Creating Characters: How to Build Story People by Dwight V. Swain
Authors: Dwight V. Swain
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But if you do need backup for your rationalizations—well, now you have a tool to help you handle the problem.
What if you want to keep Mysterious Mike’s thought processes a secret, at least for the time being, or if you’re not in his viewpoint? One approach is to state it cold turkey, as an author describing a bit of business: “Grimly, Talley scrubbed his hands. Endlessly, it seemed. ‘Germs,’ he said between clenched teeth. ‘They’re dangerous. I know. I watched my cousin die of anthrax.’”
Another device is to let other story people speculate: “I wonder why she did that. I don’t care much for garlic either. But to slap a guy’s face just because it’s on his breath . . .”
Or present the pertinent data subjectively, in Character’s viewpoint, as we did with Warren and the snake.
Where do you find the sensory images you need to bring off this kind of thing?
There are the obvious sources, of course. The newspapers and magazines and books you read, the plays and movies and television shows you see. The people you meet, the trips you take, the jobs you’ve worked at.
Beyond this, however, and above all, probe your own past, then meld the bits and pieces you recall from early childhood. They’ll have a color and ring of truth nothing else can match.
Then, when you use these fragments, make them important to your characters by assigning each memory a lesson learned or an emotion evoked, in keeping with the rationalization to which you link it for story purposes.
Remember, too, that reader recall is short, so don’t hesitate to make an emotional habit pattern a running gag. Wave it as a tag,as described in Chapter 4 . Quite possibly you’ll want to have Character feel pain or tenderness or rage every time he encounters a foo dog or Dali painting or blue-eyed blonde. Maybe he doesn’t even know why. But you know—because you’ve rationalized it, thought up reasons why it’s so, things and events from the past that account for it.
And that’s the basic principle of handling background.
“Background” is a term that covers a lot of ground, however. To make it less intimidating, more comprehensible, let’s break it down into four elements: body, environment, experience, and ideas.
Do bear in mind, though, that while we may segment “background” for analytical purposes, it remains a whole where character—and life—are concerned. The human animal is a unit, an entity, not bits and pieces. Such organic unity emphasizes consistency, and consistency is the essential element in any character, any personality, no matter how disparate or unlikely of association its components may seem at first glance.
With this disclaimer, let us move on to consider the segments from which a character’s background is assembled . . . the jigsaw that forms the basis for his being the way he is.
HOW TO BUILD A BACKGROUND
You build a character’s background for three main reasons:
1. You want to make the character unique.
2. You want to give the character reasons for behaving as he does.
3. You want to make him believable, to give him depth.
Failure to develop background, in turn, frequently will result in caricature, the kind of characterization you get in cartoons, in which the obvious is so exaggerated as to result in easily recognized but ludicrous distortion. It can be useful for minor characters, bit players. But the picture that emerges will hardly resemble real people.
At the same time, don’t overload characters with background. As was pointed out earlier, a character is a simulation of a human being, not the real thing. Bear down too heavily on his or her pasthistory, and it takes over. The story stops, and your reader becomes confused or bored. And that, you can’t afford!
In any case, and regardless of whether or not you introduce the information you develop into the actual story, there’s no better technique for evoking it in yourself than to probe Character’s background,
What if you want to keep Mysterious Mike’s thought processes a secret, at least for the time being, or if you’re not in his viewpoint? One approach is to state it cold turkey, as an author describing a bit of business: “Grimly, Talley scrubbed his hands. Endlessly, it seemed. ‘Germs,’ he said between clenched teeth. ‘They’re dangerous. I know. I watched my cousin die of anthrax.’”
Another device is to let other story people speculate: “I wonder why she did that. I don’t care much for garlic either. But to slap a guy’s face just because it’s on his breath . . .”
Or present the pertinent data subjectively, in Character’s viewpoint, as we did with Warren and the snake.
Where do you find the sensory images you need to bring off this kind of thing?
There are the obvious sources, of course. The newspapers and magazines and books you read, the plays and movies and television shows you see. The people you meet, the trips you take, the jobs you’ve worked at.
Beyond this, however, and above all, probe your own past, then meld the bits and pieces you recall from early childhood. They’ll have a color and ring of truth nothing else can match.
Then, when you use these fragments, make them important to your characters by assigning each memory a lesson learned or an emotion evoked, in keeping with the rationalization to which you link it for story purposes.
Remember, too, that reader recall is short, so don’t hesitate to make an emotional habit pattern a running gag. Wave it as a tag,as described in Chapter 4 . Quite possibly you’ll want to have Character feel pain or tenderness or rage every time he encounters a foo dog or Dali painting or blue-eyed blonde. Maybe he doesn’t even know why. But you know—because you’ve rationalized it, thought up reasons why it’s so, things and events from the past that account for it.
And that’s the basic principle of handling background.
“Background” is a term that covers a lot of ground, however. To make it less intimidating, more comprehensible, let’s break it down into four elements: body, environment, experience, and ideas.
Do bear in mind, though, that while we may segment “background” for analytical purposes, it remains a whole where character—and life—are concerned. The human animal is a unit, an entity, not bits and pieces. Such organic unity emphasizes consistency, and consistency is the essential element in any character, any personality, no matter how disparate or unlikely of association its components may seem at first glance.
With this disclaimer, let us move on to consider the segments from which a character’s background is assembled . . . the jigsaw that forms the basis for his being the way he is.
HOW TO BUILD A BACKGROUND
You build a character’s background for three main reasons:
1. You want to make the character unique.
2. You want to give the character reasons for behaving as he does.
3. You want to make him believable, to give him depth.
Failure to develop background, in turn, frequently will result in caricature, the kind of characterization you get in cartoons, in which the obvious is so exaggerated as to result in easily recognized but ludicrous distortion. It can be useful for minor characters, bit players. But the picture that emerges will hardly resemble real people.
At the same time, don’t overload characters with background. As was pointed out earlier, a character is a simulation of a human being, not the real thing. Bear down too heavily on his or her pasthistory, and it takes over. The story stops, and your reader becomes confused or bored. And that, you can’t afford!
In any case, and regardless of whether or not you introduce the information you develop into the actual story, there’s no better technique for evoking it in yourself than to probe Character’s background,
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