“Elderly people are not always craggy, wrinkled, stooped over, forgetful, or wise. Teenagers are not necessarily rebellious, querulous, or pimple-faced. Babies aren’t always angelic, or even cute. Drunks don’t always slur their words. Characters aren’t types. When creating a character, it’s essential to avoid the predictable. Just as in language we must beware of clichés. When it comes to character, we are looking for what is true, what is not always so, what makes a character unique, nuanced, indelible.”
—DANI SHAPIRO, STILL WRITING
Characters ranked as one of the top trademark secrets of best-selling authors. There’s a reason for that, and it’s the same reason this subject of craft is continuously offered in workshops all over the world. I believe creating strong, memorable characters is the key to making a successful book that leaves an impression on a reader. I also think there are certain ways to create characters that feel lifelike to readers.
When I begin a new romance novel, the first thing I do is think about my characters. My goal is to go beyond the physical description, character history, and basic personality in making sure each character breathes air. I need to identify with them. I need them to have annoying habits, to screw up, and to show the reader that they will never be perfect but they’re still doing their best.
These are the types of characters readers want to follow on a journey. A book can have the most exotic setting, the most thrilling plot, the deepest theme, but if the reader doesn’t care about the characters, the entire book will fall flat.
The skill set required for the challenge will change, too, depending on what type of romance (or, any genre) you are writing. For instance, when I write category-type romance novels of around 55,000 words, I need to draw my characters quickly and sharply in order to get the reader on board in a more compact story. I have less time to linger on secondary characters or spend pages on details.
Same thing with novellas. The characters have to come alive within a few brushstrokes, and they need to be lean and mean. A writer’s job is to relate the most important qualities that make a character unique. The best way to do this is to throw the character into a situation and watch how he reacts.
Everyone has heard the famous writers mantra, “Show, don’t tell.”
That means write active, not passive.
With shorter books, these components are even more critical. Readers need to identify with your hero or heroine in the first few pages. Instead of rambling about your hero’s fear of commitment, open your book with him breaking off a relationship or scoffing at his friend’s engagement. Don’t tell the reader he’s a workaholic. Show him at the police station, drinking stale coffee at 2 a.m., pondering why he doesn’t have a life.
In my novel Searching for Perfect, I’d originally opened with a lengthy introduction to my hero—a rocket scientist, nerd, and social misfit—desperate to find a woman to settle down with and marry. I thought it was quite clever until my editor reminded me he wasn’t doing anything. He was just reflecting about these qualities, which became a big tell-fest. Boring. I fixed it by grounding him in a real-life situation: a speed-dating event where he showed his awkwardness, sporting orange skin from a self-tanner gone wrong and bombing out on every meet and greet. Here’s an example. In this scene, my hero, Ned, is frustrated at his past speed-dating encounters and decides to get right to the point.
Ding.
By the time he hit table twenty, he was aggravated, tired, thirsty, and disillusioned. Most cared about his appearance, money, or man toys, and all he wanted to do was get serious and leave all the junk behind. Despite weeks of reading women’s magazines, he’d flunked every five-minute session.
Finally, he reached the last date. The woman seemed nice enough, but he’d been here before. No more. This time, he was running the date his way.
“Hi, I’m Bernadette.”
He leaned forward, placed his elbows on the table, and narrowed his gaze. “Hi, I’m Ned. When will you be ready to be married and have kids?”
The woman jerked back. She seemed shocked, but he bet she was just pretending. He hadn’t met a female without an agenda this whole night. “Umm, I’m not sure. I want to be in love with the right person. Then marriage and kids can come later.”
Hmm, good answer. Ned raised the stakes. “How long? A month? Two? You’re already past thirty, and statistics show once your eggs reach thirty-five, your fertility starts declining, and chances of a healthy baby decrease by forty percent.”
Was that a moan? He was only citing statistics straight from Glamour or Self. He forgot which one. Her lower lip trembled but he had her full attention. “I’m only twenty-nine,” the woman whispered.
“Right on the precipice. I would rethink your plan if you want to birth at least two children. You do want children, right?”
Another small moan. “Yes, I’ve always dreamed of having children.”
Finally. A woman who knew what she wanted. He relaxed. “Me, too. I think we have similar philosophies. It’s been a tough night, but I’m glad we finally met. I think I’m supposed to wait till the end, but since this worked out so well, how about dinner Friday night?”
Ding.
This short encounter gives a direct glimpse into Ned’s character without boring a reader by telling. Dump a character into a situation and watch him fumble around. His actions directly relate to the type of character you need to explore.
In longer fiction, a writer can linger a bit more on character descriptions, and season the characters. You have more time to build up and hint at conflict rather than knock the reader over the head with the conflict. You have space to simmer sexual tension and the banter between characters. Readers love tension in their books, so you need to have your characters unveil their secrets and demons at a slower, more leisurely pace.
With my book Everywhere and Every Way, one of the main conflicts is my heroine’s inability to have children due to a hysterectomy. I don’t reveal this fact to the reader until the midpoint of the novel, but there are hints sprinkled in for the reader and the hero to pick up on. When it is finally revealed, many of the readers’ questions are answered and the pieces of the story slide together into an easy puzzle the reader enjoys solving. The heroine’s drive to live a complete, joyful life shows up in her determination to enjoy her career and embrace the opportunities she does have. Readers know this about the character because they’ve seen her actions starting on page one, but they don’t know why she is this way.
Here’s one scene from the hero’s POV, which helps the reader depict Morgan’s—my heroine’s—mind-set.
“So, you travel a lot.”
She nodded. “Yes. My home base is wherever my client sends me.”
“You have no need to settle down?”
“No. My career is at its peak, and I have no intention of sacrificing my opportunity at success.”
He paused. Considered. “You’re very ambitious.”
She stiffened, and he got the feeling he’d misspoken. Her voice snapped back to the cool, formal tone he was used to. “Yes. And so are you. I happen to like my life the way it is, and I have no intention of changing it.”
“Ouch. Didn’t mean it as an insult. Just an observation.”
Her shoulders relaxed slightly, but Caleb knew there was more to her reaction than he realized. There was a pain there, a bruise in her soul she didn’t want to poke at. A vulnerability that called to him. He tamped down on the impulse to push a bit more, reminding himself there was no need to know the secrets of his temporary business partner. In six months, they’d never see each other again. Better to set up the rules now.
This example shows that career is a priority in Morgan’s life, and she refuses to apologize for it, yet Cal senses a deeper, unspoken conflict. You can set a lot of emotion and intent in a few words or a sharply drawn scene, as in this quick snippet:
“And you? What’s your title in this crew?” she asked.
“The grumpy one.”
Her giggle charmed him. Cal swam closer. The wet camisole outlined every flow and curve of her body, making him burn. He tried to concentrate on their conversation. “What about you? If you had to place a tag on yourself, what would it be?”
It was a while before she answered. Her voice was a whisper of sound. “A fighter.”
There are many ways to create a fully-developed character people can relate to. I fully believe our characters change as we age and grow as authors and in life experience. The characters we write about usually reflect something in our current stage of life. For instance, when I was eighteen years old, I desperately wanted to write adult romance, but my characters came out flat. I had no idea how a grown woman with a career acted. I had no experience with such a heroine, and I didn’t know what type of conversations she’d have or what running a business was like. Sure, I learned tons from reading about these characters, and I could research, but I couldn’t make myself feel something I hadn’t experienced.
Does this mean you can’t write about a situation or character completely different from your experience? Absolutely not. But be warned, it’s a bigger stretch to write about, for example, a mother’s love for her child when you have no relationship with a child and have never experienced any type of bond with a child. I avoided writing romances with single moms when I was in my early twenties, because I couldn’t relate and I found it boring. But when my brother became a father, I was fascinated with my new niece. I became immersed in all kinds of baby stuff, like first words and the joy of seeing a child’s love. After that, I was more interested in reading those stories, and I identified more with writing about that kind of connection.
I wrote The Marriage Bargain at a time in my life when I was in dating hell and began brainstorming ways to find a perfect man. I stumbled upon a love spell book to find your soul mate, which consisted of writing down the exact qualities you need in a man. Since my heroine was also desperate to save her family home and needed a large amount of money, I paired it with her search for love in a comic twist of humor. Take a look at my opening scene:
She needed a man.
Preferably one with $150,000 to spare.
Alexandria Maria McKenzie stared into the small homemade campfire in the middle of her living room floor and wondered if she had officially lost her mind. The piece of paper in her hand held all the qualities she dreamed her soul mate would possess. Loyalty. Intelligence. Humor. A strong sense of family and a love for animals. A healthy income.
Most of her ingredients were already cooking. One hair from a male family member—her brother was still pissed. A mix of scented herbs—probably to give him a tender side. And the small stick for … well, she hoped that didn’t mean what she feared.
Right away, you get a sense of the heroine and the lighthearted, humorous feel for the book. I used my own experience, combined with a lot of fiction, and was able to deliver a character readers still e-mail me about.
Sometimes it is simply a matter of age and experience that helps deepen and change our writing. I couldn’t write an adult novel at the age of sixteen. But, as I grew older, my writing’s raw, passionate edge rose to a more restrained, yet deeper level—I was a woman who’d experienced life.
Use the messy emotions in life to infuse characters with depth. Heartbreak is good. I remember looking back at some of my stories, and how I wrote excessively and dramatically about breakups and loss. I had a different view, and my characters reflected this. When someone broke my heart and tore it into tiny pieces, I crawled out of the experience battered and wary, but grown up. Reading my work afterward was a revelation. My hero and heroine matured. I wrote less about emotion and more about the nuances of emotion within the relationship. I could never have written like that before because my heart had been whole, untouched, and unbroken.
One stage is not better or worse. It just is. Everything I examined from the past thirty years has something special shimmering within it. Life changes, and one experience is replaced by another. What is lacking in one stage is fulfilled in another. It’s our job as writers to examine and embrace each stage of our careers and how our writing has changed. This will directly affect the way we write characters.
We face many pitfalls in trying to create a solid character. For instance, I personally despise perfect characters. Humans aren’t perfect, so characters can’t be either. We are all messes, filled with issues from our past, our school days, and our heartbreaks. We have committed failures and grown insecurities. We make mistakes. We choose the wrong people to love. Our experiences influence our characters. And the richer the character, the more memorable they are to the reader. I want to identify with the people I’m reading about, balanced with a touch of fiction. Make your characters real but larger than life.
I don’t want to read two pages of my heroine doing laundry for her son. I know she does laundry and has household chores, but I don’t want to be reading in lieu of doing laundry, only to be reading about laundry. I want to read about the good parts, which is why I paid for your book. I want kissing and angst and sex and heartbreak and love ever after. If she needs to clean, you can tell me about it in a one-line narrative that merely sets the stage, and then get to the good stuff.
Give your characters quirks or weaknesses. Think hard about the stuff you do that annoys your spouse. I make a mess while cooking, so my husband comes in and cleans up behind me. That will give you a hint right away to our personalities: he’s OCD and I’m a free spirit. I could care less about a sink full of dishes or peas on the floor (which the dogs will eat anyway). My husband needs the counters clean and the dishes done. These are real-life traits readers identify with. Take the basic stuff, twist it, make it more vivid, and you have a scene readers can laugh at and relate to.
Here’s an example from The Marriage Bargain. This short exchange between my hero and heroine clearly shows their personality differences in the most basic of ways.
Alexa squirmed in her seat as the silence in the black BMW stretched between them. Her husband-to-be seemed just as uncomfortable, and he chose to focus his energy into his MP3 player. She tried not to wince when he finally settled on Mozart. He actually enjoyed music without words. She almost shuddered again when she thought of sharing the same residence with him.
For. An. Entire. Year.
“Do you have any Black Eyed Peas?”
He looked puzzled by the question. “To eat?”
She held back a groan. “I’ll even settle for some of the old classics. Sinatra, Bennett, Martin.”
He remained silent.
“Eagles? Beatles? Just yell if any of these names sound familiar.”
His shoulders stiffened. “I know who they are. Would you prefer Beethoven?”
“Forget it.”
In Searching for Someday, my heroine had an issue with stuttering. In scenes where she was nervous, I showed her lapse into a stutter, as well as the techniques she used to stop herself. I didn’t detail her past until later in the book, when the reader was ready to take a breath.
There is no limit to the freedom we have for our characters. From a hero with autism (Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie Project) to a paraplegic hero (Jojo Moyes’s Me Before You) to a protagonist who never speaks (Mia Sheridan’s Archer’s Voice), our writing is limited only by our own imagination.
Give me characters that struggle with addictions or demons from the past. Show them in the workplace, failing spectacularly.
With my novella Searching for Disaster, I opened up with my heroine engaging in a one-night stand. It was a pivotal, dynamic scene because it set the stage for a choice she’d have to make in the future, one that concerns this man she begins to care about and getting high. I wanted to ground the reader in a scene that would affect the rest of her life and the rest of the book. Don’t be shy about detailing the ugliness in the world or the bad choices characters make. This is what makes them real. Here’s an example of the moment her path turned toward disaster. My heroine, Izzy, just received a bag of cocaine in her dormitory room, and the man she’d slept with tells her to get rid of it.
“You don’t have the right to tell me what to do.”
His gaze burned. “Maybe not, but I’m asking. Something happened between us tonight. I’m not into magic and bullshit, but there’s a connection I feel with you I want to explore. I can’t do that if the stuff in that bag is more important than me. Toss it, Izzy. I’m asking.”
The tiny room tilted around her as shock hit. She had just met him, and he was asking her for a sacrifice. Wasn’t it really just a way to control her? Shouldn’t he be willing and able to accept her exactly the way she was? After all, she wasn’t a druggie. She liked to take an occasional hit of coke. Why was that so wrong?
As she stared at him, the room filled with a rising tension and inner battle of wills. The bag behind her became a symbol of what path to choose. Yes, she’d never experienced such a physical encounter, one that seemed to raise sex to a higher level into the mental and emotional. But she refused to allow him to set rules. She could get rid of the bag if she wanted to. That wasn’t a problem. The bag had no power over her.
But she didn’t want to.
Izzy stepped back, as if to protect the item she’d sacrificed the unknown for. “No, Liam. I’m asking you to let it go. Just trust me—it isn’t a big deal.”
Slowly, the knowledge that she’d already chosen leaked into his eyes. He jerked away, a flash of pain carved in his face before it was quickly smoothed over by a distant expression. He nodded. Rose from the bed. And dressed.
“I’m not going down this road, Isabella,” he said softly. “I’m not built for it, and I’m not about to watch what happens next.” He paused, hand on the knob. “See ya.”
He left.
Izzy stood still in the empty, silent room. Slowly, the bitter rage swept in from deep inside and caught her in its vicious grip. It might be the enemy but it was what she’d known and lived with her entire life. In a way, it was safe, so she embraced the violent emotions with zeal.
How dare he give her an ultimatum. He was like all the others. Judgmental. Arrogant. Only able to make decisions based on logic rather than accept the unknown chaos life demanded, and she was better than that.
Better than him.
Filled with righteous rage, she tore open the bag and grabbed the vial. The blindingly white powder beckoned and promised forgetfulness. Justice.
Silence.
Izzy unscrewed the vial.
Boring characters are boring people. Don’t be afraid to make them different; don’t be afraid to push them. In Searching for Always, many readers commented on my hero and heroine’s anger issues. It unsettled them at first, but as they progressed through the book, they discovered the reason for all that anger. Sure, I received a few bad reviews because my characters weren’t happy-go-lucky, easy-going people. But who cares? Make your characters real. Make them interesting.
A likeable character can be just as riveting. Alexa, my heroine from The Marriage Bargain, is a pretty even, happy person. But she constantly worries about her weight and forces herself to eat salads. She wants to rescue the world, but her passion gets her into trouble. And she’s fierce, so she’s unflinchingly honest.
Maggie, my heroine in The Marriage Trap, is difficult. She’s sexually experienced, a bit broken, sarcastic, and a real pain in the ass. She’s not an easy character to love, but the payoff at the end of the story is bigger because of that. When she reveals a dark secret from her past, her behavior makes sense, allowing readers to become emotionally invested.
Give readers a payoff.
My favorite heroes are the ones that are so screwed up I can’t believe I’m still reading the book. Yet, I grip the pages because they are so vivid that I need to see what happens to them. Linda Howard’s hero in Cry No More was a hired killer and he terrified me. Christian Grey, from Fifty Shades of Grey, was an infuriating alpha control freak, but readers reacted to the chemistry between him and Anna, plus his hotness factor coupled with his hidden brokenness. Pepper Winters writes some deeply dark, disturbing heroes that make me so mad I want to throw my Kindle. But I always pick it back up. J.R. Ward is a master at character creation, and her Black Dagger Brotherhood series depicts a tight-knit group of vampire and shifter men who are alpha, problematic, frustrating, and hot. Readers devour this series due to its vivid characterization and raw appeal.
Even in a light, contemporary romance, heroes can make wrong choices and treat the heroine poorly. I can forgive that if I feel like I’m getting to know them and will eventually get my payoff. The payoff comes when the hero is brought to his knees and must redeem himself to the heroine. It’s a secret contract between the reader and the writer that is sacred. Yes, I know the characters are screwing up terribly, and I kind of hate them, but I’m invested and believe in their growth.
Depicting a character at her breaking point is a powerful way to connect with the reader, but it must be done wholeheartedly—you must push this character to the limit of her strength. When I’m invested in a story, it should be a roller coaster of character growth, steadily bringing me to the black moment where a hero or heroine feels as if the world has splintered and everything will be lost. Here’s an example in my book, Searching for Beautiful, where my hero suddenly comes face-to-face with his demons. The scene unveils from my heroine’s point of view, allowing the reader to experience her emotions.
“You need to get out.” His jaw clenched, and he practically hissed out the words. The serpent seemed to be whispering the commands in his ears. “Now.”
She almost left. Knew it would be better. But she’d reached a turning point, and had one last shot at getting him to break. Open up to her. Give her a chance to let her love him. In this room, tonight, the demons needed to be sprung.
“No.”
A growl rose from his throat. “Not fucking around, Gen. It’s not safe here.”
“I don’t want to be safe from you.” She glanced pointedly at the boxing bag. “Nightmare?”
The pain carved in his face made her want to weep; wail; leave. But she stayed, swearing to see it out to the ugly end, no matter what the result. They owed each other this much. “Yeah. I get them now and then, so I prefer to work it out of my system. Alone.”
“Maybe that’s the problem. You’ve been alone too long.”
“Not up for this now. Go back to bed and we’ll talk in the morning.”
“What if I don’t want to talk?”
He muttered a vicious curse. “Don’t. I’m not safe right now.”
The setup is the struggle for the truth. Once my hero confesses, my heroine must try to help him heal.
“The days kept passing, and I got used to existing again. But when I looked at my wrists I remembered that night. So I started covering them up. Not seeing them. Pretending it didn’t happen. Refusing to remember.”
Every part of her body ached and burned to take him in her arms, cry, hold him. To finally know the truth, yet feel so distant from him ripped at her soul. He was slipping away from her, inch by inch, and in sheer desperation, she crossed the room and grasped his shoulders.
Those vacant eyes filled up with emotion. A wildness that made her dig her nails into his skin and shake him with the last ounce of her strength.
“But you did remember. It happened, and you survived. You’re here now, with me.”
“I’m not whole.”
The simple words sliced like razors.
Don’t be afraid to dive into emotions we all feel when we’re struggling to deal with horrors in life or to form relationships of love.
Changing point of view is an important tool in revealing certain aspects of character to your reader. Using first person POV is a powerful technique to quickly bond a reader to a character. Emma Chase is a master at male POV, and her groundbreaking book Tangled introduces Drew Evans to the world. He’s not the typical hero, but brash, arrogant, snarky, and perfectly imperfect. Here’s a taste of his introduction:
Do you see that unshowered, unshaved heap on the couch? The guy in the dirty gray T-shirt and ripped sweatpants?
That’s me, Drew Evans.
I’m not usually like this. I mean, that really isn’t me.
In real life, I’m well-groomed, my chin is clean-shaven, and my black hair is slicked back at the sides in a way I’ve been told makes me look dangerous but professional. My suits are handmade. I wear shoes that cost more than your rent.
My apartment? Yeah, the one I’m in right now. The shades are drawn, and the furniture glows with a bluish hue from the television. The tables and floor are littered with beer bottles, pizza boxes, and empty ice cream tubs.
That’s not my real apartment. The one I usually live in is spotless; I have a girl come by twice a week. And it has every modern convenience, every big-boy toy you can think of: surround sound, satellite speakers, and a big-screen plasma that would make a man fall on his knees and beg for more. The décor is modern—lots of black and stainless steel—and anyone who enters knows a man lives there.
So, like I said—what you’re seeing right now isn’t the real me. I have the flu.
Influenza.
This opening grounds us into his character. We know Drew’s voice, manner, and can’t wait to hear his story. What makes this setup even better is we discover he doesn’t have the flu, but broke up with the woman he loves and is experiencing the fallout. Chase details it in a such a fresh way, we know this hero has never had his heart broken before.
Growth is the key to getting readers to fall for character, whether it’s a duke, a shape-shifter, or a CEO. You may not get all of it in the first draft, but you’re not supposed to. You’ll gain a deeper understanding as you write the book, and that’s when you go back to the beginning and layer.
Layering is crucial in character building. You cannot hit the reader over the head with obvious clues that scream, “My hero is strong,” or “My hero is controlling.” Use action, but don’t throw all the ingredients from your cauldron at readers all at once. Reveal them in pieces, just as you discovered them as you wrote the book. Take readers there, and they’ll buy every damn thing you write.
Many authors have trouble deciding how to introduce a character, and what details to include. I’ve learned the best way to open a book and begin a story is simple. Take your hero or heroine, and strip away everything they need and love. Snatch away every security blanket and drop them into the center of the action. See what they do and how they deal with problems. Start your story there, because readers can quickly identify with your characters when they’re in a difficult situation.
Your heroine’s car breaks down and she’s broke and lost. Your hero has been working his whole life toward a promotion, and he tanks, losing his job and career. A misspoken quote hits social media and dethrones your heroine, thrusting her into the negative spotlight. Go big and set the immediate stage for disaster. Readers can relate to the feeling of everything safe being ripped away, and you will immediately create sympathy for your character.
Another way to create conflict and sketch out a character’s personality is pitting opposite personality types against each other. In Everywhere and Every Way, my hero is a contractor. He’s blue-collar, messy, wears ripped jeans and hard hats, and looks down at the white-collar workers who spend the day behind expensive desks in cushy, air-conditioned offices. My heroine is a home designer who wears only white. She’s southern, polite, reserved, and neat. A simple conversation between the two erupts into banter that comes naturally from their different personalities. It was entertaining to write their relationship because they always surprised me. Here’s a snippet of dialogue from their first meeting to set the stage:
“I’m in a bad mood, princess. Sure you want to take me on now?”
She tilted her head and regarded him thoughtfully. “Why don’t you try me, Charming?”
His gaze narrowed. Oh, yeah, that got his attention. She tried not to get sucked into the depths of those amazing eyes, but she was fascinated at how quickly they could turn from smoke to cold steel. She wondered briefly what they’d look like when he was buried deep inside a woman. Whoa, what was that thought? Was she insane?
“What did you just call me?”
Morgan smiled at his slightly shocked tone. “Charming. If I’m playing the passive princess, you can play the part of the stud with brawn but no brains. Personally, I think the horses were the most interesting part of those stories.”
In Searching for Always, my heroine and hero are complete opposites. He’s a cop with anger-management issues. She’s a yoga teacher who teaches the anger-management course. Watching the two of them banter was also a great way to increase the sexual tension, which is also important in a good romance novel.
Here’s a scene from Searching for Always:
“I have a proposition,” he drawled. “One kiss. Let’s prove to each other we’d be a disaster together.”
“I don’t need a kiss to confirm you’d be a nightmare to deal with,” she shot back. “You’re an ex-smoker, workaholic, anger-ridden, meat eating cynic.”
His fingers moved to caress her cheek, the line of her jaw, up to her temple. Little brushes of tenderness, contradicting the raw strength and power in those hands and body. Ready to crush her but choosing gentleness. The lust rolled over her in waves, and she fought back with all her power.
“And you’re a tree-hugging, naïve, post-world hippie with a God complex,” he retorted. “Vegetarian, to boot. Plus, a hardened criminal.”
Arilyn growled under her breath and dug her nails into his shoulders with fierceness. “You know nothing about me, Officer! I am not naïve.”
“My name is Stone, not Officer. Now shut up.”
His mouth took hers.
Remember, flat, cardboard characters come from the fear of digging deep and getting messy. Use your own experiences to sketch real-life issues. Does this mean you have to create a dark, angst-ridden book with heroes that have horrific pasts and issues galore? No. If you don’t want to write a book like that, then don’t. If that’s not your style, then don’t write it. But you need the character background. Your hero or heroine’s past is significant in sketching out their personalities, because we learn how to act from our past experiences. Or how not to act. Were you the shy one in school afraid of your own shadow, unseen for years, used to fading into the background? Were you bullied? Did your boyfriend cheat on you? Did your marriage fall apart? Did your father run away? Did you have an alcoholic or drug addict in the family? Did you lose a sibling? Did you have a sibling who surpassed you in every way? Were you ignored? Were you dirt poor? Did you have a hobby or passion that sustained you through the dark times?
Dig. Think. Play. Show.
As Anne Lamott said, “In general … there’s no point in writing hopeless novels. We all know we’re going to die; what’s important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.”
No matter how much we work on understanding a character, it takes pages of writing before we become immersed in our character’s entire being. Usually halfway through my book, my inner muse clicks to life and starts screaming like a banshee. “I understand! I understand!” I suddenly get my characters. I discover the secret piece of their soul that makes them unique, and from then on, the writing is so much easier for me.
Think about characters who are so real that multiple books have been written about them. J.R. Ward’s brilliant group of men in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series. J.D. Robb’s compelling Eve and Roarke. Janet Evanovich’s adventurous Stephanie Plum.
What ties them together and makes them interesting enough to continue reading the books?
Character growth. A character arc. Somewhat damaged characters searching for something better. They are struggling with who they are, what they want, and where they are going. They don’t have it figured out, and if they do, usually the author rips that away from them so they have to go back and start at the beginning.
That’s the cycle of life, and it’s what interests readers. When characters get the happily-ever-after, it’s nice to know the hero and heroine are happily in love and strong together, but it doesn’t end the story. If you’ve done your job as an author, you should be able to write a short story or another novel that continues their path. Love stories grow and change. Couples deal with difficulties. If you’ve given your characters their necessary arcs for growth, readers will watch them change within the pages of the book. They’ll know that more changes will happen, but the characters will face them as a couple.
Romance guarantees a happily ever after, but there is also the happily ever after for now. No one believes that a marriage proposal makes everything perfect. But if you’ve set the stage, readers will be satisfied that your hero and heroine have reached a strong, solid place that will allow them to grow together. That’s the hope of a happily-ever-after ending. That’s also the satisfaction of watching characters struggle with their conflicts (individually and as a couple) to get to this place.
How do we go about creating extraordinary characters? Each author must find her own path, her own process. It’s a process that also may change depending on the book she’s writing.
After listening to dozens of best-selling authors, I’ve incorporated some great tricks for writing characters, but I have my own unique method I’ve learned to follow. I sketch out a basic background of each main character as a springboard. I create a physical description, name, basic past, personality traits, career, goals, and what makes him/her happy and what doesn’t. Then I create the secondary characters and what I want them to accomplish. At this time, I also outline a very basic plot, one that’s bare bones.
Then I start writing. I dive in, because I like the shock of submerging into my project without knowing everything. I enjoy discovering things about my characters along the way. I struggle in the beginning, usually rewriting the first three chapters multiple times. As I get further, I learn more about each character, and by the end, I can easily rewrite the book and fill in all the holes. I’ve figured out the inner workings of my hero and heroine.
I allow room in my book for surprises, such as secondary characters that walk into a scene and try to steal it. I remember when I was writing The Marriage Mistake, I created this hot guy in Vegas who was only supposed to be in a brief boardroom scene. Yet, he suddenly sprang to life and began flirting with my heroine. Taken aback, I followed the character, and chapters later, I realized he was not the main character and needed to take a backseat. I promised him I’d give him his book later. He agreed. That character was Sawyer, who became the main hero for The Marriage Merger.
These surprises, though, are unexpected riches. Which leads me to another important element in writing great characters.
Pay attention.
In her book, The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron says, “My grandmother knew what a painful life had taught her: success or failure, the truth of a life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.”
Pay attention both inside and outside the book. Inspiration may strike, or a scene may take a turn you didn’t count on. These are your opportunities to let your characters breathe. You may need to follow the path, even if it goes into a dark woods or the scary, fairy-tale forest full of wolves and death. You still may have to go.
When you are writing a book, you are living in dual worlds. When I go out and see real people other than my family, my characters stay with me. I could be drinking and laughing with an acquaintance, but the slightest tug of my attention could send me spiraling into my fictional world, snatching a fleeting detail or revelation that is crucial to my story. I hold onto the thread with enthusiasm, pulling the frayed edge through the tiny holes in my mind. It is awe-inspiring and terrifying, because it’s out of my control. It’s the muse. All I know—and accept—is that my book is always with me, ready to spring forth at a moment’s notice if I pay attention.
And that is pure delight.
Use your work-in-progress to really think about your characters. Is there something you can do to help understand them better? Take a few minutes to try this exercise. Write down what your hero is most afraid of in his life, then sketch out a short scene where he is confronted with his innermost fear. How does he handle it? Follow the threads and see if you learned even one thing about your character that can help you in the book. Do the same thing with your heroine and then compare.