Secrets of Writing: Constructing Characters: Part 1
PERSONALITY
Personality comes in five basic flavors: Boring, funny, sexy, interesting, and scary. You need to determine which version of the latter four 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 in 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 often shallow and superficial to talk to. They might be popular because of their looks, or money. But a lot of the time, it’s because they are very careful about what they say, and now to manipulate other people’s egos. A lot of the time, popular people are also funny. Maybe not to you, but to their friends. A person’s sense of humor can tell you a lot about them.
Popular individuals are often 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.
Human beings are attracted to positivism, not negativism . Successful people tend not to mope around or act depressed. Even if you may be like that, if you want a character to be appealing, you have to think of a way to make them more positive and dynamic than you are.
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.
If your hero is popular to others, then they need to behave in a way that’s believable. If they’re not popular, they need to be empathetic.
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 ones 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. It can range from homicidal to disturbed. 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.
Components of a Persona
The human persona can be broken down into three main components. Intellectual, Emotional, and Habitual. Some people are more prone to reason than emotion. Some are the opposite. And many people have unconscious habits which are displayed randomly or most of the time. These habits can indicate certain neuroses or psychological traits that can be used for characterization purposes. When constructing a character’s persona it’s not a bad idea to keep these three things in mind and see how they can be used to your advantage.
Personas, Masks and Facades
It’s important to understand that for many people, their personality is something they constructed as a tool for interacting with society. It’s not who they really are. It’s a mask. The real person is far more complex. If you could read people’s minds, you’d see their true persona hiding behind the facade.
We all know that how people act under normal circumstances is misleading. We can never be sure of a person’s true intentions, even if we know them well. There’s only one way to really get to see the inside of someone’s head and that’s when they are put under pressure. The cowards run and the heroes let the fists fly when it all hits the fan. When the Audience knows where a character really stands on an issue, they can be more comfortable with them.
In life, this is how you find out who your real friends are. When they are tested by the cruel twists of fate. The term “Fair Weather Friend” is known to us all. We’ve seen who sticks by our side when things get rough and who doesn’t return our calls.
In a story, you need to put a lot of pressure on your characters. They need to be tested, put through the fire. We need to see what kind of person they really are, what they are truly made of. And that’s what the Audiences want to see.
Pressure
Pressure can come in many forms. Through relational characterization, we can show how a normally cool character becomes flustered when his mother is around. By using choice as a tool, we can present the character with problems where the solution they choose determines their moral backbone. We can also cause the character a world of hurt to see how they react to it. The Villain can force them to do something against their will, and we can see how they deal with it.
Pressure is another critical force in storytelling. No pressure, no conflict, no story.
No one cares about people who have an easy time. We might get jealous, but we won’t be impressed. You want your hero to impress us.
There are exceptions, of course. James Bond seems to have an easy time doing certain things. But if you watch the movies, you’ll notice the best ones are the stories where he was under the most pressure to succeed. Ultimately, James Bond’s ability at cards or seducing women isn’t the skills that matter. It’s not how he overcomes the Villain. He does that using his wits and his brawn and usually, they are put to the test.
The job of a plot is to put pressure on the characters so we can see who they are and what they’re made of. Until that happens, your hero is just another citizen.
REMEMBER: True character is revealed under pressure.
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