Characters

When I see the word “character” I think of two things: the characters in books, and meeting a “character” in real life, which conjures up a host of images for me: the nutty lady I met when we adopted our cat, the before mentioned vampiresque executives, or the creepy gas attendant I saw last week.

Characters are the meat of any story, even though I adore settings. I love to see a unique world built before my eyes. I can drown in it. And perhaps that is the best choice of words, because no matter how good the setting is, if the people in that world are bland, boring, or you don’t care about them, the best setting in the world can’t save the book.

People have asked me where I get ideas for the people in my books. Fans have said mine are very real. I think that’s because my characters many times start from a person I’ve met…often they are a blend of a couple, usually exaggerated, and sometimes I will gather bits of conversations and expand. And of course, there is always a bit of me in every one of my protagonists; I think this is true of any author.

Two things I’ve discovered that is important to keep in mind, one is don’t ever make the person TOO much like the real life model. Even though the likelihood is nil, you don’t want your mom reading a story and saying, dear…was this ME? Not good. The second thing I learned was that even odd people have personalities. And personalities are usually somewhat stable. Even unpredictable people are predictable in their unpredictability, if that makes sense.

So how to accomplish a certain stableness in my characters? Since my education is in psychology, I use the MBTI system of identifying personality. It’s one of many, I happen to like this one because it easy to understand and it allows for flexibility. Here is a good website if you’re interested in finding out more:

http://www.myersbriggs.org/

Here’s an example to how it would work. Say I “type” my main character as a ISTJ. That means usually she’s inwardly focused, has a matter-of-fact attitude, tends to stuff feelings and is uncomfortable with emotional outbreaks, and leads an ordered life. She may break away from this now and then, but if all of a sudden she starts hugging everyone and is late to every appointment, then I haven’t been true to her.

I had a good lesson in this in one of my early books. My protagonist had to make the choice between leaving her home forever with her man, or staying in a world she knew he could never survive in. I couldn’t bear to have to leave her family, so I had her whimp out and stay; NOT what I had established as who she was. My sister called me on this immediately; my heroine would NEVER do that. So I fixed it, and it read much better …it felt “real’ again.

In essence then, grab all the weird people you want and throw them into your stories, but do make sure they have an identifiable personality beyond the showy quirks. If you don’t, you’ll have a host of Pinocchoes; characters that try to be human but will never become real to your readers.