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Creating Interesting
Characters
By Mary Arnold
It's a given in the writing world
that one must have characters that the reader is interested in,
can relate to, and cares what happens to the character. A wonderful
plot can take one only so far; if you fail to interest your reader
in the characters, then you could have the most original, stupendous
plot ever imagined, and it won't matter much at all.
Below are some suggestions on
what I believe makes a memorable character.
1) Quirky
people. Nothing is more memorable than someone who has an
oddball habit or personality. Hercule
Poirot would walk miles in tight-fitting
patent leather shoes because he was a hopeless dandy. He also
hated fresh air and
had a mania for square objects.
What makes the
TV private detective Adrian Monk so interesting and humorous is
his obsessive-compulsive disorder and his unending phobias. Monk
is, of course, way over the top but creating characters that have
some kind of quirkiness will make them stand out in your reader's
mind.
It might be little
more than a tendency to pronounce certain words in a manner not
commonplace. For example, my husband gets highly amused when I
say any word that has a double T in it, like bottle. I always
pronounce it "bot-tul,"
and he's never heard anyone else say it like that.
Sometimes a person's
peculiarites can play an intricate
part in your story. In one novel, "After the Funeral"
by Agatha Christie, the murderer is
discovered by tilting her head the wrong way when she masqueraded
as someone else and tried to imitate the woman's habit.
2) Characters
who have a zest for life. These are the people who live each moment, not just muddle along day-by-day. I am not talking
about adventurers who are continuously rock-climbing or jumping
out of airplanes, but rather people who, no matter what they are
doing, enjoy every moment of their life. These types of characters
are optimistic, cheerful, humorous, and can see the absurdity
all around them. A wonderful example of this type of character
is Elizabeth Peters' Sir John Smythe
in the Vicky Bliss novels.
3) Characters
with vivid imaginations and/or a flair for dramatics. These
types of characters are the most interesting because they're unafraid
to be silly or laughed at. They can imagine all sorts of possibilities,
both realistic and unrealistic.
In short, when
developing your characters, it's not enough to give deep insights
into their personalities. After all, whatever personality traits
you give your characters (kind, thoughtful, boring, determined,
vindictive, etc.), none of that will really distinguish him or
her from other people.
What makes
us different from others are our habits and mannerisms. Develop
these little quirks in your characters.
Mary Arnold is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/ which is a
site for Creative Writing.
Her writing portfolio may be viewed at
http://www.Writing.com/authors/ja7751
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