Characters: Paper or Flesh?

There is a great diversity of authors out there, and since there is no one way of writing, we all start with different things; worldbuilding, plot, theme, etc.. All of these are important, but for me, it's character. Since compelling and sympathetic characters are what I am drawn to as a reader, they're also what I begin with as a writer. I see the story through the eyes of someone else.

Possibly the reason is rooted in the rich fantasies that my sisters and I played at as children; possibly it's wanting to see the world through dramatically different eyes when I'm not satisfied with my own. But other people's stories have always compelled me, and have helped me understand my own life by reflecting through the medium of others.

It does tend to mean that I find it very frustrating when others write characters that I feel are not well-drawn. There is a well-known set of books that I find quite readable in terms of the writing, and extremely well-done in terms of descriptive power. However, they tend to characterize by giving each character a tagline and a trait, and each time the character speaks, either the tagline or the trait is mentioned. Other than that, they all tend to speak in exactly the same vernacular. I've heard a lot of people who think these books are the epitome of characterization, and that confuses me a lot. To me, it's sloppy -- I should be able to tell what the characters are like from the way they talk, not from a heavy handed authorial underscoring. And in these books, if you stripped the taglines and traits, it really wouldn't be possible to tell.

There is another author I have read whose characterization is more subtle and well-drawn, but whose basic style is to give each character a motive and a trauma. That sounds good in theory, but in practice, it tends to create very unchanging characters. Real people have multiple (and often conflicting) motives, and trauma has echoing effects down one's entire life; it doesn't simply create a personality and continue to reinforce that personality for the rest of their life.

I am not saying that these aren't viable approaches -- clearly there are many many people who love both their works. Both of them have been wildly successful, and they have worked hard to get there. Clearly I've read both of them. But I find that it doesn't work for me these days, either in reading or writing.

I think that at the point where the author thinks, "What would I feel like if I were in this situation?" it's already lost me. That may sound odd, because isn't it what we've all been taught to do in high school English class? But the reason it doesn't work for me is this: the author is starting with the idea that they cannot relate to the character except by thinking of how different the character is from them, and how differently the character must think. That's not to say one shouldn't write characters who are very different from oneself, but it's not a construction job; the authors who grow their characters organically have a basic understanding of human nature that allows them to inhabit their characters from the inside, rather than put them under a microscope from the outside.

Keep in mind that I'm not putting myself out there as a final authority. These are my own opinions, and my own feelings on the matter. I'm keeping other authors' names out of this because I'm not trying to say, "But I do it right!" or putting down their works, but rather exploring the question of what, for me, makes a character round flesh instead of flat paper.

The question I start with is, "What would my character do?" not "What would I do if I were my character?" Sometimes that question takes me very far from where I think I'm aiming. In a work I have in progress, my workshop members kept telling me that one of my characters was coming across as being much older than I initially portrayed him as. I worked with it, trying to bring him in line with the age I'd given him, then decided that my unconscious apparently knew better what I was doing than my consciousness, and re-wrote him as an older character.

I know another writer whose main character started to deviate from what they wanted the plot of their story to be, and they ended up deleting the character and making up a new one. I think that's a mistake. Those characters who well up from deep inside one's mind often tend to be the truest. (One of the most celebrated examples of this in fiction is J.R.R. Tolkien "discovering" Strider at the inn in Bree, without having any idea at the time that he was actually Aragorn. That moment of discovery changed his entire work, and undoubtedly for the better.)

People aren't simple or logical. They have messy motives, they have contradictory feelings. They don't hold simple conversations that move from one logical line to the next, but reply to things people haven't said, offer up observations that no one asked for. They do things against their best interests. They care about people they shouldn't, fight with those they love, and can behave either with great heroism, or with utter depravity; and it's possible for a single person to be both heroic and depraved. They can have moments of brilliant insight, and moments when they are stupid beyond words. Clearly no author can delineate the complexity of the human mind with perfect accuracy, but they can at least try to create a satisfying illusion of depth and complexity.

How do I do this? I listen to my characters. I try to hear the cadence of their speech, try to see what they will do if I bring in a variable plot element. I try to understand what motivates them in a given moment, and if that motivation is in accord with, or contrary to their overriding motives. I try not to flog a dead horse; just because, for instance, a character may be in the habit of picking fights with her sister doesn't mean she does it all the time. I try hard to capture the complexity and variability of real human relations. No, I'm not perfect. As a writer, I'm always striving to do better. But if I don't start with a character of flesh and bone, none of the rest of my writing means anything to me.