Making a character that fits into your story

This last weekend has been quite hectic. We worked a three-day vegan festival here in Shanghai. I spent most of two days on my feet serving crepes but it gave me time to ponder character crafting.

Part of my thinking came about from reflecting on those who are vegan (I am not) and what it means and naturally my thoughts turned to writing, particularly to giving a character his or her personality and characteristics. Would I make a character vegan for example?

 

I am of the school of thought (ok I don’t know if there is actually a school of thought on this, it might be just me) that it is always better to show character traits then to just tell the reader they exist. This means, for example, if you want your character to be considered generous, you show them doing a generous action and the reader decides for themselves that the character is generous, as opposed to just telling the reader “so and so has a generous disposition.”

 

The corollary for me of this rule is that if you show that a character has a characteristic, trait or condition then it has to be used in your story. I would like to quote Anton Chekhov’s phrase on storytelling here: “Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.” The short version would be “if it’s not essential, don’t include it in the story.”

 

If you apply this rule to character traits, which I feel you should, that means you should only give to your character traits that will have an effect on the story. If, for example, you decide that your character is a vegan and you introduce this in the first chapter, then later on in the story you will have to have a moment where being a vegan actually matters. Let’s say you have a character named Matt who you have shown is a vegan. During the course of your story Matt gets stuck on a desert planet or gets put in a situation where his only food is meat. He is then faced with a decision to either eat meat, which is against his vegan code, or starve to death. The reader then gets to see whether Matt is a true vegan or just doing it as a fad, both of which can make an interesting part of the story for the reader as they see Matt’s true character.

 

Just making Matt a vegan adds nothing to the story. This is probably why I get annoyed when I hear some TV producer say “we are going to have a gay character.” Is he implying that being gay or not makes a difference to how the character will act in situations? Unless being gay actually makes a difference in the story or you are planning to show a relationship or a sex scene, there is really no point in giving a character that trait, other than to feel good about yourself.

 

In my novel （which I have been slacking on due to other time related engagements）the main protagonist is female. She is female because this allows her to react differently to certain situations that I will be putting her through than a male would. She also has a certain medical condition which will come into play later in the story. Every bit of information about my characters that I show the reader is either planned so that the reader understands why my protagonist is making a certain decision or is something that will be used in a future situation in a book.

 

I feel this is a further application of E.B White’s and William Strunk Jr.’s rule number 17 （The elements of style）: Omit needless words. In this case I would say: Omit useless character details unless they will have an effect on the story. You don’t have to give out all the details on your character in one moment. Plant them occasionally so that they bear fruit later on in your story.

 

This implies that all of your character’s background and personality should be well thought out, as indeed it should be. I find the idea, occasionally passed around, of a spinning wheel that an author uses to decide what traits a character will have abhorrent. If you can’t care enough to figure out your character’s background and personality, why would the reader care about your character? The answer is the reader won’t.

 

I also try to avoid giving characters random quirky traits just so that they will have random quirky traits. If the only way the reader can differentiate your characters is through random quirky traits then you need to rethink your characters.