In an article for Writer’s Digest, Joshua Senter says a psych evaluation can help you understand your characters and save you from the cop-out phrase “Oh, this character would never do that!”
“Those seven words strung together are the biggest, most damaging lie anyone can tell a writer about their characters,” Senter says. “The best characters ever written are just like real humans in the most important way possible—they are capable of anything!”
Remember the story about the NASA astronaut who put on adult diapers, drove to Orlando, and attacked her ex’s new girlfriend? “Astronauts are some of the smartest people on earth,” Senter writes. “Yet here was an astronaut who basically lost her shit and did the unthinkable. If you put people in the right (or wrong) situation, they’ll do the unimaginable, and the same is true of characters you write.”
You characters can do anything, and the trick is giving them the write reason. “If you give them a psychological reason for doing something, a hero will turn into a villain, a saint into a sinner, etc.” Senter writes. “And an audience will go along for the ride if they understand the psychology behind those decisions.”
This requires you to take a deep dive into your character’s darkest thoughts and dreams, all their idiosyncrasies, passions, secrets, gross habits, and sins. Those things exist for a reason. “Find out what that reason is,” Senter says. “Understand your characters first in order for your audience to understand them later. And if, when investigating the depths of your characters, you realize they aren’t interesting to you, I assure you they will not be interesting to others.”
If you get stuck along the way, Senter suggests having your character do the opposite of what you think they might or should do. Sometimes that won’t work, but often you’ll see a new side to your character, something else to explore.
Finally, Senter says you have to be honest. “Honesty is sometimes hard,” he writes. “It will reveal things you don’t want to see about characters, but more than anything, your audience will know when you’re pulling punches, withholding story, and not being candid with them. Truth is always more interesting than fiction, except when fiction is brave enough to show us the truth humans hide.”
