Character — The Carrot and Stick Approach

“Just because you are a character doesn’t mean that you have character.” 

— Winston Wolfe, Pulp Fiction

How do you make characters that have character? Here’s my carrot and stick approach.

Badly written characters are cardboard cut-outs: unconvincing, sensational, two-dimensional, exaggerated and only there to serve the plot.

Like painting by numbers or dot-to-dot, they’re just there to fill in the blanks.

They’re often stereotypes and don’t have enough flaws or substance to make them interesting.

Good characters are like icebergs — there’s far more to them than the jagged bit that you can see sticking out of the water.

To create them, you have to know what the iceberg looks like underneath the water.

If you know something about the character and don’t say it out loud, it will inform your writing.

Your readers will pick up on it sub-consciously and start to ask questions — What’s their secret? What happened to them? Who are they deep down?

From the carefully chosen tip-of-the-iceberg, that you show the reader, they’ll infer enough of the rest to keep reading.

Great characters are seriously messed up. They’ve got issues. They’re flawed, believable and have a sense of their own history.

What emotional baggage does your character carry around with them? Who are they? What do they do? What do they think?

And most importantly, what do they WANT?

Don’t be afraid to base your characters on people that you know. Real people are always far weirder and more complicated than anything we can dream up.

Change them just enough to avoid getting sued.

Spend some quality time with your characters. The more you write them the more you’ll get to know them.

What’s your protagonist like when they’re not out saving the world?

Describe them getting up, getting dressed and going out. What do they wear? What do they put in their bag?

Follow them round for the day. Take them out shopping. See how they cope with the mundane everyday world.

Take your time over this (like eating jelly babies).

Once you know what they’re normally like, you’ll have something to compare with how they react under pressure — then it’s time to really put them through their paces.

If you don’t believe in your characters then no-one else will. You’ve got to treat them like real people.

What’s more, you have to be willing to treat them badly.

You want them to be interesting — put them through hell and see how they react.

Shove them together just to see how they get along.

Now stir things up a bit.

Think of a significant event, one that will challenge or change the direction of that character’s life.

Make it happen.

What do they want in life? Whatever it is, they can’t have it. Not yet.

Put all manner of conflict and obstacles in-between them and what they want. Throw at them everything you’ve got.

Your characters have got to learn to fend for themselves. And in struggling towards what they want, they’ll change.

They might not even want or need their goal or object of desire any more by the time they get there.

Audition your characters. Hold tryouts. Make them earn their place.

Scar them for life. Take them to hell and back (sometimes literally).

Give them a carrot to go after and beat them with a stick.

Then decide whether to give them a happy ending or just to happily end them.

Stalk your characters in the real world

Go outside. Shut the door.

Pick a person on public transport and follow them until you come to a locked door — literally follow them round all day until they go home or into work and then leave them alone so you don’t get arrested.

Take notes about them — who you think they are, how they move, how they act. If you hear them in conversation even better.

This isn’t cheating — it’s a great way of getting interesting characters. Why bother going to the effort of creating them from scratch when the world is full of readymade weirdos anyway?

One word of caution though: be careful who you follow — little old ladies are fine, but I would give the axe-wielding maniac in a ski mask a wide berth.

In short: Stay safe. Don’t get murdered. Try not to die.

And, when in doubt, don’t take the advice of anyone on the internet about anything.

Character Coups

Have you had enough of your main characters?

Are they dull, uninteresting, or just too similar to each other?

It’s time for a revolution.

If your main characters are too similar you can change them or use their faults to your advantage.

Make them different, set them against each other, or just look for other oddballs that stand out more than they do and use them instead.

For example, say your protagonists have become like male and female versions of the same character.

This has great story potential.

Turn it around, make it into a blessing rather than a curse.

Make it an issue in the plot that needs to be resolved — they’re related, or they’re clones, or they literally have become the same person.

Whatever.

One way or another, they have to resolve this — be that with a nice cosy fireside chat over a cuppa about their family tree, or a fight to the death over which personality is dominant.

When you started out you may have thought that you knew who the main character was.

But there’s nothing wrong with changing it.

Audition your characters.

Take a look at what you’ve written — is there a secondary character, or even a passerby, who stands out?

Who is far more interesting and exciting (to you) than your main character?

Who you want to find out more about?

GOOD — that’s probably why you put them there.

Time to let them come to the fore.

So how do you replace your main character?

That’s up to you.

You could:

Kill them off so that someone else has to step in (Liam Neeson in Star Wars);

Just stop writing about them and shout “The protagonist has left the building” (You know, like Elvis);

Make them take second place in the plot or even become a side-kick (Batman gets the sack or Robin gets promoted).

No matter what you decide — like crappy relationships — if you’ve had enough and done everything that you can, then it’s time to move on.

But, unlike relationships, don’t let them down gently.

Get rid of them with style and creativity.

James Garside is an independent journalist, author, and travel writer. Join Chapter 23 for the inside track on all their creative projects and insights about life, work, and travel.