Bringing Your Characters to Life

We looked at character creation a while back, and what is needed when making your wonderful protagonist, or the dastardly villain. But, how can we bring those characters to life? Regardless of the genre or setting, characters need to be believable so our readers can make a connection: Whether it be a working girl in a romance, a rampaging orc in a fantasy, or a Martian overlord that wants to take over the universe in a sci-fi novel, your characters need to be more than simple mannequins acting out your play.

Let’s take a look at a few ways of bringing your characters from the page into the minds of your readers.

People Are Not Static

They are near constantly moving. Even when sat in a bar, talking with an old friend, there is so much movement: A finger tapping on the table, the act of taking a drink, lighting a cigarette (at least, back in the good days when one could smoke in a bar), shifting positions to keep comfortable.

A lot of the time we don’t notice these things, but next time you’re down the pub, just watch a few people: It’s actually quite amazing, and at times amusing. There are countless tiny, seemingly insignificant things we can put into our character.

I’m not in any way saying that we write every little thing our characters do. But the occasional drop of information makes them seem truly alive. Let me ask a question to illustrate: Would two people sit at a bar and chat for an hour without drinking any of their ale?

Microsoft Sam? No thank you!

For those of you who don’t know, Microsoft Sam is the electronic-voiced text-reader built into Windows: Monotonous, boring, and mildly irritating.

Realistic dialogue is an often repeated message when discussing quality writing. And rightfully so! Here are a few pointers for making your dialogue realistic:

• A greatly stressed point: Listen! Listen to how people speak in real life, then apply that to your writing.
• Contractions. Real people are more likely to say “don’t” than “do not.” It makes the speech seem more natural, and for your readers contractions will allow them to more easily ‘hear’ what characters are saying.
• Accents or dialect. Not all people speak in the same way, so demonstrate this when writing dialogue. A dwarf, for example, is more likely to say, “Do ye really wannae fight me?” than “Do you really want to fight me.”
• Tone of voice. A construction worker will have a much less formal tone than, say, a king or queen.

People Change

While I’ll be covering character development and growth later in this series, it’s certainly worth a mention here. The events in your story, whether large or small, will have some impact on your characters if they’re involved in them.

Your character’s won’t be the same on the last page as they were on the first.

Tell Me More (Like, did he have a car?)

That covers just a few basic things which can help make your characters alive and believable. What other techniques or tricks do you use when bringing your character’s to life? Share them with us!