Boring Characters; Boring Story

A writing prompt.

Introduction

In my MFA program this past year, a student named Helen gave a presentation on Characterization or “the creation or construction of a fictional character.” To begin this presentation, she gave us a series of pictures of shoes. She showed us heavy duty work boots with a steel toe, Louis Vuitton’s with the classic red sole, beat up white converse high tops, and shiny black flats with a little bow tied at the top. She showed all different kinds of shoes, then asked us to say something about who we imagine wearing them. People shouted out answers like: “blue-collar,” “working woman,” “skater boy,” or “middle school girl.” They shouted things like, “construction crew,” “first lady,” “broke college kid,” or “choir student.”

Helen continued her presentation by showing us a set of different rooms. Some of them were cluttered dining rooms with papers scattered everywhere and old cups leaving rings on the plastic tablecloth. Some were pink bedrooms with bookcases filled and an open bay window with white sheer curtains. Among others, Helen asked us what would happen if we paired the woman in Louis Vuitton pumps with the cluttered dining room table. She asked what we would think if the steel-toed boots were paired with the bookish, womanly bedroom. What would change about those characters if we chose to show something about them that changed the expectations we previously had?

This is the essence of characterization. How can you use setting, appearance, job, family life, personal preferences, and opinions, all in juxtaposition to each other in order to make an interesting, perhaps confounding, and satisfyingly round character?

Doing the exercise listed above (which Helen gets all the credit for) is a great way to start. Consider what you know about your character, and how you can add or take away things that make them stereotypically knowable. If your character is a cheerleader, what would happen if she’s also a black belt in some martial art form? What would happen if your bookish, nerdy character is somehow exceedingly well-liked a popular? What would happen if your stay-at-home-mom character also helps run the college football team in her spare time? What can you change about the character’s environment to show that this character isn’t all black a white?

Below I’ve laid out several questions that I think can aid us in the quest to create a truly round and dynamically interesting character.

The Questions

What’s the first description of your character?

If you don’t have a character in mind for this prompt, consider writing a description.

Paste your first description into the document you’re using to do this exercise, then highlight the important pieces. What do they look like, what are they wearing, where are they right now, what are they doing?

As has often been said, first impressions are key and, especially in good storytelling, you want your character’s first impression to mean something!

What does your first descriptive moment tell you about this person? If you have the luxury, even consider asking someone else what they would assume about your character. Have them list out a few descriptive words or phrases that come to mind.

Or, post it in the comments and I’ll tell you what I think as well!

What do you want the audience to know?

Sometimes characters are more interesting when we get a slow-burn of information about who they are. You, as the author, have the power to give us information about your characters in increments (at the rate of your choosing).

If you want the character to be confusing or mysterious, perhaps this means you give us very little, or even conflicting information about them. Or perhaps (like in the exercise above) their physical appearance or occupation doesn’t match their interests or surroundings (like the steel-toe boots and the pink room). Is there a juxtaposition within your character that you can exploit to give them a more interesting dynamic? Is there something you could alter so that your character is surprising to us later?

What do you want your audience to be thinking about or, perhaps more importantly, NOT thinking about when they think about your character? How can you manipulate the readers into noticing what you want them to notice?

What are you hiding from the audience?

What tricks do you have up your sleeve? What does your character know about himself/herself that your audience doesn’t? Perhaps this means that your character is an unreliable narrator (if the text is in first person), perhaps this means your character is lying to themselves and only you (as the omniscient author who knows where they’re going) can understand what they will only understand later. Regardless, it’s important to have aspects of a character that are hidden, because that provides a place for the character to move into or, in other words, a character arc.

What would your character do…?

Something I like to do when I’m getting to know a character is take the time to write out a few sentences for what they would do if they were put in different situations. This can help me to consider other aspects of my character that maybe aren’t explored in the contexts within my book or story. So, take some time and write out a few sentences for what your character would do….

• If they were a hostage in an armed robbery?

• If they were offered a bouquet of flowers by a strange man?

• If they were abducted by aliens?

• If their grandmother died?

• If they discovered they or someone close to them is pregnant?

• If a bird pooped on their favorite shirt?

• If they cut themself with a knife while cooking?

• If they saw someone fall down in the street?

• If they went to a cooking class with someone they hate?

If you could ask your character one question about himself/herself, what would it be?

This question is valuable because it forces us, as authors, to consider what we DON’T know. A lot of times, people assume authors know everything about their world and characters (perhaps some authors come close to this), but more often than not—especially in the developmental phase—authors have just as many questions (if not more than) everyone else.

So, what is it that you don’t know about your character?

Ask them. Consider what THEY would say, not what you would have them say. This is where characters start to organically grow: at the crux of what we know and don’t know about them.

Conclusion

Characters drive good stories. If I love a character, it doesn’t matter what else’s going on, I’m going to stick with them to the very end. So, what does it mean to build characters like that? I personally think it means knowing them well, and making them the most well-rounded characters they can be. Give them complications, and faults, and things we hate them for. Make them endearing, tough, awkward, and rash. Give them dynamic character arcs, give them messy and brilliant mistakes. But, if you can’t do that, and above all else, DO NOT let them be boring.

Boring characters will kill any good story. Why? Because people like to hear stories about other people and characters, whether we like them or not, are reflections of the people we’ve both known and left unknown.

I hope this writing prompt was helpful to you and, as always, happy writing!