Nailing characters

[Martin Gill]

I'm wondering what techniques people use to define characters then write in their voice and/or capture their personality?

I'm writing a sequel to my first (sadly still on the shelf) novel and I have 3 POV characters. All three were in the first story, but I've moved time on by just short of a decade. One of them is now giving me trouble.

• The lead character - Kai- was 16-18 ish in the first story so she's now mid to late 20s. She's fine as she's a more mature version of the wide eyed and slightly gullible teen version of her the first time.
• The second POV voice is an old tutor - Aiden - he's fine as he was 50 ish in the first story so he's changed less - he's older and frailer but fundamentally the same person.
• The third - Owen - is bugging me. He's the son of one of the POV characters in book 1. He was about 10 in the first book so he's now 18 and coming of age. I want him to be petulant and hot headed - but only up to a point as if things go according to my plan he will become the main POV character for book 3. So I don't want him fundamentally unlikable - but I'd like him to make teenage mistakes, not listen to the wisdom of his elders, side with the bad guy for a while before realising his mistake but ultimately grow throughout the story.

So 2 questions.

How much of a dick can I make Owen while still maintaining empathy?
What techniques do you guys use to sketch out personality?

 

[Jackie Bee]

How much of a dick can I make Owen while still maintaining empathy?

I don't think there's a formula for that...sometimes even very bad characters can steal the show, it all depends on the writing. Perhaps the key is to show that he is not really evil, that he has good qualities, give the reader hints that Owen might turn around at some important point and show his good side...

 

[Toby Frost]

I’m assuming that you are writing in close 3rd person, which seems to be the default choice these days. You may want to write the characters in a particular writing style for each, in which case Joe Abercrombie’s First Law trilogy springs to mind, where certain phrases and actions are repeated for each character. The actual writing style varies hugely, so a farmer in his world will be described in a very different vocabulary to a lord (assuming the farmer survives for long, which he won’t). His style is probably as close to 1st person as you can get without being there, so to speak.

In terms of actually trying to emphasise with not just a teenager but a fairly annoying one, I’m not really your target audience. Personally, I find that the usual coming-of-age/first love/rebellion stuff is quite old hat, so I’d be more interested if he went down a different route, or didn’t quite take the usual teenage choices (perhaps after considering and being attracted to them). If he is in a “realistic” (ie miserable) fantasy setting or in the middle of some desperate space war, there’s also the question of whether he’d be allowed or able to behave like a teenager of the 21st century. My empathy would fade pretty quickly, especially if he’s complaining about some girl not liking him while the world is threatened with destruction or something actually important like that is going on.

As to what I do to sketch out character, to start with, everything a character does reflects their personality. It helps to work out what the main features of the character are and use them to drive their actions and thoughts: X is naïve, loyal, snobbish and violent, or whatever and so will take whatever the option that best fits his personality in any given situation. There do come points where the features clash, which are probably where the character becomes really interesting. Does X abandon the loyal peasant because he’s only a peasant, or save him because he’s loyal? Sometimes, a characteristic is hidden, and extreme circumstances give it the chance to flourish for better or worse. Sometimes, of course, the circumstances demand a certain sort of character, but even with that requirement you can be quite creative in working out how they got that way and what effect it will have.

 

[Zebra Wizard]

A good tip I use (my main protag in my WiP is a villian) is make sure each dick move is justified and acknowledged by the character. To the character each "mistake" is not a mistake, but calculated(some less than others) choice. The trick is to try and portray it as the right move, just like when anyone makes a mistake. You only realise said mistake afterwards. Then you can have your character regret the decision. If they don't regret it, then make sure it's clearly what the character wanted and why they want it.


Being good or bad does not = desirablity. There are plenty of "good" characters that are despised. You just need to include desirable traits. Confidence, charisma go along way, and one of the strongest ones is humor. A villianous character can get away with alot with some humor.

 

[Martin Gill]

behave like a teenager of the 21st century

This is a good point and one that I'm concious of. The setting is fantasy - at the dark age more viking/saxon end of things so honour, loyalty to one's lord, etc are all critical. C21st emo-esque behaviours would be beaten out of him. As the story starts he's already a warrior, just not a particularly proven one yet. This is helpful as its helped hone the word I want here which isn't rebellious, its resentful. He's a ******* (literally, not in personality!). His mother essentially abdicated her claim to her ancestral lands for good reasons in story 1 when he was a child. He was fostered and his parentage was hidden. The second story starts with him learning that his mother hasn't told him the full truth and he's actually the son of a rival lord - one who got his mother pregnant then turned his back on her - the root of a long stewing feud.

So he's resentful of her not telling the whole truth, resentful that by rights he should be her heir but now inherits nothing and that drives him to side with his newly discovered father... until he discovers said father is the real douche here.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

The formula for creating character empathy is called something [I can't remember the other item lol], a dog and a trumpet. The example that gets trotted out is Sonia from Eastenders. When she was first introduced audience feedback was they hated her so they gave her a trumpet and she was extraordinarily bad at it, and that turned around audience perception of her. And actually in the example of Mountain Goats (which I'm not a fan on any level of but was required to review -- it's a BBC comedy) the characters that are the best built are Bernie with her bunny she's a vegetarian, Bill who has a collection of dogs called things like Tom Jones and James Bond and Jules who has her pub which she's trying to make more upmarket. The main character doesn't really have anything like that and audiences have struggled to have empathy with him even when he was homeless. I know this is TV but I've found it works quite well with my stories. It's something I became more conscious of with my characters.

I've got a couple of obnoxious teen characters and I've found it very hard to make them completely unlikeable.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Are characters like jelly on trees?

 

[HareBrain]

Three things I'd advise for Owen: 1) make him have interesting thoughts; 2) give him something he really cares about (ideally not for entirely selfish reasons) and which is a source of struggle or worry; 3) if he does anything stupid, make sure the reader understands why. That should get most readers on-side enough to counter any dickishness.

 

[Martin Gill]

All good advice. One thing that just occurred to me is that when I write/plot roleplaying games I always "cast" characters - find an actor or famous person to be their avatar as it were in the game. While I'm not actually writing up a roleplaying game here, what I haven't done with Owen that I did in the first book was cast him. I've got clear mental models of the other two characters including who would play them in the movie of the book - that may be weird but it really helped focus on personalities and also helped me visualise the characters and therefore avoid laboriously describing them, yet still be able to really clearly imagine them.

Maybe I need to find a mental role model for Owen.

 

[Kith]

Main characters can be incredibly dickish and still be likeable - look at Jorg in The Broken Empire trilogy. As @Zebra Wizard points out, charisma, confidence and humour go a long way in making a character likeable despite other awful traits.

But if Owen is a teenager, then I'm thinking it's a different kind of unlikeable you're wanting to avoid. If he's not an important pov character until the next book, does it matter if he's unlikeable in this one? Why not just give him the room to grow and make mistakes and change into someone readers ultimately grow to love? A good example of that working in practice is Malta in Hobb's Liveship Traders. She is awful to begin with - self-centred and selfish in a realistic teenagerish way. She makes bad decisions (at least from the reader's perspective; they're perfectly reasonable to her). And then stuff happens, and eventually she grows up. She learns and changes and is someone different by the end.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Just don't use Holden Caulfield as the role model.

 

[Martin Gill]

Thanks Kith - that's essentially the journey I had in mind. Making bad choices due to resentment and a feeling of entitlement, bot being actually evil.

 

[NbDawn]

How much of a dick can I make Owen while still maintaining empathy?

Good question! I'm encountering the same problem. I think the trick is to be clear on his perspective of things. I'm betting that in most cases, he either feels justified in his actions or he doesn't realize he's being a dick. You can also add empathy by perhaps making him realize later that his actions might have been wrong. He doesn't have to actually apologize for his actions, but maybe he realizes his actions were wrong but is too embarrassed to apologize or tries to pretend the incident of him being a dick never happened. Or maybe he tries to make up for his actions in an indirect way. For example, he is mean to another person just out of moodiness or he's going along with the crowd. He later realizes he was wrong, but rather then apologize to the person, he simply starts being nice to them.

 

[Kith]

All good advice. One thing that just occurred to me is that when I write/plot roleplaying games I always "cast" characters - find an actor or famous person to be their avatar as it were in the game. While I'm not actually writing up a roleplaying game here, what I haven't done with Owen that I did in the first book was cast him. I've got clear mental models of the other two characters including who would play them in the movie of the book - that may be weird but it really helped focus on personalities and also helped me visualise the characters and therefore avoid laboriously describing them, yet still be able to really clearly imagine them.

Maybe I need to find a mental role model for Owen.

I do this too, after a fashion. I don't cast, but I do use images and photographs that mentally evoke the character in my head for much the same reasons. I used to write in a lot of forum rpgs as well, so that's probably where I got it from too.

I used to keep folders of the stuff, but usually use pinterest these days. I find music useful too, sometimes as a sort of character theme tune (either because of the lyrics or just the overall feel of a song or band) and sometimes through repetitive association.

Another thing I do to help myself define a POV character is to think about how the way decisions I've made about them already might affect how a scene is filtered through their viewpoint. That can be their occupation, or age, or something I already know about their personality. An artist is going to notice and interpret things differently to a thief, that kind of thing. The stronger the narrative voice, the easier it is to slip into their skin.

Good luck with it anyway!