Characters Matter

By Pamela

Over the winter school break, my two college boys were home quite a bit and, in addition to loving their being here, I enjoyed movie marathons (John Grisham titles this time around) and they spent some time catching up on their favorite TV shows via Netflix.

Because I wanted to be where they were, I generally watched what they watched. And while I could appreciate the jokes in their favorite sitcoms, I had a hard time enjoying them at the same level they did. Later I realized it was because I had no idea who the characters were. I knew the actors but not the roles they played. I wasn't invested in their lives at all.

The same can be said for books. If the author doesn't do his or her job developing the characters, you can't invest yourself in the story. Try watching a TV series you're unfamiliar with. Even if it's award-winning and everyone you know loves it, my bet is you'll not feel the same passion if you pick up a random episode in the middle of a season. You'll want to ask, Who is she? Is he married to her or do they just work together? Did she used to be with someone else? And is she not over him? Questions abound and make it nearly impossible to become interested in the story.

As writers, we have to develop characters. And not just stock characters or puppets that bend at our commands. We have to love them first (or hate them just as passionately) and figure out how best to communicate that passion to the reader.

In order to create characters that resonate with your readers, you must develop them fully. Several books on my shelves can help:

Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook by Donald Maass

Page after page of examples of characters in novels as well as ideas for creating multidimensional characters and taking them through the paces in your story.

The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman

Because one of the first things your story does is introduce main characters, this book by Lukeman really helps hammer out the essentials for getting off on the right foot. My copy is highlighted pretty extensively and I need to reread this ASAP.

Escaping into the Open by Elizabeth Berg

One of my favorite authors gives us her take on how to write good fiction. In the chapter "The Good Lie," she talks about creating empathetic characters your reader will relate to. Berg also has a lot of great exercises in this book that will get you stretching those creative muscles.


In closing, think back to television shows you loved. Chances are the characters stayed with you long after you turned off the TV. My list will probably be different than yours (and will date me) but I can think of Rhoda in the Mary Tyler Moore Show, Quincy, M*A*S*H, Carol Burnett, Cheers, Designing Women, Friends, Seinfeld, and the list goes on and on. Great characters I couldn't wait to watch week after week. The challenge is to create memorable characters on the page as well.

What's Inside

By Susan

Yesterday, a friend and I spent almost an hour and a half looking at a potential new house for her family. We picked it apart. We studied its trees and yard, the construction, windows, and porches. We spent a solid half hour on the first floor, and then another half hour on the second floor.

"Did you notice how long we spent upstairs?" she asked. "Is that normal? So much time upstairs?"

Part of the reason for the time upstairs, we reasoned, was the family room and office space were there. We spent time there, because that's where—if they were to live in this particular house—she would spend her time.

As I polish and revise my manuscript, I can't help but compare yesterday's field trip to character development, because houses, in general, are great metaphors for all kinds of things: novel writing, mental health, even marriage. And yet with character development, we sometimes forget why some things are important and some are not.

Last summer, I workshopped with Mark Powell (The Dark Corner, Blood Kin, Prodigals, and the forthcoming The Sheltering) and we talked extensively about the interiority of characters. What sets your characters apart, he repeated, is their interior life. What can you, the writer, put on the page that the reader can't visibly see? How is their character revealed by the way they think and process decisions? Interiority is the key to writing better characters, and is ultimately the defining difference between literary fiction and commercial fiction. In commercial fiction, what you see is what you get. To go deeper, show the reader what the character feels, believes, and how they make decisions. Show their internal reactions before they make action. Showing the reader what's upstairs in the house of your character is more important than looking at the home's blueprint; it's taking them there for an Open House.

At the same time, Powell talked extensively about the exterior of a character. How does what they wear, how they stand, and what they drive reveal what's inside?  Can you, indeed, judge a book by its cover? In a lot of ways, painting the outside of a character is like the landscaping of the house.  Sometimes the outside shows you only what the character wants you to see, and inside, you may find a house of horrors. At other times, the outside mirrors the heart of the house, and the heart of the character.

Do your characters conform, or go against the grain? How can you show this on the surface, and how can you expand their depth by spending more time upstairs, or even hanging out in the attic? And if you want a potential buyer to make an offer, they must fall in love with the interior and exterior of the house. They need to see themselves living there.

If you want your reader to fall in love with your story, they need to see a reflection of either the parts of themselves that they love and recognize or the parts that they detest (and yet also recognize.) This is the connection that bridges the writer and the reader—the same way it connects the home seller and the potential buyer.