Secrets of Writing: Characterization part 4

PERSONALITY

Personality comes in three basic flavors: Boring, interesting, and scary. You need to determine which version of the latter two you want your characters to have, because boring is the last thing you want a character to be.

Of course, there are times you will want a boring character for the sake of contrast, or to make some kind of point. But even then, you have to make them interesting enough to keep our attention.

Think of a small party of people. Notice how some people seem to always stand out of a crowd. They seem to get all the attention. As a writer, you’ve got to figure out what they’re doing right that makes them interesting to others and use that to your advantage.

Of course, popular people are usually very shallow and superficial to talk to. This is because they’re afraid of their own inner demons and they are on the run from their own neuroses. They don’t want to get into any conversations that might expose this or dredge up thoughts they’re trying to avoid. Your characters can be like that if you want, but they still have to be empathetic.

Popular individuals are favored because they retain mystery about themselves. They don’t reveal their inner pain or their personal problems. At the same time, they uplift the mood of a scene. The “life of the party” is always someone with a sense of humor, a schmoozer who knows how to please. Depressed or angry individuals are a turn off, even if they are mysterious.

Another way people achieve popularity is by stroking another’s ego in a non-obsequious way. They do it by treating the other person as a peer, rather than a superior. But doing it too much is obvious and it comes off insincere. You have to find the right balance.

So creating a personality that is positive and somewhat mysterious should be your main goal. Your hero cannot look like a wimp internally, even if they do externally. You can peel away the layers of mystery as the story unfolds. But never tell us too much about a person right off the bat.

It’s one of the first things a person learns about dating. Never tell the other person everything about yourself. It will inevitably bore them or put them off. The less someone knows, the more they need to find out. That gives them something to work for. It’s like a carrot on a stick. We need motivations in life. Nothing has value unless we struggle for it. So relationships that have the most appeal are always the those involving a chase. We chase after what we think we see and want. The less we know about someone, the more we can project our fantasies and ideals on them.

The great psychologist Carl Jung proposed a theory that we project our inner most desires on people we are attracted to. We make them what we want them to be in our minds. They are never truly what we believe them to be. And if we see that demonstrated in some way it’s very disappointing and hurtful. Character personas are idealized human personalities. We create clear individuals we can understand. So it’s necessary to reveal what we want the reader to know at that point in time, so they will form this idealized model of the character in their minds while reading.

A character’s personality needs to grab our attention. They have to light up every scene. Naturally, the Hero is the main bonfire. We don’t want the supporting cast to get to steal the show, though it can happen. Make sure the Hero and Villain keeps us spellbound. Their personality needs to outshine the other characters in the story.

Scary personalities are the kind crazy people have. They make us worried that it could rub off. Or they remind us of that old adage: “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” Scary characters are great for spiking the energy of a scene. The Frank Booth character in BLUE VELVET really grabbed our attention every time he was on camera. But you have to be careful with these kind of characters because they can lapse into parody very easily.

Ultimately, if you want to create and interesting and believeable personality in a character, try to think the way they would. And never use clichéd dialog or lines you’ve heard in movies and TV shows. You want the characters to stand out. They need to come from a place that they believe in. They are doing what they think is correct, which may or may not be what you think is correct. 

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