What do we mean by strong characters? In this case, we mean characters who are compelling. Who seem to have rich inner lives. Who are nuanced, complex, complicated. Characters who seem to leap off the page and come live in your head and refuse to leave even after you finish reading the book or watching the show. The kinds of characters you write fanfiction about.
Maureen has an exercise on how to access your ability to work with characters like this, in this week’s newsletter, which you should sign up for!
I wanted to take the time this morning to think about the elements that made a character strong enough to live in your head rent free. In my experience, it doesn’t have much to do with a deep, detailed backstory or a list of personality traits. I don’t know about you, but those approaches–writing out their childhood or filling out a bunch of personal details like favorite color and most hated person–never really worked for me. Also, they felt like a lot of work! And what does a character’s favorite color say about them, anyway? Why would you need to know that? (Maybe you do, if it comes up in your story. But do you really need to know that if it never comes up?)
Instead, Maureen’s exercise has you try to get to the emotional core of a character, and explore it. This is especially fruitful to do when you can get into a territory that is emotionally intense or difficult. And yes, you’re going to be putting a lot of yourself into it, because that’s how we write. Everything we write is built from our blood and tears. Characters are no exception. More than almost any other element of writing, writing characters is an act of radical empathy.
A character that readers resonate with, whether they’re “likable” or not, are characters that feel like they are true, at their emotional core. Like the characters reveal some truth that can’t necessarily be expressed in words. This is what you’re trying to get at. Yes, it’s hard! Writing is hard! It sucks, I know. But hard doesn’t mean impossible, hard means you can get there with practice.
On a much lighter note, this week’s podcast talks about tropes! So after you do some heavy emotional mining with your characters, check out our episode on tropes — how to use them, how not to use them, and why they’re useful.
Happy writing!