In the real world, it’s easy to reduce our antagonists to their most annoying characteristic – laziness, arrogance, forgetfulness – but that habit is poison to fiction. In a post on Writers in the Storm, Tiffany Yates Martin says we should never reduce our characters, even minor ones, to one-dimensional categories.
It’s easy to let our characters fall into their roles – the hero, the mentor, the sidekick, the lackey – but that doesn’t help you engage your readers emotionally. It’s fine to start there, but once you have the big picture, how can you fill in the details to create nuanced, believable characters? Martin suggests four methods:
- Show us the behavior; don’t tell us the label. Don’t tell us your character is a gossip or hothead. Show us how they behave and what decisions they make. A modern way to think of it: show the pixel not the whole image, and let the reader create the picture.
- Dig deeper. Even unlikeable are behaving in a way that feels right to them. Your job is to figure out why. What are their motivations, intentions, and thought processes? The more you know your character, the better you can portray them, and they might end up surprising you.
- Be specific. Find concrete, telling details that show us the character’s traits. The more specific, the better.
- Use contrasts and contradictions. Kind people can be cruel. Gossips can keep secrets. “People are more than one thing,” Martin writes.
