Character creation: watch out for irrelevant details
Character creation is one of the parts of the writing process that authors enjoy the most. Conceiving a being from nothing, imagining its physical appearance, giving it moral and intellectual traits… By creating a character the writer becomes a demiurge and gives life.
But while creating characters can be the funnest part of planning work that should always precede the writing itself, character creation is often approached superficially or downright wrong.
In this article we will see what it is important to take into account when approaching the creation of a character and we will point out some mistakes that are usually made when that time comes crucial for the conception of a work of fiction.
Character is destiny
There are authors who do not go deep enough in the character of his character. However, as Sigmund Freud noted, 'the character is destiny.
The character of your character will be what determines how he acts before the events that history reserves for him. For example, if a character trait of your character is bravery, he will act one way, while if he is not brave, he will act another.
At the same time, destiny is identified with character: your character is what he is because of the things that have happened to him and those that will happen to him throughout the narrative. So that the character is the destiny also because of the vicissitudes that that destiny (understood as fatum ) has made happen to the character. It may be that at first your character was not brave, but circumstances force him to be and in the end the courage does end up being a trait of his personality.
Por eso, como bien apunta Henry James, no hay personaje sin acciĂłn ni acciĂłn sin personaje. En el prefacio de Retrato de una dama, James insiste:
It was strange to think of a story that didn't immediately need characters to get it going; in a situation that did not depend on the nature of the people immersed in it and, therefore, on their way of dealing with it to be of interest.
What does this mean? What characters and action feed each other.
For this reason, when building your character, you should not limit yourself to imagining his physical appearance and some superficial attributes (such as "he is a nice person" or "he likes to paint seascapes"). Rather, you have to delve into his psychology, his ethics, his experiences…, because those traits are what will determine how he will face the events that history, action, reserves for him.
Despite the importance of doing so, many authors do not delve into the psyche of their characters, but, when it comes the moment of character creation, they limit themselves to staying in the external or the anecdotal.
External details
When completing a character sheet, the first thing that the writer will decide is the physical appearance of the character: does he have blond or brown hair? Is his skin pale? Freckles? Beautiful eyes? Is he tall or short? chubby or slim? There are even authors who look for images of models or actors who have an appearance similar to what they have imagined for their characters in order to always have them present.
Knowing the physical appearance of your character is relevant, we are not going to deny it. It is necessary when putting together good descriptions, and good descriptions are one of the key elements of good literature.
Specify hair color or height of your character will also help you not to make mistakes and that the character blue-eyed on page fifteen I didn't end up having black eyes on the page one hundred and fifty.
Although those kinds of mistakes can be excusable if the work is good. In Flaubert's Parrot, Julian Barnes quotes the critic Enid Starkie who pointed out that Flaubert paid so little attention to the external characterization of his characters that «once said that the eyes Emma's (Bovary) are brown; in another very black; and, in another, blue ».
But if the physique of your characters is important for something, it is because of the way it can mark their destiny and, therefore, their character (or vice versa). A character with great physical attractiveness may be used to everyone being well disposed towards him and consequently have a tendency to think that he does not have to try too hard to please others; Or, conversely, everyone may think he is handsome but dumb, which makes him frustrated that no one takes his ideas seriously.
Anecdotal details
Writers who already have a little more experience you know that the physical aspect is important, but not decisive, and you are willing to delve into your characters to give them characteristics that become unique and recognizable beings.
Unfortunately, more times than do not stop to think about his character and how he will make him react to the conflict; in the qualities that he treasures to overcome (or not) the tests that history holds. Instead, you look for a secondary characteristic or anecdotal detail and you use it in an attempt to give consistency to the character.
It can be a gesture, like brushing your hair away from your face; a mania, such as nail biting; or a hobby, like collecting perfume bottles. You take that gesture, hobby or hobby and make it appear here and there throughout the narrative with the naive idea of ​​thus giving solidity to the character.
Also, that gesture, hobby or hobby works also, from the point of view of novice writers (or less careful) to give the character naturalness. It is a trait of plausibility that have a character remove bangs from his face, scratch an ear, or collect coasters.
However, the likelihood of a character is that he is an "ordinary man," in the sense that narrator points out Berlin Alexanderplatz Alfred Döblin's :
An ordinary man insofar as we understand him very well and we sometimes say to ourselves: we could have done the same thing as him step by step and have felt the same as him.
The reader will not understand your character for his collection of coasters or that gesture with which the face hair. You will understand if you understand your motivations and goals, your weaknesses, their ideals and, in short, their idiosyncrasies.
Name
Another characteristic that often overwhelms the authors is the name of its characters, especially its protagonists. It is not a trivial detail, but again it has a relative importance.
Many of the character names celebrities who are part of the collective imagination (such as Emma Bovary herself, that we have cited before) resonate in us by the greatness of the work that they star and for the phenomenal way in which their author gave them life. He name alone would have no resonance without good deed and good construction of the character that support it.
Writers often strive to look for names that have a meaning or connotation that agrees with the character psychology: Roque, for his rock fortress, or Laura, who associated with laurel and, therefore, with triumph.
The idea is a good one, and it has been used with success by great authors, as we will soon see; but only if you are able to consistently and faceted that personality that matches the name. The important thing is not that the name represents the character of the character, but that you manage to build that character in a solid way through its arc and each page you write.
In the novel Doña Bárbara, by Rómulo Gallegos, its protagonist, Santos Luzardo arrives in the Venezuelan plains with a renewing spirit: he wants modernize their hacienda and impose more civilized customs on lands that in the words of the author himself they are «lands favorable to the barbarian outbreak, that overturn the bottom of the soul and open the cage to the black birds of the grim instincts. '
Doña Bárbara will be Santos's antagonist. She is the cacica of the area and has taken power through violence, fear and corruption. Gallegos was right when choosing the name of his character, because Dona Bárbara effectively represents the barbarism that Santos yearns to combat. But Gallegos did not limit himself to choosing a name, on the contrary, he built a superstitious, sensual, greedy, murderous character and without any of the feminine qualities of tenderness and compassion that, at that time (the novel was published in 1929), was He took it for granted that a woman should have. Furthermore, Gallegos rounded off his character by giving him a tragic past in which the origin of that wild and fatal personality is found. And it is that the motives are of crucial importance when writing fiction.
In summary…
In short, does this mean that you should not give importance to physical appearance, secondary traits, or name when creating characters? Absolutely. It means that first you have to develop well the core of your character, his skeleton, and from there, add those layers of more secondary or external character.
This is how Charlotte Brontë defined Rochester, male lead Jane Eyre's , in a letter to her editor:
Mr. Rochester has a thoughtful soul and a very sensitive heart; He is not selfish or self-indulgent, but he had a poor education and is often wrong; he makes a mistake, when he does, through recklessness or inexperience. For a time he lives like many other men, but since he is radically better than most of them, he does not like this degraded life and is dissatisfied with it. He is learning the severe lessons of experience and has the good sense to extract wisdom from it. The years are improving it; the effervescence of youth seems to wane, but what is really good in him endures. It is like a good old wine that time cannot sour, but only soften. This is at least the character I want to portray.
As you can see, it does not refer to their physical appearance, their gestures, hobbies or hobbies. Brontë talks about his past, his education, his experiences, his soul and his heart. He conceived Rochester from the inside out and thus succeeded in creating one of the most iconic characters in the history of literature, worthy of the protagonist of an immortal novel.
Do you tend to pay more attention to the external or the anecdotal than to the psychology and the internal when you work on your characters? Do you think that a mania or a habit gives it solidity? Or, on the contrary, are you aware that what is important in a character is his psychology and how his experiences have made him become? In the comments there is room for your reflections.