Kyle Carruthers

Kyle S. Carruthers ©2013 by Kyle Carruthers 2508 E. 148​th​ Dr. Thornton, CO 80602 - Nonfiction 5275 Imaginary Parenting by Kyle Carruthers Introduction Welcome to the most important section. Don't tell the other sections, they'll get jealous. Really, though. There's a reason audiences will pay to see actors sit on a stage and talk for hours, with no plot or setting to adorn the conversation. People. Stories are always centered around what people do, what people feel, what they are driven to or driven from. Plots would be empty, settings would be meaningless, and I'm certain some sort of trans-dimensional rift would occur if a writer found a way to produce dialogue without a character to speak it. But why is it so important? People care about people more than most anything, and characters are people. As with all aspects of life, there are exceptions, but even the most diverse audience will have this in common. The pessimists among you may be poo-pooing this statement, but understand that care can be used in a negative sense. Would serial killers bother murdering if they felt that humans weren't really a big deal? Before I get sidetracked on an unhelpful tangent about the inherent value of humanity, let's get back to what this means for your writing. In choosing characters for our stories, we are able to accomplish an act of precision that is rarely achievable in real life. We are given the opportunity to experiment with the wonderfully and fearfully complex entity of hope, love, pain, joy, fear, shame, confidence that is the human being (shoot, I found my way back to inherent value). The character is our pathway to communicating such emotions to our readers. If we can successfully birth and raise our characters well, the audience will be enraptured. Now, let's lay some ground rules. The Fundamentals There are a few decisions you need to make, and a few things you should before you begin even imagining your characters. If you've already started doing that, I'm afraid it is too late for you, but you might as well keep reading to find out what you're missing out on. Some of the following information downloads are mechanical, and some are a little more philosophical. Sorry in advance if you're allergic to that. First Person vs. Third Person Narration Choosing which perspective to choose to tell a story from is a basic, but far reaching, decision. Telling the story from the viewpoint of one character, in effect having the character tell the story, gives you more thoughts and raw material to connect with him or her, but it is also limiting. Third person allows for greater versatility, but if you take it too far it might be difficult to juggle all the pins. Advantages of First Person − You are able to tightly focus on the characterization of the main character. − It is easy to convey internal thoughts and conflict. − The main character has a closer connection to readers if he or she is the one telling the story. Disadvantages of First Person − It is difficult to develop characters who the main character is not interest in. − In most cases, you are committing yourself to one highly developed main character with less developed supporting characters. − Readers who do not care for the character's personality will likely be driven away. Advantages of Third Person − Having a greater number of developed characters can appeal to a broader audience. − You can fairly easily change which character you are following, allowing for deeper characters. − You can reveal important information to your readers while still keeping characters ignorant. Disadvantages of Third Person − It is harder to convey the thoughts of a character completely, but it is still possible. − Third person narration makes your world bigger, and therefore more difficult to convey well. − More effort is necessary to give characters the appearance of reality. Third person narration is more common, but choose the perspective you feel strengthens the focus of the story you are telling. Dynamic and Flat Characters Characters can be deep and shallow, but another dimension they can have is being dynamic or flat. Dynamic characters are the ones who change throughout the story. Flat characters are ones who change very little after their introduction. The protagonist is usually a dynamic character. Antagonists are often flat unless they are redeemed at the end of a story, at which point they have been promoted to dynamic. Dynamic characters are superior to flat characters in regards to realize and depth, but flat characters provide a foundation. Without flat characters, your story would be a constantly shifting mire of mid-life crises and conversion experiences. Also note that all characters have some flatness to them. That's okay. Choose which characters you desire to change and plot their arcs carefully. Change normally must occur slowly in order for readers to believe it. You must give them the chance to anticipate the changes. The events of the plot and the decisions characters make should compile to show the directions they are moving. Some circumstances allow for abrupt change. Cataclysmic events will often force a character to adapt or die. The death of a friend, a break-up, the divorce of parents. All of these are events you can employ to affect your characters greatly. When these happen, it would be suspicious if your characters did not change in some way. A character facing an obstacle must often change to overcome that obstacle. Similarly, overcoming or failing to overcome an obstacle can also cause characters to change. Love Your Characters This is the sappy, emotional, and philosophical part. Beware. Here's what's up: when you create a character you have the choice of treating that character like an imaginary entity or a real person. Both are valuable, but on some level you need to suspend your disbelief and imagine that you are now the mother or father of a new creation. Wait, what was that plopping sound? It sounds like responsibility. You are completely free to treat your characters like playthings. They don't have rights. You own them. You can abuse them mercilessly and make them run cruel circuits. In many ways you will need to disconnect from them as you give them facelifts and personality changes, but underneath all that, if you don't believe that your character is real, the readers won't either. Personally, I think it's easier to treat a person like a real person if you treat them with respect. Yes, even the villains. You can love them as much as you hate them, but in the end you are the creator of the little world you are making. You are the only reason Scissor-face Sam didn't have a nice childhood and grow up to be a famous polka artist. My recommendation is to be cold and callous when first creating a character, but treat them like children after that. You will need misguided, or plain old selfish characters for your plots, but if you never grow to love them it will be easy to stereotype them as simple and bad to the bone, you don't want shallow antagonists. You want deep and realistic antagonists. (Standard exceptions and normal billing rates may apply for comedies. Nobody is deep in a comedy.) Let's (Not) Be Realistic Do not create realistic characters. This is hard to grasp, so I'm just saying it straight out. It is bad, unhealthy for your writing,unethical, immoral, and could get you jail time in 17 states. I only say this because I love you enough that I don't want you to attempt to create a novel where your characters brilliantly mirror the average person. It won't take you long to discover that the average person is not very interested in the average person. This may be a tragedy of discontentment, but while creating accurate replications of the real world with writing may be artistic, it is seldom the best way to hook people into your stories. People are drawn to characters who are amazing. At the very least they want a character who can get through half a paragraph without saying “like” or “um.” While this contradicts the previous point where imagining characters as real people was recommended, it actually doesn't. Being at the serious disadvantage of not being real, characters need to be better than normal in order to compensate. Every real person has the potential for greatness within them, but novel characters need to be great from the start in order to classify as normal. You can't count on readers to give them a chance, like they (hopefully) would in real life. Character Types You get to choose which and how many characters you want in your story. If you aren't familiar with the standard stereotypes, you need to stay in (and read) more. When you are deciding what characters to use, try to match up character types with the flavor of the story you wish to tell. If you want your story to be gritty, try to emphasize the darkness in all of your choices somehow. Blur the lines between the good and the bad. If you want a light hearted comedy, embrace clichés and stereotypes rampantly. Experiment with unique combinations, like having a villain who is a hopeless optimist, but match flavors. If an experiment fails, abandon it. PB&J is great, but no one wants jelly in ravioli. Deep and Shallow Now that you've had a primer on some very important basics, it's time to get into fleshing out your characters. There are two types of characters in the world, deep and well-developed characters and shallow characters. Both are useful. Do not disdain the shallow character because he has had little thought put into him. shallow characters will hold the majority rule in the world you are building. Also remember that there is no clear dividing line between a shallow and deep. There are varying degrees of shallowness and depth that can be attained. What Are Shallow Characters Good For? These are often the background characters of your story. Their screen time is likely limited to a brief description. The lucky ones get a generic line. “Would you like fries with that?” But shallow characters accomplish the important task of making a world feel normal. We go about our daily lives without realizing the tremendous inner complexity that the hundreds of people we pass in the halls or in the street have. Instead of copying the true reality, shallow characters capture humanity's perception of reality. That being said, if it pleases you to develop the inner lives of your shallow characters, please do so. Often this will lead to unexpected connections and interactions that give life to a story. As the author, it is good to be one step ahead of “humanity's perception of reality.” Know that you have the power to take every character you pen, and breath a history, love, hate, tragedies, and blessings into his or her being. Deep Characters While shallow characters are a necessary feature for most stories, it would be a poor show to watch a chorus alone on stage tittering over half-imagined gossip. Deep characters have the magical ability to influence the course of the story. True, you make them deep because these characters are pulled strongest by the tide of plot, but you can also say that the story follows these characters because of their personalities, decisions, their unique splendor. These are the main characters, the villains, the anti-heroes and the rivals. The more developed and realistic these characters are, the better time you will have getting readers to sympathize with their plights and victories. Supporting characters are classified deep as well. They may not get as much attention as a protagonist, but don't neglect them. How To Prioritize Which Characters to Develop If an author has the power to make all of her characters deep, why doesn't she? For one, an author is limited by factors such as time, space, and, importantly, a reader's patience. You are going to need to play favorites. An important point to remember is the more time is spent developing a character, the more the reader will expect that character to be important to the story. So, the rule of thumb for the author is to develop characters who are important in some way to the plot or to the main character. Only spend time on the woman standing next to the man in the elevator if she is going to have a bigger role than the kid cast as a tree. Also, don't confuse the importance of a character with how many times he appears. The wise mountain oracle may show up as many times as a meaningless vegetable vendor in your story, but if he utters an earth-shattering prophecy, it is entirely appropriate to take half a page or more to establish his character. Half a page of characterization, while it might be sufficient for a one-shot prophet, obviously doesn't do for the leading man or lady. But what of the middling characters? The ones who play reoccurring supporting roles. When doling out characterization, be in the mindset of continually strengthening the characterization of characters currently speaking or being described. That is, whenever a character gets screen-time, you should have something in that appearance that either solidifies previous insight into him or else contributes a new attribute. Forming a habit from this will also get you in the habit of shading some depth in background characters, making for a deeper world overall. Another hint to remember is that is is easier to make big steps in development earlier on in the book. At a certain point around the middle of any story, readers start to feel like they have the characters figured out. Taking that into consideration with the previous advice, tackle what you believe to be the most important attributes of characters when they are first introduced. After that, continue making believable refinements. When To Lie It's one of the satisfying experiences, for both the reader and the writer, when a character is revealed to be something or someone different than what was assumed all along. This is a common occurrence in mystery novels. The culprit is usually who has sent out false signals prior to the reveal. Often this will be a character the readers assumed to be shallow and unimportant, but is instead the keystone of the story structure. This is common in the mystery genre. Often the culprit will be a character thought to be shallow until the big reveal. If this is done, you must be careful to lay a believable foundation for your character to spring into their new role as antagonist, undercover police officer, or what have you. In fact, even though the reveal of a secret identity, or a secret hatred, or passion, takes place in a specific scene, you must characterize that moment for the entire novel leading up to that point, but you must do it stealthily so that that read does not become suspicious. So...How Do I Actually Do All Of That? I guess that​ is​ fairly important. Since you asked, here is a list of methods you can employ to create deep and complex characters. Keep in mind that most of what is said here can be applied to any type of character, not just the protagonist. Antagonists and supporting characters follow the same rules for characterization, the difference is only in the role they play. Make Them Want It (It Being Variable In This Instance) Everyone wants something. The basics of life are a universally shared desire, food, shelter, warmth, love, cookies, but as we narrow in on cultures, communities, and individuals we find that specific desires appear. This point of characterization is particularly useful because it plays so greatly into how a character will act. The combined desires of the characters in your novel should create a circuit of cause and effect. For example the hero, Leonard, wants to bring the villain, Harold, to justice and Harold wants to get revenge on his older, and more handsome, brother Herb. Herb is speaking at a kazoo convention, so Harold plans to sabotage the convention, which then brings Leonard to the convention who teams up with Herb to save the day. Little does he know, evil runs in the family and Herb, who loves kazoos, is masterminding a plot to destroy all musical instruments that do not make annoying buzzing sounds. This sets up for an titanic struggle between Leonard, who loves music, and Herb. Once you have given a character a desire, they have a goal, an objective, and in a way it brings them to life. There is no longer a need to arbitrarily determine a character's actions. This piece of information will be the tuning fork which you use to maintain an active, but consistent, character. Make Them Strong...Or Not Strong characters are attractive because they are able to accomplish feats that we cannot. They satisfy an element of wish fulfillment in our hearts, and they can also inspire us to be better. In most cases it is a good idea to have a main character who is strong, capable. This could be physical. More often it is the strength of courage, conviction, or love. Weak characters are more attractive to most people. Why? The strong character, if done well, can inspire hope, but it is very difficult to understand a perfect character. The current plight of humanity is to struggle and to regularly fail. Seeing success is a joy to us, but success with struggle is an oxymoron. For readers to empathize with a character, it is helpful that said character is remarkably underwhelming. Not in everything, but still obviously flawed. Flaws can be physical, mental, emotional. Luke Skywalker had his hatred of Vader to overcome. Indiana Jones had his fear of snakes. The main weakness of a character up against a fantastic situation can simply be normality. A hobbit versus one dark lord, a teenage wizard versus another. When the stakes are high, not being skilled enough is a sufficient weakness for readers, who love to side with the underdog. Fill Them Up With Moral Fiber In this case, the words moral is applied very broadly. A bank robber has a set of morals. That doesn't go away because she shoved a spray-painted squirt gun at a teller's face and took his money. Either she believes that what she did was wrong or that it was right. If she believes what she did was wrong, there must be a reason behind it. If she believes that what she did was right, her view of morality doesn't match up with the majority of society. That's interesting, and there is probably a reason for. She might believe that she has been wronged by the universe, and deserves more than she has been given. She might be more philosophical and believe that morality is relative and therefore irrelevant. Setting a moral code inspires these kinds of questions. It says a lot about a man if he finds it acceptable to kick puppies. It says just as much if he believes it is his obligation to give money to every panhandler he passes. When you discover what a character will and won't do, it defines them by limiting them. Limits are good. Once you know your characters limits, you can use these to manipulate them in fascinating ways. Suppose you offer your character the opportunity to obtain a great desire by sacrificing one of their moral beliefs. Forcing characters into hard situations is fantastic for development into deep characters. Even do this with antagonists, perhaps especially. A good way to show that someone is evil is to illustrate that they know what the right choice is, but disregard it for personal gain. Pester Them Your characters should not be all-forgiving and all-loving. What annoys your character? Often two perfectly nice people simply don't get along. What types of personalities clash with your characters? Once you know, it's a shame not to use that information. Having all the good guys get along seems childish even in juvenile fiction. Often enough, people will dislike each other without having a reason. No one is going to doubt the realism of inter-good-guy conflict, and I'm sure you can find a way to use it to further your plot. You can also use annoyance as an excuse to let slip deeper issues. A defining trait of any person is how she treats people she doesn't like. Pinpoint how much a character is able to endure before openly showing agitation, put him in a situation where they are tempted to give in to agitation, and you are giving the reader a good picture of how calm and forgiving that character is, or how short of a temper he has. Horrify Them Many of these points are about what motivates characters, and fear is one of the best motivators. When a character appears that he desires to succeed in sports or academics, the truth may be that he does not love success, but does fear failure. The most powerful fears are the ones the ones that are abstract, that are not tied to the physical. These are the fears that are always with a character. The fear of losing a loved one can be more powerful than the love felt in the presence of the loved one. The fear of never being loved can be more overpowering than the yearning desire to be loved. Fear is closely tied to desire, but it finds itself on the negative side of the axis. Fear is almost always a weakness, or an obstacle to be overcome. Use it when you believe a character has become too strong to inspire sympathy. The terrifying strength of fear is that it can divert a fantastically competent person from achieving her potential through insecurity or obsession. Send Them To A Shrink If you have never taken a personality test, I highly recommend it. They're not completely accurate, but when you are familiar with the standardized personality types you may apply that knowledge to character creation. Knowing yourself is a plus, as well. It can be difficult to fall into the mindset of another personality type and becoming educated on this topic will help you to make sure that all your characters don't act like you would. There are many types of personality tests, so be aware that this is a helpful tool, not a hard science. Of the different tests, I prefer the enneagram for creating characters more than others because, unlike many other tests, it is what a personality is like at various levels of emotional health. This offers a ruler by which we can begin to measure character growth. Thinking about personality gives the opportunity to make decisions about how similar you want your characters to be. Do you want a protagonist and an antagonist who are surprisingly similar in all but which team they're one, or do you want polar opposites clashing against each other in every way possible? Push Them To Their Limits In the popular Pokemon video games, Pokemon will occasionally evolve into a stronger form. This generally occurs after intense training and experience or the satisfaction of specific conditions. Some of your characters are going to evolve throughout your books. If you so choose, they will overcome trials, gain experience, and become better people. Unlike the Pokemon game, and many other video games, there is no set currency of experience which determines when your character moves on to the next stage of development. You need to spend time determining what it is that your characters need, not want, need. Try to make this as specific as possible. Don't just say “Molly needs to learn to be kinder,” say, “Molly needs to be humiliated so she has the opportunity to let go of her arrogance and be more empathetic towards Samantha.” If you decide to be so generous as to lead your character along the path of growth, make sure that this happens at some point. In real life, we do not have the authority to give people a taste of their own medicine, even if it's good for them. In our fictional worlds, we are not so limited. The example I used was particularly negative. There are people who must be shattered before they can be rebuilt, but it is important that we do not approach this with cruelty. If we attempt to change a character by heaping tragedy upon him, it must be because we believe that this is what will ultimately improve him. Not all needs have to be as painful. All one character might require is a person to lovingly invest in her. One consideration we must have is that there are some characters who are beyond the hope of redemption. When we offer a character the opportunity to change, she may humbly take it and become a better person, or she might evolve in a different way. She might reject the opportunity and so propel herself deeper into selfishness. Blind Them A cool aspect of being a writer is that you get to be all-knowing. This is a wonderful perk, but a better perk is keeping secrets from your characters and your readers. A temptation in writing is to have characters jump to the correct conclusion when presented with a clue. The answer seems obvious to us because we already know the answer. It's not too much of a tragedy when this is done, but I think it passes up on wonderful opportunities to deepen characters through their biases. There are more interpretations of the world than there are people, and all of them are wrong. Decide in what ways your characters falsely perceive reality. It could be in a specific, misleading instance or one of your characters could have a perceptual bias. Optimists and pessimists are in the latter category, but you can also pull fun strings with characters who believe themselves to be overly competent or skilled. Tempt Them We've already spoken of a moral code, but having a code is different than being able to follow it. How capable is your character of living up to his own standards? At some point, we all fail to adhere to what we believe is right, but there are always degrees. In the Lord of the Rings, the hero, Frodo, turned out not to be much of a hero after all. He was not able to rid himself of the ring. He was a failure. Will your characters be one who can live up to their standards enough to accomplish their goals? If not, will it cause them to redefine their idea of morality towards an achievable goal or will they continue on in a futile attempt to hold to their convictions? Will you allow such a character to eventually rise out of the mire of insufficiency and redeem herself? That's A Lot Of Information...What Do I Do With It Now? Squeeze it out of your brain like suntan lotion, and apply it, but not just anywhere. Much like a three-dimensional object can appear shallow if viewed at the correct optical angle, a “deep” character can appear shallow if you have developed the character in ways that are irrelevant to the story. Do not use the methods above unless it is going to share something about the character's personality, and even then, choose carefully what you wish to spend your precious word-count on. Let us take a look at the following two attempts at characterization. Flower Lover One: Greening was startled out of his daydream as a young girl scrambled next to him on the bench and stared doe-eyed at the rich bouquet in his hand. “I love flowers!” she said, her face a beaming star against the drab night of the subway station. “I do, too,” Greening said. Encouraged by the child's joy, he selected a Bird of Paradise, and gave it over to her fragile hands. Flower Lover Two: Browning was startled out of his daydream as a young girl scrambled next to him on the bench and stared doe-eyed at the rich bouquet in his hand. “I love flowers!” she said, her face a beaming star against the drab night of the subway station. “Keep back child,” Browning said. “These flowers were quite expensive, and very dear to me. I won't have your dirty hands ruining them.” Greening and Browning both love flowers, but that fact alone is not what characterizes them. What matters in this scene is how they choose to use that love. Greening is able to share his love with the girl, and so he is shown to be a kind and caring man. Browning may care about flowers, but he apparently doesn't care about children. Also, because we have spent more resources characterizing either Browning or Greening than the girl, the reader will assume that the man is more important to the story than the girl. It is assumed that the knowledge that Browning is bitter and Greening is gentle will be of use in the future. There will be a disconnect if for the next portion of the tale we ignore these two and follow the girl's story unless we can later tie the man back in. Spending time developing characters is like making a promise. Breaking promises is a good way to make no one happy. You Haven't Practice Enough. Here Is What You Can Do To Get Better I am so disappointed...I bet my co-authors $20 that I could drive you away by now, and you're still here. You're still determined to create engaging characters? Really, you're sure I haven't poisoned you against the whole concept of writing? Well, I suppose I might as well hand over tips and techniques for you to practice and find inspiration in your pursuit of developing characters, even if it means more competition in the future. Thing 1:​ Know yourself. How can you understand fake people if you can't understand real people, especially yourself? Read through this section again and try to think about the concepts in relation to who you are as a person. It also would help to take a psychology class as an elective in school, or check out books on it at your library. Thing 2: ​Read biographies. There are people in the real world so interesting that there are books written about them, and people read those books! I was shocked too. Surely you can benefit from taking a peak at them. Thing 3: ​Think of the most interesting person you know in real life. Why are they interesting? Try to write a short scene in which you attempt to portray that person. Thing 4:​ Look up the Myers Briggs and/or Enneagram personality tests for free online. Take the tests pretending to be one of your characters. You can also try creating a character from scratch based on the available outcomes for the tests. Things 5: ​Constantly be aware of how you determine the personalities of the people around you. Why exactly do you think that Carol is bubbly? Why do you perceive Hugo as socially awkward? Once you identify the reasons, determine whether you can use the same signals to characterize your fictional creations. That's it. Those five things are all that I had left. You've drained me, exhausted me. I should sue, but I won't. Now go away, and remember to name a character after me.