Boring Main Characters: How to Write Good Characters

The past five entries have been a lot of fun to write, talking about what makes some MCs boring and how some others are so fascinating. I hope I’ve given some helpful advice. By now you should have figured out a lot more about your MC. It’s all in your head, just ready to spill out into the novel. Today I want to talk a little about how to actually write about your MCs.

I’ll admit, this is certainly the hardest part. The characters in WANDER still bug me sometimes because, no matter how much I work in my plotting documents, they just refuse to act properly in my novel. Maybe you have the same thing. In your head your characters are real, fascinating people, but when others read your work they say your characters are dull and boring. What in the world are you going to do?

This may sound sneaky, perhaps even bad for your novel, but you have to let your characters express themselves. That doesn’t mean letting your characters do whatever. It just means giving them the proper scenes to let them be who you want them to be. This is especially important during opening scenes when you want the reader to learn about your character without dousing them in backstory and useless description.

Think of the openings of your favourite books. The Hobbit opens with Bilbo smoking on his front porch, giving us an excellent look at his ordinary, lazy life. The Hunger Games starts with Katniss hunting in the woods. Paranormalcy starts with Evie on a mission to tag a vampire. Skybreaker (by Kenneth Oppel) starts with the MC on a normal voyage turned crazy. All of these scenes are perfect for giving us a sense of who the character is.

This rule doesn’t just apply to openings. The rest of the novel should also be full of opportunities to showcase your characters’ personalities. In WANDER, the MC, Wander, is used to murder and torture and all sorts of awful things like that. Those things don’t affect her. But, for a reason that you learn later, she has nasty associations with rape. So, in the middle of the story I wrote a scene where Ida nearly gets raped, but Wander saves her. The plot would have been the same if Ida had been mugged, but Wander’s reaction would have been much different.

After all, what is a novel? It is a story about characters. The characters have to work to fit the plot, and the plot has to fit the characters. Adding a scene or changing one slightly to allow your characters to show their personalities will only improve your story. You don’t need to get bogged down in lengthy character descriptions, nor do you need to forget about character in order to keep the story moving. Just let the characters suit the plot, and make the plot fit the characters. 

Boring Main Characters: Improving Relationships

Last week I talked a bit about how to develop your character’s traits by making a list of traits and figuring out how all those things affect your character’s lives. Now I want to take a moment to talk about how to develop relationships between your characters.

The example I used in this post was of Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games. Whatever you think of the books (I loved the first two and hated the last one) one thing Collins does very well is relationships. Katniss has a clearly defined relationship between all the other characters. She is protective of her sister. She hates President Snow. She looks down on her mother. She admires Cinna. And, of course, there’s the whole love triangle with Gale and Peeta.

Think for a second of your own life. Think of people you know and figure out what you think of them. Maybe there’s the girl in your school who you’ve hated for as long as you can remember because in grade 6 she told you that you were weird. What’s your relationship with your parents? Your siblings? Do you admire your best friend? Are you jealous of him/her? What about your girlfriend/boyfriend?

My guess is that you can’t think of a single person who you don’t have some sort of mental association with. Hopefully there are very few people who you flat out hate, but there are going to be a lot of people you don’t like that much or find slightly annoying. Your characters will be the same.

Before you write a scene (especially when it’s dialogue between two people) figure out how the characters relate to one another. What I did in WANDER was to write out a chart where I plotted the characters relationships to each other for all the major characters. Even if you’re writing a book in first person, it’s still important to figure out the other character’s perspectives. Also, keep in mind that people change. Katniss’s idea of Peeta is constantly changing throughout the story. It’s a good idea to make a chapter-by-chapter outline of what your MCs think of each other, or at very least to find the major turning points and figure those out.

If you’re a seat-of-your-pants writer, you may not care for all this pre-plotting advice. That’s fine. You don’t have to do this all beforehand. What I’d suggest is that you take your finished draft and then figure out all the relationships. Through writing freely you can find out new things about your characters that you wouldn’t have in the plotting stages, and using character charts you can apply it to your novel.

However you decide to do it, inter-character relationships are definitely important to having interesting MCs. Next week, stay tuned for one last post on how to make your characters come to life on the page. 

Boring Main Characters 4: Adding Details

We’ve already seen that too many amateur stories have boring MCs, we’ve examined what doesn’t work, and we’ve seen some examples of well rounded MCs. Now I’ll talk about how to make your characters as three-dimensional as those in my examples.

The first way is to figure out all sorts of little details about your character. I’m guessing you’ve all seen the basic charts. They usually look something like this:

Name:
Age:
Gender:
Height:
Weight:

Charts like this have their uses. You obviously need to know your character’s name before you can start to write a book about them! (unless the fact that they don’t have a name is a factor in the story) This is the first step in creating a living, breathing character.

That’s just it. This is the first step, not the only step. There’s lots to do once you’ve figured out their physical features and basic likes and dislikes. The next step is to find out a lot more about them, and how these things affect them. Maybe your MC goes to an expensive private school. Does this make them just a slight bit snobby? Or do they feel the need to apologize, and explain that their family isn’t that rich? Do they have lots of friends at school or in the real world? How do they liked their parents?

Write a list of stuff about your character. Try to get a hundred short phrases. If you can’t think of enough things, write one for yourself first. Include things like favourite colour, political views, favourite school subject, most precious possession, do they have bookshelves in their room, how many siblings, how many friends…etc… Then, after you’ve got this long list, write how all these things affect your character. If your character likes pink, is she really girly? A guy who has an Obama poster on his door will probably be really active in politics. Someone who’s good at math will be very analytical in the story. A character’s most precious possession will probably get mentioned. Perhaps your character is a bookworm, so when they talk they would frequently mention characters from books (yes, you can mention characters from other works without breaking copyright). If he only has one little sister ten years younger than him, perhaps he’s really protective of her. Maybe your character has a ton of acquaintances, but no real friends.

I hope this doesn’t seem like a waste of time to you. Yes, most of the details will never make it into your story. That’s why it’s so much more important to figure out how the details affect the character. Maybe it doesn’t matter to your story that your MC has ten identical teddy bears sitting on their bed. It’s what it reveals about their personality that matters.

What are you waiting for? Go write about your characters! Next week I’ll talk a bit about relationships between your characters.

Boring Main Characters: A Few Examples of Cool Characters

ng Over the past two weeks we’ve considered the problem of boring MCs, and what won’t fix the problem. This week we’ll take a look at a couple books that have really interesting MCs and start to figure out what makes them so fascinating.

  

Since I started out this series by bad-mouthing Twilight, it’s only fair to use another Paranormal book as a good example. In this case, let’s take a look at Evie, the MC in Kirsten White’s debut novel Paranormalcy. Evie has an unique job at the International Paranormal Containment Agency, she’s got a funny ‘voice’, and she’s got a well-developed character. She has a favourite TV show. A favourite colour (pink). A best friend. She likes to paint her walls. She has a certain taste in clothes. All these little things come together to make her a really realistic character. (annoying, perhaps, but what real person isn't annoying sometime?)

 Now let’s consider Katniss, heroine in Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games, which is perhaps my favourite YA book. Katniss has an interesting role in the story and a recognizable voice, she has a real personality even before she gets thrown into the Games. She likes hunting. Her father is dead. She and Gale have an interesting relationship. She wants to protect her little sister. She resents her mother. She hisses at her sister’s cat. Relationships play a dominant role in the story and from the very start of the book we already know what Katniss thinks about those close to her.

One of my favourite examples is a Fantasy published in 1937, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Despite the older style of writing and the fact that this book is written in third person (rather than first like my other two examples) Bilbo’s character comes out clearly from the beginning. He completely forgets about Gandal’s promised visit, he hospitably lets the Dwarves come in to tea, he likes fireworks, and when he gets sent off on an adventure his biggest worry is that he forgot a pocket handkerchief. At Bilbo resembles a stuffy English gentleman but as the story progresses he becomes more of an adventurer; this change is part of what makes the story so interesting.

All of these stories have strong MCs and what makes them so good is that they’re not ‘flat’. They have numerous aspects to their personalities and their relationships to other characters are well defined. Next week we’ll look at how you can use small details to build up your characters.

Boring Main Characters: What NOT to do

Last week I touched on the problem of Boring Main Characters in YA literature. This week I’m going to give some advice about what not to do.

You might have looked over your manuscript and decided that your MC isn’t as interesting as you want them to be. They’re flat, and, (you have to admit) just a bit boring. What’s the first thing you do?

For a lot of authors, their first response is to make their character do a lot of interesting stuff. Has anyone else noticed the rise of stories written from the perspective of murderers, vampires, assassins or some strange creature? By making their character do something interesting, perhaps someone scary or even a villain, the author hopes that that will make the character be an interesting person.

Sorry folks. It doesn’t work that way. Character is much more than just a person’s actions. Consider this quote from the movie Get Smart. “They may be bad guys, but that is what they do, not who they are. Until we view them as real people, with real likes and dislikes, we’ll never be able to defeat them.” I’m pretty sure those aren’t the exact words, but you get the gist. A person’s job is not what makes them a real character. You need a lot more. You need a ‘voice’.

When people realize that they need a voice, that they can’t just tell their story from some flat, literary perspective, a lot of them tend to go overboard. The voice completely overwhelms the story. This voice is often one sided, most often snarky and rude. While this may work in some stories, the narrator is still ‘flat’.

I’m not trying to say that you can’t make your MC an assassin with a snarky ‘voice’. That’s perfectly alright in some instances. However, you can’t just do that and sit back and expect a perfectly interesting well-rounded character to come cartwheeling out onto the page. There’s more to characters than giving them an interesting vocation and a kick-ass attitude.

What more? Next week I’ll talk about some MCs that are anything but boring, and we’ll see what makes them that way.

Boring Main Characters: The Problem

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a fairly active member of the site inkpop.com, a writing website for teens run by HarperCollins. The site has around 40,000 projects and hundreds more added every week. I have two stories up, one of which has reached top five and been reviewed by a HarperCollins editor, the other is around rank 100 right now.

One thing that I’ve done a lot of on inkpop is critique other people’s stories. I’ve read and commented on at least 400 projects in my inkpop career, so I have a fairly good grasp of the problems that plague teen’s writing. On the blog I will address these problems in mini-series coming each Thursday. Something I’ve noticed that is a major problem on inkpop is that Main Characters (MC) tend to be boring, all the same. For this reason, I’m writing a six part series on what to do to make your MC unique.

The Problem

The vast majority of you have heard of Twilight. A lot of you have probably read it. I’m personally not a fan, but I read the first two and a half books simply to see what all the fuss was about. Half way through the third book I got too bored, so I stopped.

Whether you hate the books or if you’re one that really enjoys them, you have to admit that Bella is a pretty ordinary person. She, by her own admission, is boring. We’re told that she has hobbies, but we never see her doing anything interesting. She’s not particularly good, or bad, at anything in school. Her emotions are all pretty basic, and her responses are quite predictable.

You might say that Bella is an ordinary teenager. I’d say that she’s not. What’s my reason for saying this? There is no such thing as an ordinary teenager.

Think about yourself. Think about anyone you know. Everyone is unique. Everyone is interesting in some way. Everyone has a favourite book, a specific personality, a different way of viewing the world.

Bella doesn’t. And, unfortunately, many of the MCs I’ve read about on inkpop don’t either. I once read ten stories in a row that all had a MC who could be exactly the same person. These are the characters who walk to school, snooze in the back row, and go back home. They wake up in the morning and look in the mirror. Maybe they’re a bit snarky or they’re shy, they could be popular or not, but somehow the writer has only told us that they’re different, they never actually showed us what makes the MC interesting.

Good stories aren’t written about boring people. Editors right now are desperate for new novels with ‘fresh’ voices. They want unique MCs, perhaps more than anything else. A ‘Mary Sue’ won’t get you anywhere.

So, what are you going to do? Next Thursday I’ll have another post on what not to do.