Building Character

Building Character

I've been thinking over the last few days about characters. I imagine every character within a story to be important, but the ones you spend most time with should be the ones with most depth. Right? It could be that a good story is one with characters of equal depth, all with their own back story, likes and dislikes. People are exactly that, people. They all have their own thought processes, emotions, likes, dislikes, strengths as well as weaknesses. Proposing that the sole purpose of a side character is to propel the protagonist forward sounds strange. To some people, the most important characters are those that help the hero, so shouldn't they have the most detail?

So. All characters should be interesting with their own sense of dimension. How do you convey that? It probably won't work to list a series of character traits on the page, it just doesn't work like that. They way I want to do it I think is to have side characters perform actions that speak their personalities, and make it boldly clear about who they really are. Not quite sure how that can be written yet, but it's what I want to do.

I've established now then that side characters are important within a novel, so hows about our main focus?

Probably should be the same come to think of it. The interaction this character will have with other characters should be memorable. Is there a certain phrase that's used from time to time, or a quirky hand gesture that's thrown around dismissively every now and then? Little things like that build character I imagine and that's what I'll do.

You can take any character from any novel that's ever stayed in a reader's head for any length of time and you can expect a character that they can connect with. Mr. Grey, I look at you.

On that note I'll end this little ramble. That's exactly what it was. A little ramble on a Saturday afternoon as I wait for a video to render. Back to work now.

-Rue