How do writers create those "special" characters?

How do you create those really interesting, complex characters? The ones that feel like they could be a real person out there somewhere. They just stay with you whether they were a hero, anti-hero, villain.
Is it really just a case of making them relatable by giving them a character arc, character lie, fears, wants, flaws, interests, values, relationship etc or is there more to it than that? If so then what? What do you think the best fictional characters have that set them apart from all the others? I saw a TV show a while back where the character had a very simple obtainable goal. Nothing was in her way accept for herself. Her fears, personality and her flaws. I wasn't much interested in her goal but the drive behind it. She was prepared to sacrifice so much and open herself up to so much hurt and rejection...it was her want for this goal that made her compelling for.

 

I've heard that advice before. That a writer should aim to make a character that readers want to succeed, for whatever reason.

I think the way I go about making special characters is either by creating someone I can relate to or creating someone I'm drawn to. I want them to have outward goals, and inner goals. I want them to have their own viewpoint and not be fully aware of themselves. I also like taking little moments with real people and trying to insert them in the story. It doesn't mean my entire character is based on that person, but they share similarities.

 

My sneakin' suspicion is that those special characters were probably based at least largely on somebody real, but also tapped into something archetypal. If someone inspires certain kinds of reactions in you—awe, profound respect etc, that person probably puts you in touch with the archetypal. I think a writer can use that, though probably without realizing they're doing it. In other words, they probably didn't set out to create a 'special' character, but just unknowingly tapped into the deep unconscious through observation of someone they know.

 

See, that's the exact opposite way I go about creating my own characters. Not to say that mine are special, only that they feel special to me. In answer to your question, I imagine characters as human beings and discover who they 'are' by making them a kind of 'friend' I'd like to spend time with (if that doesn't sound too peculiar). I make them human. I ask them what they think/feel about a specific development in their world. The story grows organically out of who they are - not the other way round.

 

I think what an author can do to make a character special is—to care. To care about what matters to the character. That doesn't mean the character needs to share the author's views or loves or hates. But the author needs to share theirs.

One of my secondary characters is a young rancher in Montana in the late 1880s. I wanted him to be a successful rancher, which meant he needed to care about what he was doing. As I developed him, I had to figure out what there was about ranching that he loved.

His father was also a successful rancher, but their attitudes were different. Rob, my character, has an inborn love of that kind of life—and he lets it define him—both to others, and to himself. His father, on the other hand, saw ranching simply as a job. The older man was a responsible individual who would tackle any job and do it to a high standard, but he didn't actually love being a rancher. He kind of fell into the job, and stuck with it and made a success of it, but when the chance came to pass the ranch to his son, move on and do something else, he took it. Rob, on the other hand, would die rather than give up the ranch.

Superficially, Rob is a cheery soul, popular, respected, humorous, effective, and knows how to have fun—but deep down, he is serious about his chosen way of life and the protective love he has for his family and friends. He's inherited his father's responsible attitude towards work in general, but his desire to do a good job goes a lot deeper than that. The cheery, fun-loving, teasing side of his personality can quickly change to something far more implacable if anything threatens his ranch or his family's well-being. Crossing him is not a good idea. He will be fair, but you won't get around him either, if your intentions aren't good. He doesn't flinch from taking hard decisions, and his temper can be formidable if he's pushed to it.

I had to put myself in his shoes to create him. I personally have no affinity for ranching, so I had to imagine what his feelings were like. But it was his feelings that mattered, when it came to constructing his character. I had to figure out what HE cares about, in order to make him memorable.

The general belief when it comes to plot construction is that you need to decide what a character 'wants.' That's okay, but it can also be superficial. It can help you create a plot, but if you want to create a memorable character, I think you need go deeper. What does your character love? What matters to him? What would destroy him if it were taken away? Figuring that out is what brings a character to life.

 

All the things that you mentioned are important. But I think it's more than that. I think memorable characters also display a sense of vulnerability. For example, all memorable characters feel a sense of loss during the course of their journey. And this doesn't necessarily mean someone dies, but more of a moment of despair and hopelessness.

When characters don't have that sense of loss or sacrifice during their journey, they can't become that character everyone remembers.

 

It is both simple and complex.
All complex characters consist of three things. History, Motivation, and Character.

History
The story is responsible for what the character survived. His attitude to different people, the world. Where is the character and how did he get here.

Motivation
All complex characters have their own motivation. They have their own goals. They may be different, but they must be understandable to the reader. Whether the character is building his future, or trying to escape from the past, but this motivation should be clear to the reader.
Avoid creating just good and evil characters. Give each character their own motivation, then create a situation where these ideas, principles, and desires of different people collide. This is how different views of the world and different pasts make people enemies.

Character
Character is responsible for how a person reacts to obstacles that stand in their way. How do they move toward their goals?
This carries both positive and negative qualities.
Brave - reckless.
Good - naive.

Tip. (Write a small plate for the character, where you write information about these three points. Each time you don’t know what to write, look at the tablet and think how exactly this person will act in this situation. As with story writing, think about how exactly your story influenced your character, and how the events of the book changed him. If it will be difficult for you, then update the plate with changes from your story, but be careful with this, people are not able to change much, so if you change the character too much or often, the reader will no longer feel connected or understand the character he is reading about. So the basis of the character must remain the same.)

Another important principle that is often forgotten. "Nothing appears from nowhere, and does not disappear into nowhere."
Everything must have a reason. A character cannot abruptly become strong or smart because the writer wanted to. If the character is strong, then he must have a reason from the past to be strong. If a character needs to be smart, then he must have a reason to be smart.

The last principle is "Not perfect."
People hate perfect things. Therefore, Superman has a weakness in the form of kryptonite.
The character cannot have, only positive or only negative qualities. The character must always have balance. The protagonist must have flaws, or he will not be believable. The villain must have its positive qualities or it will not be believable either.

 

I especially like these two principles. The first one is connected to 'continuity.' Cause and effect, etc.

The second one is connected to creating a believable character/person, not just a plot device. This is what will make your story memorable. Believable people automatically will be more interesting to read about than a 'perfect' hero, or, conversely, a 'perfectly bad' villain.

 

I think this character was memorable because she was extraordinary, not just believable:

Extraordinary is the key word, I don't believe people want to read about normal. Well not too much anyway. This can mean many things but the most memorable characters anywhere in literature are always extraordinary in some way.

Mav

 

I've noticed a consistency when reading deep characters: the author leaves their thoughts and actions up to interpretation. The actions of the character speak for themelves, and they have to suggest the complex machinations of our character's mind.

Whenever a character is overly described by the author, or his actions are explained, it sort of destroys the magic. In real life, our impressions of other people are limited, because other human beings are so deep and intricate that we can't really sum them up in a few words. We think of them as the totality of their actions and manners.
When exposed to a fictional character, we in fact know nothing about them. It is through the exercise of interpreting their actions, some which we expect, some which come at a surprise, that we imagine a character as sentient and enigmatic - like a real person.

Personally, I've literally gotten teary eyed thinking about the sufferings of my fictional darlings, and felt ecstatic for those who found fortune. These characters have turned out the best by far. So it probably helps if you're really emotional

 

An interesting character has its own world views and ethics. This allow someone to be the hero and villain at the same time while creating a power struggle where the reader isn't sure about who's right or wrong. This also increases the drama when one of them has to kill the other.

Getting into the head of an odd character should feel like stepping into another world where everything circles around strange interests and is biased by large amounts of blatant self denial.

 

I am haunted by the past, I'm drawn to oddball types – the unloved, unlovable, the unloving, ya know the walking wounded. People that I feel are haunted by the past too and this intrigues me and coupled with the fact that I'm an upbeat person – a hopeful person, I can not divide this outlook or tone from my work. It is how I write. It took a while to spot it and face in and work with it but this allows me more freedom in how I create characters and stories.
So I think one of the major keys of writing a good character is knowing what sort of people you're drawn to, or are interested in, and how you interpret behavior.

I look for the trauma – or that moment they don't even recognize as a trauma and let it rear it's head as my characters try to achieve their goals. And because no man is an island I understand that every great character needs someone else to play off I like to create a catalyst character someone who is not necessarily an antagonist, and not always a friend.
Links are really important and staying true to the character you first shape at the front of the novel. In Jane Eyre it would have been ridiculous had she given in to Rochester and became his mistress as that would have compromised her need for independence and to live a moral life. Same thing with Harriet the Spy - when her friends find her book and read it - Harriet doesn't grovel in apology in fact she allows herself to be isolated and cloaks herself in a mixture of anger -- how dare they read my stuff -- and loneliness.
Tone helps.
Links help like tying in the setting to character -- Willy Wonka is perfect for his magical chocolate factory, Harriet is just the right kind of brash gutsy girl that would climb into a rich woman's dumb waiter. Or theme -- Humbert searching for a love that is almost an art transcends Lolita into a figure and this is mirrored in his travels through roadside America and the fact that he never really sees Lo as her namesake Dolores or what her friends call her Dolly. That part of her is never known.

 

Not in the fiction I read and watch.

 

I do think that these are the basis of a special character, but what makes them excel is that all these things come together in an exemplary way.

I don't read as much as most of the posters on this board probably do but one of my favorite series is A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin. And I feel like Martin's real strength in that series is how he writes the characters. What really draws me to these characters is the tragic arcs they have. Each one has a tragic flaw that if left unchecked does result in their demise. This creates that real fear that these characters will not get the happy endings we want for them. This also makes it so that even though there is a lot of external conflict at the end of the day it is whether the character has won that internal war that determines how their arc will end.

So I guess I would add one more trait to a character that makes them standout and that is that internal conflict and the chance that the characters could fail to become the better person we know them capable of being.

 

He gave the orcs purpose? And industrialised parts of the Middle Earth.

Everyone bashes on Sauron just because he's a modernist. Wasn't everyone going to be included in his new world vision?

 

A fine example of evil incarnate. A more human example is Stansfield from The Professional. He's wicked through and through, yet still believable, memorable, and compelling.

 

Does Palpatine have any redeeming qualities?

 

Sauron does not reveal himself as a villain. He does not speak or do. He never even shows up. It is described by other characters more as an element of nature (a kind of cataclysm) than as a character. This is a different kind of villain; they must be taken apart separately. Since we are talking here about characters and not the forces of nature, then its partitioning seems to me unnecessary.

Not a bad example. If you look at the episodes in turn, then at first he does not seem such a bad guy. He changed after an attempt on his murder. (Look at 2-3 episodes) We see how after trying to kill him, he becomes paranoid. But he does not consider himself evil, or the dark side evil. Therefore, he is trying to recruit Luke, go to their side and see world with their eyes.

Regarding motivation. He just wanted to clean up the galaxy. This is the eternal battle between order and freedom. What is more important? On one side, he ruled with an iron hand; on the other, we never heard of wars or major conflicts between all peoples of nations and planets.Initially, he had good motives that led him into darkness.

PS: I didn’t watch new star wars and I won’t watch it.

 

Hate to be blunt, but it sounds like you didn't watch the prequel series either.

Palpatine created a war across the galaxy, just so he could manipulate the senate into giving him more power. By promising to end the war he created. He was pure evil from the start, he just kept it on the down-low, because he is a master manipulator. Even the attempt on his life was likely an act where he never was actually in danger, but was done to get Anakin fully on his side. I don't doubt that he had the power to kill Mace Windu without any help.

But I do think that despite being pure evil, Palpatine is a fascinating character. I think it's because he is just so clever, always way ahead of our heroes. And that the only way to beat him is exploit his one tiny weakness (his trust in Vader). Honestly, beating him is kind of like trying to blow up the Death Star in A New Hope in how improbable it seems.

 

You do not contradict me.
He believes that the end justifies the means. He purposefully goes to his goal. (This is a human quality, determination. Usually this is the quality of good guys.)
He trusts Vader. (Another good quality. Trust. Again, positive quality.)
The fact that he is smart (Positive quality.)

We may not agree with his actions or morality, but without the set of these positive qualities that balance his negative qualities, we would not take this character seriously.
Imagine the ideal villain: Stupid, weak, lazy, cowardly, indecisive and so on. Show me such a villain, which consists only of negative qualities.

I do not argue that Palpatine is a villain. I say that he has positive qualities and you named them yourself. It is these positive qualities that make him believable.

 

I didn't watch the old new Star Wars.

 

Hannibal is more interesting than Jame Gumb.
Rorschak is more interesting than Night Owl.
Lex Luther is more interesting than Brainiac.
Magneto is more interesting than the Apocalypse.
Darth Vader is more interesting than Palpatine.

Many other examples.

I am not saying that this is an ideal system. But we are talking about creating interesting characters. It is this approach that makes characters more interesting. Although you can make one of the elements mystery to create a veil of secrecy. Example movie "Driver".
Just like you say, there are many other ways to make a book more interesting without creating interesting and deep characters. Interesting setting, interesting events, interesting mechanics of world etc.