How do you give your characters personality?

[ElectricBlue]

Thanks to all, but especially for this suggestion. I can't wait to start to read my next book with a guaranteed vivid personality, and will note how I know this.

For me it's the quiet observational stuff, tiny details that build up a picture of the character over many thousands of words, but definitely not all at one time.

My character Amanda, for example, in The Floating World, is portrayed like this - her hair most immediately, and what she's wearing as she turns from the counter, but not exhaustive - those are the first things anyone sees. Later in the telling, her earrings and the colour of her fingernails, her Cleopatra eyes, are revealed, over time. The touch of her hand to Adam's arm. Mannerisms, mostly, little cues as to her personality. What I call grace notes - the plot doesn't really need them, but the story telling does.

One thing I haven't seen addressed yet is the cadence of speech. Does that figure into any of your writing?

Subtly. Jenny, for example, has a favourite word, "Perfect," which she will drop into an observational comment when the situation suits. Enough to associate it with her, but not enough to say, "If she says that one more time, I will stab her!"

Ruby, the way she lights and smokes a cigarette:

It was the movement that first caught my eye.

That automatic sequence of movements done by muscle memory, repeatedly and without thinking, dexterous and complete - the red nail fingertips of her right hand, several silver rings on her fingers, flipping open the top of the box. One finger aligned the flipped up lid so the angle was right, then two fingers grasped the filter and pulled a cigarette out.

They could have been touching her clitoris, the movements so precise, the purpose so similarly exquisite.

I was three tables away with a direct line of sight.

My eyes followed her finger tips, focusing only on their movement, as she withdrew the cigarette from its silver-lined box. Red-lined would have been better, edges velvet smooth and seductive, smooth and warm with blood. Her left hand, her eyes elsewhere because she knew exactly where everything was - every item perfectly placed like a heroin fix - took the lighter, turned it around so her thumb was on the wheel. Her red tipped thumb ready to turn the flint.

 

[Britva415]

How do you give your characters personality?

Let's consider the extent to which "personality" is synonymous with "attitude."

Attitude in one sense is how a person behaves—their'tude: An actualization, often vivid, sometimes not, of what their internal frame-of-mind is, their sense of what's going on and how they're going to react to it.

So it's two fold: It's both their feelings about things, as well as the 'tude they project.

With that in mind, one can get to the 'tude by identifying the attitude. What IS their attitude? What DO they think and feel about what's happening, and, how are they going to "act out" in response? And I imagine that THIS, the acting-out, might be what you're looking for, in terms of figuring out what to write and how to write it in order to intensify the "sense of character" you convey.

There are many, many ways to project 'tude. Not all of them have to be snarky or snotty or snippy, you know? Sometimes the 'tude is very gracious, or very quiet, or very concealed. Either way, I'll be damned if that isn't personality!

 

[Bramblethorn]

How do you give your characters personality?

Do you start out with a fleshed out character, using traits from different people in real life?

Do you start out with a place holder, concentrating on plot, and then layering on idiosyncracies like paint onto a canvass?

Does a character come alive in your mind without any conscious model from real life?

Is the cadence of their speech something you're conscious of? Or does it just evolve naturally?

Bit of all of these. Sometimes I'll create a character based on specific RL people, though I try to do this sparingly, and mostly for minor characters. For major characters I'll think about their background and try to develop their speech patterns etc. from that.

For instance: one character is an autistic woman, ethnically Indian, who's grown up in Australia. She wants to fit in (and avoid the whole "go back to where you came from" thing) but social interaction doesn't come easily to her, so she's read a LOT of books - some of them a bit old-fashioned - and patterned her speech after that. She has difficulty gauging when it's appropriate to speak informally so she goes for a slightly more formal tone (also, Indian English can sound a trifle old-fashioned by Western lights) and she tends not to contract words in situations where most speakers would.

But when she's stressed, she has difficulty sustaining that precision, and either she speaks in very long run-ons or she shuts down and goes averbal. Both of those are patterns based on a large number of autistic people of my acquaintance.

 

[KindredFlame]

Base then on someone you know. It’s that simple.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Start off with whatever archetype you are portraying.
Now you have a framework, what makes her different?
What ticks, habits, likes, dislikes does she have that bring her out of the archetype?

Think of the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
You have this bad ass hero in the jungle, leather jacket, whip. Smart, figuring out all the boobytraps, etc...

How does the scene end? He's escaped from the bad guy, climbs into the plane... and he's terrified of the snake. Meanwhile his pilot, who's been sitting on his ass fishing while Indy did all that is calling him a baby for being scared.

Now he's got personality.

We see him back in the classroom lecturing, that establishes he's not just street (or jungle) savvy guy.

The coed with "I love you" on her eye lids shows us he's a decent guy. Not the stereotypical womanizing hero (then when we learn of his past with Marion that changes...)

Climbing out the office window to run away from his students.

Then his conversation with Marcus.

They are all beats that establish Indy as different from the archetype, they establish his personality.

 

[Britva415]

Is this more of a "how do I establish personality at all" question or is it more of a "how do I establish a personality that's vivid and not uncompelling" question?

 

[NotWise]

I use conflict, and when I've done it well I've used a sense of humor.

I have used a character's manner of speaking. Claudia in A Valentine's Day Mess is probably the best example. The ghosts in Love is Enough are another. I'm trying to use it in a WIP. I don't use it often because it's time consuming and risks making the character hard to read.

I also try to use mannerisms that people commonly associate with character traits. That's a short-story writing method I learned in public school. I'm not great at it. The best I've seen on Lit was a 750-word story by KeithD. I was only a few paragraphs in before I told myself, "I know her."

 

[DeMont]

For me, perhaps the most important quality in a book of (non-erotic) fiction is that there are characters I want to spend time with. I don't necessarily have to like them, but I do have to find them interesting. I'm currently reading a book where the characters just barely make the grade. The MC is a generic nice guy, pleasant enough, but I keep getting distracted, analyzing why he's not vivid. The plot is what keeps me from giving up.

How do you give your characters personality?

Do you start out with a fleshed out character, using traits from different people in real life?

Do you start out with a place holder, concentrating on plot, and then layering on idiosyncracies like paint onto a canvass?

Does a character come alive in your mind without any conscious model from real life?

Is the cadence of their speech something you're conscious of? Or does it just evolve naturally?

@AG31,
Good evening my dear colleague. To begin I should make it clear that I should not be seen as a "professional" author, that is I don't make a living from writing, however, over the years I have had an amount of paid, awarded, sold and commissioned work published at various times.

For me, as far as giving characters personality, I would say "... All of the above." This is entirely dependent upon the nature of the story. The first, and major move, is to introduce the MC.

For example:
"Matchbox reached slowly into his coat and slid the gun from its holster." (Opening sentence - Placeholder)
This might be expanded to read; "Matchbox reached slowly into his coat and slid the gun from its holster, he held the gun up to the back of McGinty's head and pulled the trigger twice." (Still a Place Holder)

There, I have my MC. Now I have to work on Matchbox's reason for being there with a gun, or, the reason for Matchbox and McGinty being there together at the time. I need to develop Matchbox's motivations in being there in the first place and/or shooting McGinty. I have to give some physical form to Matchbox and develop the character's background. All of this will, usually in my case, be achieved by utilising everything you have mentioned as the story is being written.

There is, most normally, some "concept of character" in my mind as I begin and I use their patterns/dialects and idiosyncrasies of speech to style the character.

My characters are not normally based on people in real life, I create fiction with fictional characters however, having said that, I currently have a work in progress about two ladies that are counterparts to two ladies that I actually used to know. For this particular story type I do not need any great, in depth character development as the tale is about actions rather thann characters

So, you see, that is why I say "All of the above" - either way the story, for me, determines HOW I bring the character to the reader rather than how I create the character/s.
Most respectfully,
D.

 

[AG31]

So, to answer this question, think of several characters that YOU thought were well drawn in movies or stories, and think about what you liked about them, and also think about how much of that character's personality was revealed in the story.

It so happens that the next library book I picked up is a textbook on how to reveal personality. Apart from wonderfully atmospheric descriptions of scene, every sentence, practically, reveals some aspect of the personality of one or another character. Given this "challenge" of yours, I was so excited by what I was finding that I had to get up in the middle of the night (now) to report this. It's hampering my reading, distracting me.

The book is "The Impossible Thing" by Belinda Bauer and I would never have contemplated reading it except for the fact that I've read all of her previous books. It's about two young men on a search for a valuable bird's egg shell. One of them is sort of dim, but enthusiastic. The other is quite clever, but has that appealing literalism I associate with Asberger's (maybe now it's ND, @EmilyMiller?). They spend their days selling junk on e-Bay and playing Line of Duty. The e-Bay hobby is how they got involved with the egg shell.

As I said, normally not my thing, but it's a gem.

 

[AG31]

Are you on about the way they speak in the story, one common and one a toff?

No, not accent. Rhythmn. I'm not sure how one does it in print, but I associate different rhythms with different vivid characters.

 

[Writer61]

Base then on someone you know. It’s that simple.

You still have to convey it to the reader.

 

[AG31]

Is this more of a "how do I establish personality at all" question or is it more of a "how do I establish a personality that's vivid and not uncompelling" question?

I think the same techniques could apply, but they're applied well in the latter case.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

I think one useful method is to ensure that they have at least one flaw. One of my MFCs was down on her small bosom. A MMC was a misanthrope. Such things are the drop of lemon juice needed to turn a ‘nice’ sweet into something delicious.

 

[GemmaGemmaGemma]

I think a lot of them are just extensions of myself. They have experiences that I've had, have skills that I do, knowledge etc. This allows me to add detail that feels realistic and creates an immersive story. Their personalities just come out as I write, as I imagine them.

I do stuff like this as well, especially with new interests. If I'm just getting into something, like a tv show, I will give it to one of my characters and make it a part of them. I'm really interested in this one thing at the moment so I can talk about it loads. Once I've moved on from this new thing the story is already finished and I won't use it again. It's like leaving a little part of myself with one of my characters.

 

[Britva415]

not accent. Rhythmn. I'm not sure how one does it in print, but I associate different rhythms with different vivid characters.

There are two ways, depending on whether the rhythm is inherent in the word choices or not.

I mean, word choice is one way. Use the rhythm of the words themselves to either be the character’s speech rhythm, or, at least to kind of stand in for it or represent it or evoke it.

The other way, if contriving unnatural or inauthentic word choices doesn’t work or is objectionable, is to let the character speak for theirself, words wise, but, figure out how to describe the rhythm when they speak.

If you don’t want to describe it, there aren’t really any options.

 

[AG31]

I'm not really sure that I give them much personality. I give them actions that serve the story, and I give them dialogue that brings scenes to life. But I don't really go much further than "a character who wants this and acts in such a way".

I started out with the shortest stories, and pretty quickly realized that short stories were not the place to look. They were full of energy and imagination, but there wasn't much attention paid to personality because they were what I call 'simple erotica.' In the short stories your characters lacked personality for the same reason mine lack personality. You're writing about something else, about sex.

So then I dipped into some of the longer ones. I read Annie's Inhibition Removal Therapy. Brilliant!! Very little attention to personality. Super! It would have been a distraction.

When I launched this thread, I wasn't thinking about erotica, per se. I don't look for character or personality in my erotic reading. But I know most of AH writers do value character and plot, so I figured they'd be interesting conversationalists. But now that I've researched your stuff, I'm thinking that I have a more pointed question. What are some examples of erotica that feature vivid personalities where the personality is not a distraction from the sex?

I went back to @ElectricBlue's post in this thread, because his erotica is absolutely dependent on an appreciation of the other. But what is vivid is the MC's feeling of appreciation rather than the personality of the appreciated.

Suggestions, anyone? A story about sex that features vivid personalities?

 

[StillStunned]

Speaking for myself, anything written in 1P is probably not going to have a vivid personality. Everyone thinks of themselves as normal, the default, as it were, and trying to make the narrator too vivid could come across as trying too hard.

I've said once or twice that I divide stories into plot-driven, character-driven and sex-driven, which each containing the other elements to a lesser degree than the element that drives the story. So most stories mix plot, character and sex, but character is the most subtle of the three, and the most difficult to bring to the forefront.

As for a sex story with a vivid character? I went completely overboard with Hag-Ridden: A Fairy Tale. No subtlety there. Whether or not it detracts from the sex is hard to say though.

(ETA: And thank you for the kind words about "Annie's Inhibition Removal Therapy".)

 

[AG31]

Speaking for myself, anything written in 1P is probably not going to have a vivid personality.

Not sure you mean you're speaking about your opinion or about your writing.

It so happens that I'm reading a first person narrative book where the personality is so clear you expect the MC to just jump off the page. Margaret Maron's Deborah Knott and Sigrid Harald series are great. I expect she accomplishes this by basing the characters on herself, because they're fairly similar.

 

[StillStunned]

Not sure you mean you're speaking about your opinion or about your writing.

It so happens that I'm reading a first person narrative book where the personality is so clear you expect the MC to just jump off the page. Margaret Maron's Deborah Knott and Sigrid Harald series are great. I expect she accomplishes this by basing the characters on herself, because they're fairly similar.

My own writing, mostly. I've read books with very strong 1P narrators - the Flashman Papers come to mind, for instance, and several of Elizabeth Peters's characters such as Amelia Peabody and Vicky Bliss.

It probably takes confidence to trust that your readers will stay engaged with a 1P narrator if their personality doesn't match the reader's. The better and more compelling the story, perhaps, the stronger your narrator can be.