14 Tips for Building Character

This essay is adapted from Rick Meyer’s notes for a talk at the 2005 Nieman Narrative Editors’ Seminar. Rick’s presentation was paired with Laurie Hertzel’s talk on scenes.

We probably ought to declare something right away, so no one can accuse us of cheating. In nonfiction, when we talk about building characters, we’re not talking about creating them. That happens in fiction. In our world, God creates the characters. That’s his or her job. It’s our job to write about those characters.

But it is true, nonetheless, that writers build characters. First, when they report them, they take them apart and put pieces of them into their notebooks: Pale, amber eyes. Red hair. Freckles across the bridge of her nose. Talks softly and slowly. Perfume like lilacs. Then when they write these characters, they put the pieces back together, back into whole beings. If they have done it well, these people come alive. They inhabit our imaginations just as vividly as fictional characters do.

Maybe more so, because when we read about them we know they’re real.

What happens to the main characters in the stories we edit is called the plot or the story line or the arc of the narrative. We ought to develop plots, or story lines, through scenes as much as possible. I’ll try here to suggest some ways to develop the characters in those scenes into full, three-dimensional figures. In other words, I’ll try to suggest how to make the characters come alive, how to make them come up off the written page.

None of these suggestions is original with me. I’ve picked up these notions along the way from editors, reporters and writers, teachers and folks who write about writing. They include Jon Franklin, John Gardner, Jim Frey, Tom Wolfe, Mark Kramer, Gay Talese, Sol Stein, Walt Harrington, John McPhee, Jacqui Banaszynski, Elmore Leonard, Barry Siegel, Jack Hart, Kit Rachlis and Norman Mailer. If there’s anything unique here, it’s only because Willie Nelson might be right when he says, “If you steal from enough people, somehow you end up doing your own thing.”

My suggestions number a baker’s dozen plus one. To illustrate them, I’ll use a piece you might be familiar with. It’s an old story by now, published in 2002. But it has some pretty good examples of what I’m going to talk about. It’s Sonia Nazario’s piece about a 17-year-old kid named Enrique, whose mother leaves him behind in Central America and comes to the United States to find work. He is so torn and lonely for her that he sets out on his own, by foot, riding on the tops of freight trains, hitchhiking on trucks, all the way across Honduras and Guatemala, up the length of Mexico, then by coyote across the Rio Grande and illegally into Texas, then finally to North Carolina to hunt for her. Forty-eight thousand kids do this every year. Some are only 7 years old. It’s a new and extremely dangerous migration. Sonia’s story won a Pulitzer.

Many of the things I’m going to talk about Sonia did on her own. A few I suggested. Some are suggestions I wish I had offered but didn’t have the good sense to at the time. A number might make you yawn, because you know some of these things as well as or better than I do. But maybe there’s a notion or two here that could be helpful. It sort of goes without saying that Sonia and I talked about things such as these all along the way — as she reported, while she drew up her story architecture and during her writing. If you wait to consider them until the line editing gets under way, you’re way too late.

Here are the suggestions:

Sometimes you’ll be tempted to develop characters by saying who they are. Show them instead.

Shaq was tall. That’s telling it. Shaq ducked to get through the door. That’s showing it.

My father was easygoing about religion. That’s telling.

Every spring, my father let me skip catechism class so I could play baseball. That’s showing.

From “Enrique’s Journey,” here’s an example that tells first and then shows:

Uncle Marco and his girlfriend treat him well. … Uncle Marco gives Enrique a daily allowance, buys him clothes and sends him to a private school.

I could make a pretty good case that you shouldn’t do both. It’s redundant. In retrospect, I’d suggest to Sonia that we take out the first of those two sentences.

Let’s say I tell you: “My father was easygoing about religion.” Right away, you should follow up by saying, “Please give me an example.” Or, “How did it show?” Or, “How could you tell?” Or, “Can you give me an anecdote or a vignette that shows what you mean?” Or, “Tell me a story about that.”

I’m likely to think for a minute and say, Well, every spring when the mission sisters came around to our little town to teach catechism, my father let my brother and me duck out to play baseball.

One day, one of the nuns came to the house and asked him why we weren’t in catechism class.

“Well, Sister,” he said, “my boys know a lot about their religion, even know how to serve Mass. But they don’t know how to execute a double play at second off a hot grounder to short, and they need to know that, too.”

Now you have an example of an action my father took that showed what he was like. My father is starting to come alive.

So is Enrique’s Uncle Marco, who was a moneychanger:

Enrique runs errands for his uncle, washes his five cars, follows him everywhere.

His uncle pays as much attention to him as he does his own son. … “Negrito,” he calls him fondly, because of his dark skin. … His uncle trusts him, even to make bank deposits. [One day], he tells Enrique, “I want you to work with me forever …”

Because of [a] security guard’s murder, Marco swears that he will never change money again. A few months later, though, he gets a call. For a large commission, would he exchange $50,000 in lempiras on the border with El Salvador? Uncle Marco promises that this will be the last time.

Enrique wants to go with him.

But his uncle says he is too young. He takes one of his own brothers instead.

Robbers riddle their car with bullets …

In detail. When you seek the attributes that describe your subjects, think of the senses: What do your subjects look like, sound like, smell like, feel like — and, if you kiss them, what do they taste like? Mint? Garlic?

What do they smell like? He hadn’t showered in days, and his T-shirt smelled like sour milk.

What do they feel like? (What is this? Some kind of California touchy-feely stuff? Well, not exactly.) He had leathery hands, and his shake was slow and firm. (That guy could be from Maine.)

A lot of what we know comes to us through our senses. If you don’t believe me, watch Sesame Street. Kids learn the number four by seeing four apples, hearing four bells, feeling four fuzzy peaches. Try to record all the senses. What do you (or your subjects) see? Hear? Smell? Taste?

Get specific details. Not just black shoes. Black shoes with laces and little heels. A subject didn’t just shout. His voice split the morning like an ax. It was morning, and his voice was loud.

Details. Individually, details are very important. But taken all together, they are more important still. They help you convey your characters not just at the level where they can be seen and heard and smelled and tasted, but taken all together, they convey them at the level where they come to life.

Not all details are worth reporting or writing. Look for distinguishing details, the ones that distinguish me, for instance, from everyone else. Look for particularity – details that are particular to me. Let’s say you’re writing about my eyeglasses. What distinguishes my glasses from everyone else’s?

Use not just distinguishing details, or particular details, but telling details. What are the particular details of my eyeglasses that tell something about me? (They’re dirty. Then you can put that together with something my wife would say to you: He’s always too busy to clean them. That detail and the reason for it will tell readers something about me. It will characterize me.)

Telling details:

Here’s a checklist for character development that will help you get all the details.

Which is better? To write that the character had pale, amber eyes, or to write that she rolled her pale, amber eyes and looked at the ceiling?

Which is better? To write that he had big feet, or to write that he walked hard on his big heels, as if he’d spent a lot of time in boots. This gets back to showing action to build characters, instead of simply saying what they look like.

In “Enrique’s Journey,” Maria Luisa is a villager along the tracks who feeds kids riding the trains. Her attributes are her hands. Here is what she does with them:

A stooped woman, Maria Luisa Mora Martin, more than 100 years old, who was reduced to eating the bark of her plantain tree during the Mexican Revolution, forces her knotted hands to fill bags with tortillas, beans and salsa, so her daughter, Soledad Vasquez, 70, can run down a rocky slope and heave them onto a train.

“If I have one tortilla, I give half away …”

It’s not the ordinary details that bring a character to life. It’s the exceptional, remarkable ones that do it.

A lot of people talk slowly, but when I talk you can watch grass grow.

A lot of people sound nasal when they talk, but when I talk, I sound like gravel rolling down a tin roof.

A lot of people say “hell.” When I say “hell,” it has two syllables and sounds like I’m talking about pellets of frozen rain.

On the page, and in your mind, I’m no longer so ordinary, am I? (You know, if I kept this up, I could make myself come alive.)

From “Enrique’s Journey,” here is a not-so-ordinary smuggler:

He leaves it up to El Tirindaro, a subspecies of smuggler known as a patero because he pushes people across the river on inner tubes by paddling soundlessly with his feet, like a pato, or duck …

Dialogue happens in scenes, and it has to do with plot. Dialogue should advance the plot. But it also has to do with characterization. Fill your notebooks with what your subjects say, with their speech patterns and what they sound like when they talk.

You should use what your subjects say – and how they say it – to show penchants for jargon, poor grammar and mispronunciation. Or meticulous pronunciation, even eloquent diction. Or pretension, sarcasm, humor, anger, fright, sadness, joy, impatience, frustration.

Sometimes an appropriate silence, or even an inappropriate silence, can say a lot about a subject and the subject’s character.

Are characters soft-spoken? Do they drawl? Twang? Are they clear, or do they mumble?

A caution: What you’re likely to get in your notebooks, and even more so on your tapes, is speech full of unnecessary words.

Try not to include those words in your stories. Pare dialogue down. Look for opportunities to avoid head-on talk, what some folks call dialogue that’s on-the-nose:

That’s what a tape transcript looks like. It’s direct, on-the-nose. And it’s guaranteed to put readers to sleep, or worse: make them turn on the TV.

Instead, try to write dialogue that is less on-the-nose, more oblique. Something like this:

The next word should NOT be, “Yes.”

Next should be: Laurie had halibut and iced tea. Rick had abalone steak and Jack Daniels. These are telling details.

From “Enrique’s Journey”:

…which are often intertwined.

Tom Wolfe was big on this, especially about showing the social-class characteristics of his subjects. Remember the Black Panthers at Leonard Bernstein’s party? Now those guys were fully dimensional, unforgettable characters who came up off the page like freight trains breaking wind in a crystalsilverlinen tunnel ooooooooeee, lookathewideeyedhonkies, chuga chuga chugga, choo choo. (Whatever you do, don’t try to write like Tom Wolfe; no one can do it like the master.)

Or Hunter Thompson’s memorable clash of cultures and values:

An editor should kiss his reporter on the forehead for characters like that, the clashing of cultures and classes and values.

Enrique is not rich. He has rich relatives. They ignore him.

It is necessary for plot. Why does the character do what he does? If there is no reason, then the story – which is to say, the plot – falls apart.

But motivation also shows character.

If your subject does something for one reason, then it says something about her character. If she does it for another reason, then it says something else about her character.

It might show that the subject is brave or cowardly, bold or shy, generous or selfish.

No one is all good or all bad. If you want characters to come alive like real people, you need a complex mix of the good and the bad.

Challenges are necessary for plot. If the main character meets no challenges, then the story just lies there. Its plot is too weak to move, let alone get up and run and jump and skip and dance.

But the way a protagonist meets external challenges tells a lot about his character. Is he straightforward, or passive-aggressive? Is he enthusiastic about the confrontation, or is he an avoider? Is he an optimist about his chances, or a pessimist? Does he take on the challenge right away, or is he a procrastinator?

Challenges are not only external. They can be internal as well. Internal obstacles usually are in the form of internal conflicts. Responsibility conflicts with fear. Love with guilt. How a subject deals with inner conflict tells a lot about what kind of a character she is.

…because of the challenges they confront, both externally and internally.

Few of us stay the same. Many of us grow as a result of our experiences in life. Some of us shrink. But we change.

Try to find the signs of such change. Show how your characters grow, or diminish, or even fly apart in a psychoneurotic fit, if that’s what happens.

From “Enrique’s Journey”:

There is a reason. The characteristics of the good guys show most clearly in contrast to the characteristics of the bad guys.

You won’t make your protagonists stand out by skimping on your antagonists. Without three-dimensional villains to challenge them, heroes can’t help but look weak.

If the Joker is a wimp, it’s hard for Batman to strut his stuff.

…but not so much attention that readers are fooled into thinking minor characters are major characters.

That can be a tough line to walk. Sometimes the temptation is to give minor characters nothing but their names, ages and genders.

But that makes them cardboard characters at best.

Other times the temptation is to use too much characterization, to build them too large. But then they’re not minor characters anymore, and readers grow puzzled, even disappointed, when they don’t do much in the story.

Sometimes all you need is a few brush strokes. Physical attributes, a mannerism and maybe a dash of dialogue. A good thing is to characterize a minor character through the eyes of a major character.

For an example, let’s go back to Enrique’s Uncle Marco and notice this time the extent to which he is developed before he drops out of the story.

***

Building characters reminds us that we can’t be God, but we can get in on some of his fun.