Well-Dressed Characters
“At Citibank we will meet accidentally. We'll start to talk when she borrows my pen” -Cake
Are your characters alive?
I will keep reading a book rife with cliches, slogging toward an utterly predictable ending, or otherwise not gripping me with its prose, IF the characters feel real and I care about them. Plot tension keeps readers turning the page to the end, but good characters make readers want to buy the next book in the series. Mystery writers have the luxury of creating one brilliant detective to span a whole lifetime of work—if they want.
(When mystery writers suddenly come out with a new detective, it’s intriguing. Did they kill off their long running MC or just put her on the shelf like an outgrown stuffed teddy? Famously, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed the world’s most famous detective when he got sick of dear Sherlock, but readers revolted and happily, it’s possible to ressurect the fictional. It turned out that he’d faked his death. Nice.)
Genre fiction heavily relies on beloved characters to keep readers coming back. But even literary fiction should strive to develop characters that readers can love or love to hate—how else to pack that emotional punch when an adored character dies tragically?
I was listening to the classic Cake song, “Short Skirt Long Jacket” and I realized that the lyrics secretly teach a masterclass on character building.
“She wants a car with a cupholder armrest
She wants a car that will get her there
She's changing her name from Kitty to Karen
She's trading her MG for a white Chrysler Le Baron”
Karen, nee Kitty is completely alive to me. I know this woman.
Telling readers what a character does or says or thinks is more important than describing how they look. That’s what undergirds an interesting character, and it can supplement or directly tie into that most important question that the writer must ask of every single character: what do they want?
I’m talking about “jump-off-the-page” characters. Though, that sounds kinda dangerous. I read every night to fall asleep, and frankly do not want any characters jumping out of my kindle while I’m prone, pajama’d, and powerless. I’d rather jump into the page myself and meet these characters where they are. Are they flat like cardboard cut-outs? Or do they exist all the way around? I like to spin them around to check.
Of course, there is limited space to fill in the whole history of every character, particularly side characters. Small, unique and repeated details have to do a lot of the heavy lifting. Watch people. Writers should take full advantage of every single person they meet. Popping out for a coffee? Watch the barista closely. Take notes. Be creepy. It’s for your craft. What is it about a person that makes them unlike anyone else? Squirrel away these reactions to real people and then pull them out for new characters. Choose one to two details about a character and repeat it a few times so that it sticks to the character like their favorite shirt.
For example, after a typical ride on the subway (in 2019), I put this note on my phone: “A grandpa who refers to his children and grandchildren numerically, i.e. ‘here’s a picture of number three from my number one.’”
Can you picture this man? He’s proud of his brood but doesn’t see them as much as he’d like so there is a little bit of detachment in how he talks about them. Maybe he talks about his family to strangers more than he talks to his own family.
Eye color is not an interesting trait. Hair color is barely interesting, and I only say barely because of all the work that hair color has done for female characterization in the past. (The leggy blonde, the fiery redhead, and the demure brunette walk up to the noir detective writer in the bar and take turns tossing drinks in his face.) Height is only interesting if someone is very tall or very short.
I want a character “who’s fast and thorough and sharp as a tack. She’s playing with her jewelry, she’s putting up her hair. She’s touring the facility and picking up slack.”
“I want a girl with a mind like a diamond.”
