January 5, 2006
How do you create interesting characters? To be honest, I'm not sure. I assume if they're interesting to me, they'll be interesting to other people. There are a few rules I follow now that took some time for me to learn, and there are undoubtedly exceptions, but I'll throw them out here.

1. Main characters should be proactive. Readers aren't all that interested in reactive characters who are blown before events.

2. Corollary to rule #1, main characters should be fighters. I don't mean physically, necessarily, but either as a rule or by changing throughout the course of the story, a character must fight for what they are trying to achieve, whether love, the solution to a crime, revenge, a job or whatever. A friend of mine read my novella "Name Your Poison," part of CATFISH GURU, and objected to the fact that at the end of the story Mac takes another job rather than making demands on his bosses, to fight for what he wanted where he was. There were a lot of reasons I did that, primarily because Poison was written as a prequel to BLOOD SECRETS, in which Mac starts his first day on a job, but her point was well-taken, I think.

3. Quirky is as quirky does, but there's not a lot of reason to have a vanilla, bland, boring character who doesn't do or think interesting things.

4. Icebergs. That is to say, 9/10s are below the surface. You should know more about your character than you reveal, because it will show and guide your character's behavior. Show those quirks, don't tell the reader about them. Don't say, he drinks stingers for breakfast. Have him fixing a stinger before breakfast. And, if possible, figure out why he does.

Joe Konrath offered up a checklist/questionnaire with the following categories for characters:
UNIQUE
GOALS
FLAWS
QUIRKS
PERSPECTIVE
SUPPORT
ENEMY

They're all quit reasonable, but I'm not that systematic about my character development. Take Derek Stillwater, for instance. I knew he was an expert in biological and chemical terrorism. I knew he was some sort of Special Forces guy, but at first I wasn't sure what kind, then decided on Army, because of his involvement in the first Gulf War. I knew he was outspoken, a loner, and not necessarily a team player, which would make him a bad fit for the military, so I had him retired from the Army.

I knew he was fit, but I wanted it to be different from the usual, so I had him a hardcore ocean kayaker. It fit his personality. He lives on a boat--not a houseboat--in a marina off Baltimore, keeping him relatively close to Washington, D.C. Again, it has that sense of independence and perhaps rootlessness to it. I wondered what somebody with his background would do after quitting the Army post-Desert Storm, and realized the UN would probably have wanted him as a weapons' inspector. The CIA might very well have had an interest in him, but again, he probably has too much of a stubborn, independent streak to work long-term for the CIA.

I wanted him to be not necessarily a typical action hero, though very capable physically. So I made him have a love-hate, totally neurotic relationship to the subject he's an expert in. He FEARS these things--biological and chemical weapons--partly because he's seen their effects. And he reacts to this fear very often with panic attacks prior to entering a project. He's always trying to quit, but can't seem to, having a tiger by the tail. He's more afraid of what might happen if he does quit. His job's affected his relationships. He still loves his ex-wife, but their marriage never survived his career or hers. He can be charming, but he's also short-tempered, grouchy and single-minded when working. He's also got this obsession about using religious music to clear his head and think about problems. I don't really know where that came from, just that in my household if either my wife or I put "Chant" on the CD, it generally means we're stressed out and need something that will give us some calm in the middle of the storm, and I thought that would be a strange but important aspect of Derek's personality, one that, in the middle of the crisis, is going to freak out people if he pops on earphones and an iPod and starts listening to Bach's B Minor Mass for 15 minutes.

Sometimes in characterizaton the tail wags the dog. In other words, you need something done and you give your character the ability to do it. It's integrating those traits and giving reasons why. For instance, I needed my character, Joanna Dancing, in my current novel, to be comfortable with motorcycles. I found myself having her steal a dirt bike to escape. Later on, I found that she owns a motorcycle. It wasn't intentional, but it became part of her personality, the independence, the "speed" fetish, etc.

You can get ridiculous about it. But the more real the character is to you, hopefully the more real it is to your readers.

Best,
Mark Terry