Hey all! I've got some questions about how y'all go about fleshing out your characters. I remember from years ago in high school a 2-1 rule when it came to fleshing out characters; for every two good qualities you've got to give them at least one bad one. I don't think that really makes a believable character though, I feel like as real people we've got an equal amount of good and bad qualities, as no ones perfect. But when I give my characters an equal(ish) amount of positive and negative traits, they still don't seem like real people. How should I go about giving them more realistic traits? And on that note, I always try to define my characters as gorgeous people, it's really difficult for me to break myself of that mentality. For anyone who's similar, how do you break yourself of that habit? What are good ways to add realistic negative appearance traits also? Help!
I've never heard of that rule. It sounds severely limiting and forces a lot of things that might not fit the character. My characters aren't beautiful, well, Mr. Fogg is, but they are as realistic as I can make them. What I try to do is look at the qualities of my friends and kind of incorporate those into my characters. I don't mean I base them completely off of my friends, but I see the qualities I like and I don't like, and I try to mix those into the people I create for more believable characters. Example: one of my best friends is one of the hardest working people I know, runs himself ragged almost, but he also has the lowest self-esteem I've ever seen on a person and apologizes constantly for himself. His twin is the exact same way. Both are hilarious and sassy, and I love them dearly for so many other things. But that contradiction of being hardworking and apologetic to a fault, that's something that makes a person real. Sometimes when he's done too much at work, he gets kind of mean. I'd never say that to him because he's very sensitive about how he comes off to people, but it still happens. Something I used to do at college was sit in the quad and make up stories about the people walking by just based purely on their appearance. It taught me a lot of my own prejudices, for one thing, but it also made me really see a person so I could write down detail as much as I could. I also made up stories about the kids in high school photos at the photo lab I used to work in, something about how the footballers would be car salesman (I know several who do this now), how the cheerleaders were happy once but now they wish their husband would notice them more than his workload. Cliche, yes. But also again helped me see my own faults which I could then turn into a character quality. I hope this helps.
I actually find that incredibly helpful, I find myself making stories about people based on their appearances, but I never thought to apply it to my character creation. When I look at my friends (maybe it's just me) but I find it hard to find faults in them. I think they're all gorgeous. I'll have to start noting things though, give it a shot and see if it's helpful. Thank you!
The truth is we are all just about capable of displaying every personality even if it's not one that comes natural to us if motivated correctly. Some people can swing from one to another, one event can change us. But it's takes more than just personality to flesh out a character. Even good personality traits can be bad sometimes. I'm not a person prone to very nasty traits like anger, jealousy, selfishness, dishonesty. But I have lots of minor flaws that cause me problems. I'm not assertive enough so people tend to walk all over me. Lack confidence so tend to end up trusting others over myself, so I end up in a situation I don't want to be in. This has lead me to not being so trusting of people so I don't let people in a easily, this causes me problems making friends. I put others first, to the point where my life just stops and becomes about others. All these are negative flaws in some situations. I find, in real life, there are no truly nasty or truly good people just your perspective of them. The girl who bullied me at school...I saw her one way. But maybe someone close to her saw a different person. Then we have our self-perception. I don't think I'm very clever so was shocked when a tutor told me I was bright and a fast learner. I think I'm a tolerant person, so was shocked when someone said I was intolerant to other people. So how does your character see herself? How does the world see her? As a society we are encouraged to desire good looking people. Skinny is the trend at the moment. But if you look back at old painting from Greek times, the women were quite chubby, because that was what was desirable then. Today people with large foreheads try to cover it, hundreds of years ago, the sexiest thing a woman could possess was a large forehead. I think you need to start thinking about the real people of the world and get away from the Hollywood image of good looking men and women. I don't know for sure if you do this, but lots of writers use an actor or an actress to model the appearance of their characters on. It doesn't paint a cast of realistic people, unless you do it just for the one character. I've never had this problem as we all have our imperfections and even the most beautiful people have their insecurities. All my life I've been told I have beautiful red head and that I'm a pretty girl. That doesn't stop me having my own issues with the way I look. If things are being perceived by characters it's easy to use an unreliable narrator. When you catch yourself creating gorgeous people add in a few things that make them not so gorgeous.
Personally, I rarely comment on my characters' physical attractiveness. It's just not that important for most of what I write.
There is a lot you can say without a laundry list of a character’s description. That would apply especially to their alleged flaws. If the narrator sees them as flaws, it should be shown not told. For instance, an overzealous character that always gets it wrong could be written with him butting in with a bad idea only to be corrected by somebody sensible. A parting thought from your MC’s POV might be, He does that every time. My MC in my WIP is a blonde but you don’t know that until the third chapter when Shandor said, “Maybe you should hide your blonde hair or Daesh will be aiming for you.”
I think I have heard of something like that 2-1 rule, and I agree that it's very limiting. Plus, adding too many qualities can make a character less believable. No one's perfect, so possibly when one adds a quality, either "good" or "bad," it would be with a twist, for example in my story "Alex is nice to people but not to Rodney," or "Rose is pretty but doesn't see beauty in herself". As for physically describing your characters, I wouldn't do a lot at once, maybe sprinkle some descriptions in the story where it fits. Overall, imperfections make us interesting.
I could see how this would be a good starting point for starting writers, especially those in high school who aren't very 'mature' writers. It would help avoid a lot of self insertionalist Mary-Sue type characters which I'm sure high-school teachers have seen enough of to last a lifetime. Don't give them traits. Give them personalities that have those traits. Sometimes they may end up not even having the traits you want to assign them, but if you allow them to develop like real people, rather than giving them a set of rules for them to follow like a computer program, you'll find them come alive. Finding character voices can be hard, just keep at it. It takes practice, but you'll get the hang of it.
This is all really exceptional advice! Thank you all, I'm definitely going to be implementing this into my work. I'm currently writing a story about a heroine from the perspective of a bystander. It's an interesting challenge, for sure; which is what prompted this question, because if I'm looking at other people it can be difficult to pinpoint certain aspects of their personalities.
IMO, I think that might be taking show vs tell a bit far. If it's something that's physically observable and is important to the story, there's no reason not to simply mention it. It would be like having a one-eyed character and not mentioning that fact until some way into the story.
"Luke was a noble and good person, but he had a daddy complex, liked to make out with his sister and didn't mind committing mass murder."
I tend to agree with you. I don't think that makes a believable character either. In fact, that's good way to make a character that's just obnoxious. The flaws are forced instead of organic. And more often than not, they tend seem "try hard" instead of a meaningful representation of human behavior. Worse, those flaws often clash, rather then help, with the story's overall theme and message. That's not good. You want everything, especially characters, working towards that theme, not against it. How about this: Instead of thinking of a "bad trait," consider focusing instead on three things instead: Goals, Motive, and Conflict. Let's start with a very basic character. Let's say we have a character. Her mother is a single immigrant mother and the MC wants to go to college. That's your goal. But why? Well, her mother struggled everyday to put food on the table and this MC wants 1) Her mother to know that those struggles to give her children a better life weren't in vain. 2) She wants to be a good example to her siblings and community. 3) She wants it for herself to. She wants a good career. That's her motive. So, this is all good, but what about these flaws everyone talks about? We can't be having a mary sue here, can we? This is where your conflict comes in. What is keeping her from that goal? Let's say she wants to go to college and become a doctor, but she kind of sucks at biology. Or her grades aren't good enough. Or they are good enough, but they don't have enough money for college. Or the workload is more than she anticipated. Or she gets out there and she soon distracted by the parties and the boys and the things that college students get distracted by. Maybe she outright fails the first year of nursing school and now she's seriously doubting herself and doesn't want to go. There is where you find your character's flaws. Notice those flaws I mentioned aren't there to be there. It's not like I'm saying "Oh, she has a bad temper. Let me just have her go off on someone out of nowhere." Okay, but the story is about the girl being a first generation college graduate. Where does a bad temper fit with that theme? I mean it could work, but it not when you just throw it in there. It's like person said earlier in this thread. Most times people aren't going to have these glaring pathological character flaws like jealousy or anger. Normally, it's the little human struggles we discover about ourselves just getting through the day. Hope that helps.
I don't think this is effective. The reader forms a mental image of a character almost immediately, and once they do I feel is it very hard to change the image they have in their mind. If you want the reader to see your MC as blonde, you're going to have to mention that trait almost immediately. When an author only mentions a physical characteristic much later, it risks pulling the reader briefly out of the story because it conflicts with the mental image the reader already has. I suspect most readers then move ahead completely ignoring the author's newly-revealed trait. I know I do. If I envision a character as a redhead for three chapters and you then tell me she's blonde, I'm still going to envision her as a redhead for the remainder of the book. Personally, I prefer an author give little physical description to begin with. If they're going to give it, I think it makes the most sense to provide it as soon as the character is introduced.
There is a writing exercise my high school teacher told us about. She said: "once in a while try making your good-looking character repulsive and your ugly character the most appealing." It turned my world upside down back then, but also helped a lot. Later I developed it into "make readers accept the wrong one and doubt the hero", which is less attached to appearance and more open for interpretation. That game's not that hard to play on paper, but it made me able to see things at different angles and find various traits in people around. The second thing I've learned from it is that some features had become labeled as "bad" or "good", but they are eventually neutral, human and fit for both sides. As for physical matters: hair is hair, hands are hands, lips are lips, they can belong to anyone, the rest is up to the narrator. Right now I'm working on a text, there's a guy recovering from physical trauma. That could be marked as a "negative" element, but would it be so if his tender side is shown? On the contrary, it becomes something that depicts him as a victim, causing sympathy. The plot often demands for a certain type of personality to appear, you may want to figure this out first and try finding someone who could be a real prototype. Go along the main idea and the plot, sometimes they can turn vices to virtues and back and give you hints on what's needed right at the moment. 2:1 is too narrow for a skilled writer, so it's no ultimate rule. Besides, we all like different things, it's not always universal for the writer and the reader. You may want to explore someone's experience: just go ahead and ask what they'd do or what habits they have and include anything suitable in your work. Quick sketches are great aid: they are little writes where you describe random people graphically, like if you were filming them, then decide and explain what attracts your attention and how it interferes with your first impression and their psyche. That will gain you a big palette of nuances to choose from. I'm currently testing an RPG game for a friend and it's much fun to listen about other groups solving the riddles, it gives me impressions on different ways of thinking. Hope that would be of help.
Every kind of this. The bit about a computer program with set rules is crucial. Now that the days of clunky, boxy, poorly integrated graphics are behind us, ever notice how one of the things about modern computer animation that makes it feel fake is how smooth and fluid it sometimes is? It lacks an acknowledgment of chaos because real life is not that freak'n smooth, visually or as a metaphor. Humans are infinitely messy, irrational, unpredictable paradigms. We rarely even follow the rules we go around actively proselytizing. That's why the word hypocrisy exists in order to describe the phenomenon, and it's a common word in common play because it's a common happenstance. Your character is not a game character. As part of the human condition, whatever parameters you think describe the character will get broken.
I don't think a formula like this is going to be very helpful. Fleshing out characters is about bringing them to life. That goes beyond personality traits and physical descriptions. Try to think about your characters outside the narrative of your story. What happened before your story started? You don't have to include a backstory, though, I am a fan of lightly weaving backstory into the present narrative. It's the stories of our lives that make us who we are.
