How to Create Compelling Characters

Creating a character usually starts with one defining trait. It can be a look, an attitude, an emotion or an action. Characters can be based on someone you know or know of, or a character can be made up from whole cloth. The goal is to create a character who feels real.

What makes a character feel real?

The same things that make a person feel genuine and authentic will make a character feel real. Generally, people are usually outwardly consistent. But when you dig deeper, you find inconsistencies and paradoxes requiring more knowledge of a person’s background or experience to understand them.

If you continue probing, you find a complex emotional structure developed over years of upbringing and events which have shaped that person. If you get to know someone even more deeply, you learn their personal triumphs and doubts. All these elements go into making a character seem believable.

Love Your Characters

There’s an old adage: you don’t have to like your characters, but you absolutely must love them. Especially your villains. It’s easy to like your heroes. They are noble, heroic, brave, courageous and determined. The villains are more tricky. They can be narcissistic, venal, greedy, murderous, duplicitous or any other combination of reprehensible qualities. You may not agree with the things you need your villains to do, but as the writer you must understand their reasons for doing what they do and allow them to do so.

Approaches to Developing Character

Usually, a character begins with an initial trait. You see the character or have a broad idea of who you want the person to be. From there, as you think about the character, it is helpful to observe the people around you for traits that might be similar to your character.

How do these people demonstrate those traits? How do they affect the individual in specific ways? Sometimes, your character is informed by people you research. What choices do they make? How do others speak about them? What do people know or not know about them?

The Core of a Character

The core of the character is the set of values defining that character. There is no specific set of combinations, but there are some basics. Every characters has three selves: public, private and hidden.

Public Self

A character’s “public self” is the one they allow the world to see. It is the way they conduct themselves in the world. It is the narrative about themselves they tell to others.

Private Self

A character’s “private self” is the one they see when they are alone. It is what they think of themselves when no one is looking. It is what they see in the mirror. And, most importantly, it is how they perceive the world around them and react to those assumptions. Often in movies, main characters have a less than ideal view of themselves which at some point needs to be made public so they can face it and change.

Hidden Self

A character’s “hidden self” is the aspects of a character which the character doesn’t know they need to change. They don’t know what this is because it is hidden from them. But you, as the writer, need to understand this need within your character as it is the source of what truly motivates your character to have the drive and need to see his or her actions through to the end of your story. This is often a deep-seated, emotionally complex need that gets resolved through the changes a character goes through within a story.

Paradox

What makes people human is, while we are generally predictable, we are not always consistent. We surprise, confuse, and change how we are seen constantly. More often than not, these contradictions are driven by our hidden self — the deep-seated emotional triggers and assumptions about what we perceive.

These reactions are not conscious choices by characters that can be articulated by them; they are gut responses to events that occur around them. The key when creating a believable character is to allow for contradictions that don’t negate who the person is but add layers.

For example, someone who is shy might light up and become talkative on a subject they love; someone who is bossy and demanding all the time needs to be cared for and told what to do; someone who is brutal and thuggish might see something that makes them weep; or someone may have a secret skill or interest they acquired long ago that surfaces unexpectedly.

Believable paradoxes are what make a character fascinating, especially when the paradoxes are in conflict with each other. When building your character, try to think of who the character is and what might be some unexpected proclivities, like/dislikes, and behaviors that would be the extreme opposite of how they usually appear.

Emotions and Point of View

To make characters compelling, they need to be 3-dimensional. That means they do more than just serve a function in your plot. They must be imbued with emotions, values and perspectives specific to who they are.

Deepen a Character’s Humanity

Emotions are what makes us empathize with people. We recognize and understand the emotional reactions, and we feel their feelings along with them.

Point of View

A point of view is how a character sees the world around them. It implies a set of attitudes and opinions about themselves, the people they encounter, and how they interact with the world. A character’s point of view is what influences the way they react to people and situations. In comedy in particular, the stronger, more distinct and crazier a character’s point of view, the funnier the character will be.

Finishing Touches

Characters, like people, are very specific in their behaviors and never are two exactly alike. As a writer, you can make your characters unique and distinct by giving them specific habits and activities to define them. Anything from gnawing their cuticles when nervous to weeping at the sight of rainbows, if done in a specific and defining way can make a character stand out from all those around them.

There are many different types of characters in a story. What these characters do and what they represent are the tools the writer uses to argue for your theme and to make your story compelling. To do so, you need to know who they are, what drives them, and what they want. You must also evaluate them for how they affect a story. A fascinating character who does not influence the plot is a useless character who will distract the reader away from the story you are trying to tell.

Dominant Traits

When people describe other people, they usually identify one character trait and one emotional state. Your job as a writer is to figure out the trait and the state for each of your characters that will push your story forward.

A dominant character trait is the defining quality that makes a character unique in your story and makes the character appropriate for your story. When you look at well written movies, you’ll see that each character will have a different emotional trait which is unique to that character and complements the traits of the other characters in terms of undertaking the challenges they face.

Dominant Emotions

A character’s dominant emotion is the overall mental state of a character. While they will have a spectrum of emotions, there is usually one strong emotional state that defines each character. It defines their first response to situations and to others.

Character Arcs

A story is a document of change over time. That change occurs in the protagonist of your movie and in those they influence. The scenery doesn’t change. The objects don’t change in any material way — unless they are destroyed or created; but the people who populate your movie must change. Or you have not done your job as a writer.

Not everyone must change, but the protagonist, by way of having achieved their goal, will go through an emotional change; and the antagonist, by dint of not achieving their goal, will change as well. The change can be huge and the change can be small.

In “Whiplash,” the main character goes from timid, uncertain and forgettable to confidant, courageous and outstanding. Pretty big.

In “The Karate Kid,” the antagonist goes from arrogant and bullying to humble and generous all in his last line of the movie.

In every action movie, the bad guys go through a huge change from alive to dead.

Where Do You Start?

There are lots of ways to begin the creation of your character. You can start from the internal character or the external. I’ll dig deeper into character development in my next two blogs. But here’s a hint: It’s always helpful to start at the end.