Character Creation: Part One

Welcome to my new blog, Fiction Writer’s Formula. Here, I’ll discuss writing styles, strategies, tips, and mistakes I’ve made along the way. I hope that all you aspiring writing out there will find this blog useful.

Let’s start with character. You don’t have a story without one. Every event in your story, every problem (and your fiction should involve an avalanches of problems) exists to define, transform, or prove transformation for your character.

I consider character creation so important that I’ve centralize my next few posts around the subject.

Nearly every great story starts with a character, and every great character starts with a problem.

When you set out to write a story, ask yourself what belief serves as your story’s moral premise, the message you wish to convey to your readers. That revenge solves nothing? That greedy leads to unhappiness?

Create a problem for your hero, your protagonist, which connects to your premise. Decide what sort of event(s) would create that problem. What’s your hero’s goal? How does the problem frustrate that goal? Why?

You need, as the author, to understand two relationships between your hero and her or his goal.

1)                   Why does your hero have this goal (it must feel immensely important to your hero, life and death)?

2)                   Why does your hero think she or he has that goal?

The two usually exists separately.

Ever read the Japanese manga Naruto or watch the cartoon show? Naruto thinks he wants to become the leader of his village when he grows up.

He actually feels lonely. He’s an orphan, shunned for reasons he doesn’t yet understand. He wants everyone to view him as an equal. He decides, after he discovers that everyone respects the village’s leader, that he wants to become the next leader.

A character named Sasuke (also from Naruto) thinks he wants to become the strongest fighter in the world so he can take revenge against his older brother.

He actually felt helpless when he couldn’t protect his parents from his murderous brother. He never wants to feel helpless again. If he can defeat anyone (to include his brother), no one can threaten him.

Notice how these two characters can’t both get their way. If Naruto really wants only to become his village’s leader, it wouldn’t matter to him if Sasuke respects him or not, if Sasuke ever views him as an equal.

If Sasuke’s concerns end with the death of his brother, he could give Naruto what he wants—acceptance as an equal, but Sasuke must feel that no one can stand as his equal, since an equal could defeat him, return him to his childhood shame.

Take Tony Stark (a.k.a. Ironman) from the movie Avengers. Tony, at the beginning, “doesn’t play well with others” (as another character tells him after a psychiatric exam).

Tony inherited not just his intelligence and billions of dollars, but also his family’s company. His wants, whether he realizes it or not, to prove to himself that he made himself a success.

"I don’t like it when people hand me things,” he says whenever someone tries to deliver an item to him.

The movie has other plans for him. An alien attack on New York (911 flashback, anyone?) forces him to partner up with a few other superheroes and save the day. His journey forces him to work with others, to serve as part of a whole.

He spends much of the movie in opposition of his new teammates. His subconscious fear that he can’t handle things on his own serves as his antagonist, the source of frustration against his new goal: the rescue of Earth from the aliens.

The movie starts after Tony puts his name on a skyscraper like Donald Trump. He, by the movie’s conclusion, replaces his name with the letter A for Avengers, the name of his new team.

Your story needs a premise and a character with a problem that relates to that premise. Your protagonist needs a believable reason why she or he possesses her or his problem (goal).

Your character must offer more than this, though. How do you craft a personality for them?

I’ll start us down that path next week. See you then.