Last week we talked about making the characters in your book compelling and interesting and the most simple way to do this is to have them struggle against something or someone.
A character who faces adversity, danger, or fear, who for example is opposed by an obstacle let’s say climbing a huge forbidding mountain or facing a monster or a homicidal killer—this is likely to be interesting.
But you should also make your characters fully developed, not one-dimensional as though they were as I like to say, “cardboard cutouts.”
In other words, with a character, if there is no hint or explanation why they are acting the way they do, a reader will likely lose interest and get something else to read.
A three-dimensional character on the other hand is one whose personal motivations are made clear. Why they are doing what they do and why they want what they want.
A character (good or evil) should be after a goal.
The reader will stay hooked on your story to see if the character achieves this goal.
This applies mostly to fiction but also for nonfiction if your book is not just dry facts and dates, but also portrays factual history providing dialog between real characters through the use of scenes similar to those in a novel.
As an author, do not tell the reader… why a character acts as he or she does.
Instead, show the reader why… through the words and behavior of the characters.
You can include their background (at least hints of it), where the characters came from and how they came to be doing what they’re doing.
Adding flaws to a character, for example weaknesses, can add color.
I did a book entitled “Infested Waters” about a pod of pollution-caused ocean-going spiders that were attacking and eating swimmers in the warm waters of the British Virgin Islands. The lead character the hero a world-renowned ocean biologist named Jack Brendan, is called upon to discover what is behind the attacks. He is required by his job to scuba dive.
Jack has always been secretly terrified of swimming in the ocean.
He hides this fear as best he can. He does the job because he has to preserve his pay and status although he has the shakes every time he goes on a dive.
Jack has a girlfriend who’s the opposite; at home swimming in the sea as though she was taking a bath. Jack has to constantly pretend to be a he-man to impress her (this allowed me to work some humor into the story).
Make the characters as different from each other as you can. Sameness is usually boring.
The objective here is to provide the reader with enough information about a character so they can become emotionally involved. The reader wants the hero to win, the villain to lose.
Once again; do not as you-the-author simply tell the reader something. In this case that Jack is afraid of the ocean. That’s boring. Instead, show the reader. Jack shakes with fear telling himself “Oh my God!” as he puts on the dive gear.
When characters want something it drives the plot. The reader will keep turning pages to find out if they get it (the goal).
Build tension through the book. Will the hero reach his or her goal?
Perfection is also boring, the person who is always right, who is never afraid and who effortlessly wins…whatever.
Instead, part of your goal as author is to instill in readers empathy for a character deserving of it. For a villain you want to portray, by showing through action and dialog, why the villain came to their villainy.
One of the most memorable transitions in character development was the original movie of King Kong in 1933. For most of the movie Kong was the horrifying monster that audiences screamed at. But at the end Kong became a pathetic character, shot down by airplanes off the Empire State Building. For all his immense strength Kong could not defeat the destructive engines of man—It was a pitiful end—and all for the ape’s love of a girl.
The audience suddenly felt sympathy for Kong.
That kind of twist is an example of rich character development.
More next week on characters and how as an amateur psychologist if you know what makes people tick—this can be helpful.
John Sammon is a freelance writer and the author of 41 books, many of which can be foundhere on Amazon. He is a resident of El Dorado Hills. This commentary is part of a series on the journey of self publishing.
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