Characterization Secrets Revealed

THE CHARACTER INTERVIEW

Want to know the secret to writing a story your readers can’t put down? Ask your main character.

You stories come alive through your characters. Truly, the story is not yours – it belongs to your main character. If your characters are flat, then even the most original of plots will also fall flat to the reader. It is fairly easy to create a character in your own image. But what happens when you need a character very different from yourself? How do you make that character ring true to the reader?

Character sketches are important when creating solid characters. When you start writing Chapter 23 you won’t have Dillon looking into her deep brown eyes when her eyes were bright green in Chapter 1. You already know that Jake was an all star linebacker in high school, so you don’t have to wonder if he could actually lift Darren’s dead body into the trunk of a car and throw him into the swamp. Your character sketch will tell you those things. What it won’t tell you, however, is Jake’s motivation. It won’t tell you why Jake might have killed Darren. In order to know those things, you need to know more about your character than a simple character sketch will allow. The tool I find most effective for really getting to know a character, his motivations, and his internal thought process is the character interview.

In life when you are getting to know someone, you do so through your interaction with them. You can do the same thing with your main characters. If you sit and talk to a character, you will get to know him and how he will react in any situation. You will know what truly motivates him (even if that underlying motivation is hidden from your reader until you expertly unveil your final plot twist). Characters with depth will pull a reader through parts of the plot that, while necessary, are not high-tension. The reader will follow these characters because you have made the reader care. In order for the reader to care about a character, you need to care about that character. For you to care about your character, you need to know him or her.

This is not to say that all characters need to be highly-developed. Some of your characters are needed for the story – for instance, someone needs to be driving the cab on the way home from the night club, or a boy stocking produce may cause apples to spill across the aisle, sending your main character tumbling into the arms of a stranger (who becomes important later) – but you do not need to know everything about them. Without these roles your story would not be complete, but the characters themselves can be flat. They serve their purpose and they are gone from the story. The characters you really need to know are your main characters, especially your antagonist and protagonist.

How do you know if you really “know” your character?

Have you sat down with him in a coffee shop or stood behind her in a long line at a department store? Have you sat in the seat next to her on a plane ride overseas? Have you walked into the local bar and found yourself sitting next to him?

What does he think of the current President of the United States? How does she feel about exercise or no-carb diets? Is there a reason she would never buy a Ford? Why does he no longer talk to his older sister? What’s in his refrigerator? Has she ever lost a loved-one or been cheated on?

You may say that none of these questions have anything to do with your story, and that may be true. However, questions like this have everything to do with your character. If reviewers are saying that your character isn’t quite right or doesn’t ring true, it may be because you don’t know them like you think you do.

An interview may be in order, or possibly just a written account of a chance meeting between you and your character. The setting can be any of your choosing. It should be a place that your main character would frequent.

If your main character has a drastically different lifestyle than your own, you may be forced to choose the formal interview style:

If your main character is a crack addict living in an inner city and you are from a small farming town in central Wisconsin, you may need to “travel” to the city for an actual interview with him. He’ll want people to know that he’s not all bad and that he was once a good kid in the seventh grade. He will grant you the time because he wants you to accurately portray him in your story. He will show you he’s not all bad, and will trust that you’ll find a way to show your readers this.

If your main character lives in the desert and you’ve lived all your life at the seaside, again, you may need to “travel” to her location for a formal interview. She’s your character. She will sit down with you to tell you her story – just to make sure you’ve got it right before you tell the world.

If you have common interests with your main character, perhaps you have a chance meeting somewhere:

You meet a man who was just jilted by his girlfriend in a coffee shop while reading a copy of the Canterbury Tales. He puts down the book to attend to his coffee and sees you there. The national news is on and he starts a conversation from one of the news stories. From there, you learn more about him through active dialogue.

Maybe you meet your main character at a local dog park. You’ve never seen her there before, but you both own Black Labs, who seem to want to run and play together, so you strike up a conversation. Your conversation turns from dogs to day-to-day life as the animals scamper off, happy to run and play without your watchful eyes.

In either scenario, you may be surprised what you find out about your characters. The interview forces you to really get into their heads and to see their life, and the world, from their perspective. Many authors interview most, if not all, of their characters in this way to ensure that the lives they bring to the page ring true to the reader.

As an author, you form your characters. You breathe life into human beings and other entities on the page and make them come alive for the reader. Getting to know the character before you introduce him or her to your readers is imperative to the success of your story. If a character is based on yourself or someone you know, it may be very easy to relay that person and all of their idiosyncrasies to your readers. On the other hand, if your story calls for a person you have never met before, or someone from a different time or place, you may need to lay out that character in more detail before continuing on with the story.

The role your character plays in your story may also influence your interview questions. Remember, good protagonists have some negative personality traits and antagonists have some positive personality traits – they are all human (or based on a human personality). Even Freddie Krueger had a reason for the things he did. Now, simply because he was burned alive by neighborhood parents does not, to us, make his actions acceptable, but we understand him and his need for revenge. Your readers need to understand your evil characters from the same stand point. In this interview, ask the hard questions. Get the hard answers.

Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, although the undisputed hero of these tales, had several issues to deal with. Horatio Cane on CSI: Miami – always gets his man, but sometimes has underlying motivations. He’s got baggage, too. Even your “knight in shining armor” characters have baggage. They have a past that lead them to where they are in their world right now. Ask those questions. Find out those motivations. Is there some reason they are fighting so hard for their cause? There must be – or they would not be fighting hard enough to win.

There are many different ways to develop great characters. I would never suggest using a character interview in lieu of a character sketch, for example, but I would suggest using this technique to get to know your characters in addition to many of the other tools you use regularly as an author. It will help to give your character a true and unique voice and allow you to portray that character to your readers. After all, it’s not your story – it’s your main character’s story. It should be told from his eyes and with his voice.

The following is an interview with a lighthouse keeper who has more to his story than meets the eye. It is also an example of the idea that we do not always get all of the answers we need from our character interviews, but they will, at the very least, point us in the right direction:

ID: 1566704   (Rated: 13+) Lesson Four Character assignment  I sat down with a character in the novel I am currently writing. by Beck the Boilerlady