Inside, I screamed “How could you not like him?! Do you have a heart?! Is there a void where your soul should be?! Are you actually a Dementor that’s really good at makeup? Well, I guess this is what the Dementors are doing after getting kicked out of Azkaban!”
Outside: “But I really enjoyed it!” *Hugs between broken writer and Dementor in disguise* “Thank you for reading!“
But you know what? That person that might be a soul-sucking cloaked demon creature? They were right. The character was unlikable, or more accurately, there was no reason to cheer him on. There was nothing to make the reader connect with him, relate to him, transfer themselves into his story, feel affection towards him.
And if the reader doesn’t connect with the character through empathy? Nothing else in the story can work. Everything relies on this one fictional person. The basic definition of story is "A flawed hero with a goal overcoming obstacles to reach that goal, and how that journey changes them.” So without character, you don’t have story. Without empathy from the reader, you don’t even have character.
So what is empathy when it comes to characters?
It’s the process of a reader transferring their own lives onto the character. When this happens, the character’s goal and inner desires, values and weaknesses, everything about them, become proxies for our own. We learn of a shared piece of human nature between us, something we have in common on a significant inner level, and suddenly we want to see this character succeed. Because now, they are us – and we want to see ourselves succeed in real life. We feel what they feel, we experience what they experience.
The best way to sum up character empathy in my opinion, is this quote from C.S.Lewis: “Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another ‘Really? You too? I thought I was the only one!’”
That’s empathy.
Which doesn’t mean the character has to be an angelic little cherub …
There are characters that operate in a moral gray area, there are characters that are downright awful, there are characters that shouldn’t be lovable …but we love them. So this is NOT saying that a main character has to be a perfect angel that rescues baby squirrels when they’re not busy volunteering at the local soup kitchen, it just means there’s something WORTHWHILE in the character that persuades the reader to stick around. We need a reason to relate with that at-first-glance unlikable character. Just as we have flawed people in our own lives who we can forgive and love.
A good quote for this one would be this, by G.K.Chesterton: “That’s the great lesson of Beauty and the Beast; that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.”
So how does a writer accomplish a good empathetic connection?
Luckily for us, establishing this only takes a little planning in the beginning of the story. Certain elements foster empathy, elements which you can give to your character and display in the story. Making sure to incorporate a few of these will ensure that first connection between reader and character. A connection which you, the author, will then be able to grow. It’s this tiny first note of shared humanity which deepens into those important links we hold with characters. We’re living people, they’re imagined and comprised of words on a page; yet these people can be friends to us, family, mentors, role models, and become some of the most influential people in our lives.
And how does that begin? Evoking empathy.
And how do you evoke empathy? Well here are the characteristics that human beings instinctively identify with and admire …
– Courage (This is the one EVERY main character should possess. Gumption to pursue what they want separates main from background characters.)
It’s a good plan to give your main character at least FIVE of these empathetic little “virtues.”
If this sounds like a resume, that’s kind of what it is. “Dear Potential Reader, I’m applying for the job of Main Character of this book series. I aspire to consume your every waking thought and drastically change your life, for better and worse.” It’s a diagram of the worthwhile traits of the hero, the characteristics that win us over, which promise the reader “If you follow my story, knowing me – and experiencing the story through me – will be well worth your time.”
These traits will be displayed in the set-up of the story, the first ten pages or so. But the story CANNOT stop to let the character exhibit these winning behaviors; the story must KEEP PROGRESSING, every empathetic element must be shown with a story reason for existing within a scene. Like exposition, empathy needs to be added in subtly, as the story motors onward, slipping into the reader’s knowledge without them noticing. If it’s a scene created for the express purpose of convincing the reader “This character is lovable! Love them! I said love them!” then it will be glaringly obvious and the reader will feel the exact opposite. (They’ll also feel that way about the author, incidentally.)
Now! How does this work?
Harry Potter:
Harry is the poster child for being treated unfairly. Yet in the face of the abusive treatment of his childhood, Harry is courageous. He does not succumb to the Dursley’s relentless campaign to stamp the magic out of him, and become a proper Dursley; though this would’ve won their approval, put him in their good graces, and made his life exponentially easier – but he didn’t do it. He knew they were wrong, knew what was right, and refused to become like them. So heck yes Sorting Hat, there is “plenty of courage, I see”. He was loved by his parents, by the three that dropped him off at his Aunt and Uncle’s, and by the majority of the Wizarding World. He’s also snarky, loving, and in constant danger.
Judy Hopps:
Every reason why we care about Judy is established in the first few scenes. She’s courageous. She’s funny. She’s loved by her parents. She’s motivated by noble values. Definitely goal oriented, hard working, and smart. She’s also in imminent danger, and being treated unfairly.
If we took out the pieces of the story meant to evoke our empathy, what would happen?
Nobody would care. Judy Hopps would have been an annoying, smug, and consumed by ruthless ambition. Harry Potter would have ceased to exist because everything about him is empathetic.
Establishing these early allows us to begin the process of temporarily transferring our lives into a story. Or in the case of some life-changing stories, not temporarily transferring, but letting them become part of our souls forever.
Yup, having your story connect with a reader forever starts with just a little empathy. Pretty useful.
Oh, and speaking of souls, give me mine back, Dementor reader. I learned how to make people like my characters. Now you’re out of the Azkaban job and the beta reading job.
To all the writers who have ever been told “Your characters have to be three dimensional!” or “They should be well-rounded!” and just felt like saying: “What does that even MEAN?! What goes into a 3-dimensional character? Specifically? And how do you go about creating one?!”
Good news. There’s a way.
Great main characters – heroes, protagonists, deuteragonist, whatever you want to call them – have ten things in common. Ten things that are easily developed, once you know what to create within your character. So no one will ever be able to tell you “needs to be more three dimensional!” ever again. Ha.
1) Weaknesses: Main characters should be flawed, but I’m not saying this because it will make them more realistic (though it will) – I’m saying they need to be flawed because if they’re not, they shouldn’t be a main character. Story is another word for change, or more accurately, character growth. Not character as in “fictional person”, character meaning “heart and soul”. Story is someone’s character changing, for better or worse. Main characters at the beginning of the story are lacking something vital, some knowledge of themselves, some knowledge of how to live a better life, and this void is ruining their lives. They must overcome these weaknesses, if they’re going to become complete, and reach a happy ending. There are two types of weaknesses: Psychological and Moral. Psychological ones only hurt the main character. Moral ones cause the main character to hurt other people. Easy.
2) Goal: Characters exist because they want something. Desiring something, and the fight against opposition for that desire, is the lifeblood of story; and because character is story, it’s also desire that can breathe life into words on a page, and begin the process of creating a real person in a reader’s mind. It’s this ‘desire for something’ that sparks that first connection between reader and character. It makes us think “Well, now I have to find out if this person gets what they want.” This is a powerful link. (How many mediocre movies do we suffer through, when we could easily stop watching, because we’re still trapped by that question of “what happens?”) So if this is powerful enough to keep people watching an annoying movie, imagine how powerful it can be in an excellent story.
Like in Up, the goal is to get the house to Paradise Falls.
3) Want: If the main character wants something, they want it for a darn good reason. Usually, they think that attaining the goal will fill the void they can sense in their lives, the deficiency they can feel, but don’t know how to fix. And they’re almost always wrong. Getting the goal doesn’t help anything; which is why, while pursuing that goal, they discover a deeper need that will heal them. Which brings us to …
4) Need/Elixir: Main characters are missing something, a weakness in their innermost selves is causing them to live a less-than-wonderful life. Through story, these main characters can be healed. Once they discover what’s missing, and accept it, and change the way they live to include this truth they’ve uncovered … they’re healed. Learning this truth, whatever it is, forms the purpose of the story for the main character. The reader, and the character, think the story is about achieving that big tangible goal the premise talks about; really, underneath it all, the story is about someone achieving a big intangible truth, that will ultimately save their life and future. Often, this need is exactly what the character fears or professes to hate.
Like Finding Nemo, where Dory states exactly what Marlin needs to learn.
5) Ghosts:
Not this kind of ghosts.
Ghosts are events in your character’s past which mark the source of their weaknesses and strengths. Because these happened, the character became who they are. All we need to know about backstory are these moments, because who the character became is all we care about. There’s really only one ghost you absolutely need: the source of their moral and psychological weakness. Something happened that knocked the character’s world off kilter, and everything from that moment onward has been tainted by what happened. This moment haunts them (hence the name), and holds them back from uncovering that need that will heal their weaknesses. Pixar are masters of this: the source of Carl being stuck in the past, curmudgeonly, unable of loving anyone new? Ellie dying; his ghost. In Finding Nemo, the source of Marlin being suffocating, protective to the point of being harmful, possessive, and fearful? His wife and 99% of his children being eaten in front of him; his ghost.
6) True Character: These are the strengths, values, convictions, fears, faults, beliefs, worldview, and outlook on life that make the main character who they truly are.
7) Characterization: This is everything on the surface of a main character. The way they look, talk, act, etc. All of this originates from those deeper elements of their being, the strengths, values, ghosts, weaknesses, needs, that make them who they truly are. So often, you can think of this as a facade they’re projecting, a way to shield the the truth about themselves, how they wish to be perceived. The story, and the other characters, are slowly going to see deeper than this characterization, revealing more and more of the reasons it is the way it is.
8) Arc: If the character is going to change from “Incomplete Person” to “Complete Person” there’s going to be a journey they go on to make that possible. The external story, the pursuit of that big tangible goal the premise is about, is causing an inner journey to take place. What they have to do in pursuit of that external goal will apply pressure to those weaknesses, and pressure causes change. This process has seven steps, but if I write it all here this post is going to be obscenely long. So I might wait and give this its own post.
9) Changed Person: Who is the character going to be at the end of this story? They better be different, or else the story didn’t work. How do they show how different they’ve become? What is the moral choice they make, that spins their trajectory from “the future doesn’t look so great” to “happily ever after”? This should be known right away, maybe even before anything else is settled about the character. This gives a distinct end goal, a way to work backwards, a destination in mind that you can navigate towards.
10) Fascination and Illumination: The surface characterization, and the brief glimpses of the true character underneath create curiosity in the reader/audience. What the character says, and the implied subtext beneath the dialogue, creates a puzzle the audience wants to solve. Actions they take work the same way; if the writer indicates there’s deeper motivation behind why a character behaves in the way they do, we buy into solving that mystery right away. We can’t help it. “Who are you really? Why are you the way you are? And how is that going to effect the story?” These are all the unspoken, almost not consciously acknowledged, questions that fascinating characters provoke. Searching out meaning, connecting the dots to find the truth – we can’t resist this. We’re not fascinated by tons of backstory and exposition about a character; we’re fascinated by story, by mystery, by the technique of withholding information and having to interpret and hunt out the truth on our own. So gradually, the story and the characters will force that character to reveal a little more, and a little more, until we have a complete picture of who this person is. Crucial that this information isn’t told up front. Gradually illuminate it. It’s just like getting to know a real person.
So how does this work in a real character? Let’s take a look at Flynn Rider/Eugene Fitzherbert, because almost everybody has seen that movie.
Moral Weaknesses: He’s selfish. He’s a little greedy. He’s a little rude. He uses his charisma and bravado to keep people at a distance from the real him.
Psychological Weaknesses: Insecurity, fear of vulnerability, feels like the real him (Eugene) would be unwanted, unlovable, and have nothing – just like when he was an orphaned kid. Also, he doesn’t know who he wants to be, what he wants to live for.
Goal: Flynn wants to get that crown. So he has to get Blondie to see the floating lights, so she’ll give it back to him, and then they can part ways as unlikely friends.
Want: Why does he want the crown? What does it mean for him? He actually states it (reluctantly) in song: “I have dreams like you, no really. Just much less touchy feely. They mainly happen somewhere warm and sunny. On an island that I own, tanned and rested and alone. Surrounded by enormous piles of money.” He senses there’s something off in his life, something is missing. But he mistakenly believes this missing piece is money, which will allow him to buy a lonely island, where he can live out his days as Flynn and no one will ever know Eugene.
Need: “All those days chasing down a daydream. All those years living in a blur. All that time never truly seeing, things the way they were. Now she’s here, shining in the starlight. Now she’s here, suddenly I know. If she’s here, it’s crystal clear, I’m where I’m meant to go.” He wants a crown … he needs to fall in love with Rapunzel. He needs to love something more than himself, and find out that love isn’t something to fear and push away. He needs to abandon the ‘Tales of Flynnagin Rider’ ambition, and get a more worthwhile, new dream.
Ghost: The source of all of his weaknesses can be linked to his “little bit of a downer” childhood as an orphan. Interestingly, he isn’t aware of another facet of that ghost, and Rapunzel points it out to him. “Was he a thief too?” she asks. He looks taken aback, before answering “Uh, no.” Something’s gone wrong. The choices he’s making are not living up to that original role model.
Characterization: Flynn’s charming, funny, smart, charismatic, and arrogant (in a somehow charming sort of way). He’s also rude, contemptuous, and sarcastic. All traits that help him keep up that ‘swashbuckling rogue’ facade, and push people away from the real him.
True Character: Underneath all that, he’s a Disney prince. That pretty much sums it up.
Changed Person: “Started going by Eugene again, stopped thieving, and basically turned it all around.” He started the story as the guarded and evasive Flynn, he ends as the selfless and thoroughly-in-love Eugene.
Fascination and Illumination: Imagine if everything about Flynn had been told, right up front. We know he’s an orphan, we know he’s upheld a fake reputation, we know he’s a kind and loving guy underneath it all, we even know about his “tales of Flynnagin” childhood dream. You know what happens? We like him … but we’re not interested in him. There’s nothing we need to find out. There’s no curiosity. And if there’s no curiosity, and nothing being illuminated, your story’s not going anywhere. So instead, we find out – alongside Rapunzel – more about Flynn as the story progresses. And that is how it should be.
So!
Developing characters in this way, I’ve found, really reduces worries about how “well-rounded” and three dimensional I’ve made them. They feel real to me. And besides helping me create characters, this ten element technique has also let me analyze characters I like, which is strangely fun. It’s a great way to figure out why a character works, what causes them to be so effective, and how you can go about creating them yourself.
Yeah, I’m a bit of a nerd.
But if you want, try it out. Develop a character. Analyze a character. You might find it as useful/fun as I do.
This is good advice for character development, but not for static characters, like Batman or Atticus Finch, nor tragic heroes like Othello or Anakin Skywalker.
There are aspects of some of these steps to theses types of characters, but don’t feel that you need all 10 to make a complete character. Or that all main characters need this level or type of development.
Inspiration Haven 