Wondering how to make the characters in your story “developed” or
real? Then start with reality. The reality is that we as humans have deep
seated needs, wants, and often hidden desires. So too must our characters if
they are to somehow come to life on the page and become important and memorable
to our readers.
Kurt Vonnegut said it best,
“Make your characters want something right away even if it’s only a glass
of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have
to drink water from time to time.”
our writing become real when they start to reveal their needs through their
actions and not dialog or authorial intrusion. One of my favorite examples of
this comes from Seth Kantner’s memorable character Cutuk in Ordinary Wolves. Cutuk, a white
boy born and raised in a sod hut in the Alaskan wilderness, aches to fit in and
wants nothing more than to be like his Inupiat counterparts. This longing to
fit in and be accepted and loved is revealed through his physical actions,
including a subtle refrain where Cutuk continually presses and flattens his
nose in an attempt to make himself look less Caucasian. What makes Cutuk’s
longing feel real is that it is real, and Kantner reveals this through a
character constantly consumed with this desire, coupled with his feeling of
displacement. Let’s face it, we all understand this longing to belong, because
that need, like our need for water, is part of what makes us human. We’ve all
wanted to be loved and even needed at some point. As writers we perhaps want
this more than anyone, because we’re extra complicated in that we also desire
something else, and that is for others to want and love our characters and
stories!
As you journey with your own
characters through the stories of their lives, from scene to scene, from
situation to situation, don’t impose some heavy handed exposition to reveal
what your characters want. Instead just listen to them and let them come alive
on their own. Watch them on that high definition screen in your mind’s eye and
think about yourself and your own life, perhaps even observe the people you
know, and notice how our subtle human actions in everyday life often reveal
those things we want most. You’ll never know completely what someone else wants
or thinks, and that is part of the beauty of a story and the uncertainty of
life.
advice literally and open a story with a scene of a man holding an empty coffee
mug beneath a faucet head. The cup is stained, the top chipped, the glaze of
the mug cracked and worn like the man’s lips. He fiddles with both knobs but
manages to get nothing but a rusty drop or two. As soon as he tries to get
those two drops from the cup to his mouth, as the writer we know he’s in a
desperate situation and we want to know more.
Here is a character who wants
water right away, just like Mr. Vonnegut insisted. What is different in his
need for water is the beginning of a story, the beginning of an external conflict,
the opening to a plot. If you were to continue writing this story you would
follow this character and his obvious struggle to survive. You might not know
what the situation is that put him here, needing water, so desperate for that
sustaining life liquid, but those answers would reveal themselves to you, just
as his emotional needs would be revealed as his character blossoms before you
as he rises or falls, and as he changes or grows as a human.
as simple as a glass of water, but if they are to be real in the readers’ eyes,
them they must also be real to us; they must be sustained by hopes and dreams
and fears and by the simple, yet precious elements of life, just as we are.
Beautiful example!
Thanks, Lynn!