A well written character, one that evokes empathy and makes the reader give a damn, is important to a book or story’s success. As the weary cliche states, the devil is in the details.
As author, you are the creator, animus prime, the provider of these details, and your responsibility is to strike a balance of physical detail, social behaviour, and psychological back story that will allow, or better yet demand, that the reader identify with one or more of the characters in your story.
There are plenty of books, articles, and software that provide frameworks, formulas, and theories for creating characters that are entirely valid.These tend to be all pencil and no eraser, if you get my drift. If you don’t, then let me explain.
A character needs to be written with a level of detail that allows the reader to recognize the type (good guy, bad guy, love interest, mad scientist, crooked cop, etc) but fill in the finer details from their personal armoire of memories, myths, senses, and images. What I’m suggesting is that the author consider writing characters as though they are a pitcher that the reader fills up. Or. if you can tolerate a little homonistic word play, a picture the reader colours in.
Back in the old days, when jeans were tight and hair was feathered, I read Stephen King’s Pet Semetary, along with almost all of his other novels. The books were a very visual experience, and I cast the characters from the people in my small town. Even some of the location details I would borrow from local homes or store fronts, and simply transplant them to Maine, Vermont, or wherever they were needed.
King left enough space in his exposition of these characters for me to participate in defining them, and my attachment to the story and the author was stronger for it. Every time I pushed the cart around the supermarket while mom filled it from her list, I saw someone from those books. When I rode my bike out into the valley, I rode past the house that Carrie lived in. If I rode into town, I went past the garage where Christine was worked on.
As readers, we need to be involved and engaged. If the characters are lectured at as, they remain a static collection of facts and figures, a simple point of reference. They will be as dynamic and intriguing as a tax return. Don’t tell us that “…he had hair almost to his shoulders, greasy, curly and unkempt, and he was chastised for it by classmates and teachers alike.” Instead show us how “…embarrassed, he tucked an escaped coil of hair back behind his ear, and quietly slunk away from Jane and her cheerleader friends.” If we weren’t that guy in high school, we know someone who was. It creates the opportunity for a personal point of reference and attachment to the character.
A detailed character sketch is great thing for a writer to have as a point of reference, but it doesn’t need to be shared verbatim. That’s like handing out the answer key instead of the test.
As authors, we need to provide strong outlines and a big box of crayons for the reader. Leave stuff out and invite the reader in.
