creating believable characters

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creating believable characters

• What makes a character believable?

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• Something we identify with like an external
  marker (habit, quirk, mannerism)
• eating our food in a specific order
• chewing our cuticles when nervous
• looking away from someone talking to us
• constantly smoothing our hair

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• Or it could be an internal marker (an emotion,
  bias, motivation)
• Dizzying fear of public speaking, bugs, heights,
  water, peanut butter sticking to the roof of our
  mouth
• Aversion to certain sights (blood, phlegm, raw
  edibles)
• always late, always early, always
  procrastinating

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we need vividness

• Grinning a lot is not vivid because it doesnt
  have much visual impact.
• Raw, ragged cuticles (those chewed on ones) does
  because it includes a sense of pain, a visual
  impression, an emotional question it speaks to
  character?

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• Characters should not be a potpourri of random
  traits, but traits that match the internal and
  the external markers and create personality.
• Traits help establish a reader relationship to
  the character
• We might be concerned with the shy, reclusive
  character that wont look someone in the eye
• We might be unsympathetic to the seemingly
  egotistical character that is constantly
  smoothing his hair

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example

• Jeff Goldbloom the FLY is a socially inept,
  reclusive scientist with quirky Einstein like
  dress habits
• External marker is vivid we picture the closet
  of duplicate shirts, pants, blazers
• Internal marker is clear - the work devoted (if
  not obsessed) scientist with neither social
  obligations nor sense

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Believable characters are

• Not a checklist of stereotypical characteristics
  but, like us, a complex mixture of sympathetic
  and unsympathetic, good and bad habits/qualities.
  
• Characters have flaws because, by nature, humans
  have flaws. We relate (believe) in that kind of
  character.

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Internal markers are revealed by

• reactions to events
• reactions to other characters
• motivation for actions
• biases or opinions about the world
• opinions on different things
• patterns of behavior/decisions

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External markers are

• Revealed by observations
• Our observations
• Other characters observations

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every story is about conflict and every conflict
is a revelation, disclosure, exposure of the
external and internal life of our characters
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Work out

• Take your character profile from last week
• Browse the Character Thesaurus
• Create a Character Chart (at least 7 bullets)
• Make changes to your character as desired
• Due 3/30

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Nolan Parker external internal

• café au lait skin
• snarled, nut-brown hair drawn in a loose
  ponytail
• heal tattered grills navy windbreaker
• sling pack bulging with books
• ear phones dangling to an inside pocket

• mixed culture/heritage
• out of synch with his time
• disregard for fashion accuracy
• philosopher, creative, educated
• member of the IPOD
• generation

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Lydia Clemente

• external
• 1.
• 2.
• 3.

• internal
• 1.
• 2.
• 3.

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