Writing Characters You Don't Like

 I wonder if you are like me when you begin writing a new story. Because I’m such a nice person (tongue in cheek here) I want my characters to be nice too. Most of my real-life friends are nice and I tend to think of them when I’m creating a character, so my fictional characters tend to be nice also. See the problem? A story must have conflict. Without conflict there is no story.

Some writers like to create a really mean, ugly character to serve as the story’s villain. Like Crabby Appleton, “rotten to the core.” This was a cartoon character on TV a long time ago. You didn’t need to know why he was so rotten. He just was. You can sometimes find these villains-for-no-apparent-reason in mysteries, but they are not satisfying. I think they give the story a cartoonish feel.

We need to write characters that feel real and we need conflict or there is no story. Therefore, you just have to pull up your socks and develop some characters you don’t like. You need to understand why they act the way they do. You must accept that their actions and opinions are part of who they are. Why are they like this? I try to invent a childhood for my ornery or hateful characters that points to possible reasons why they are like they are. But this seldom happens in real life. We rarely figure out why a person is that way. People are much too complex to be explained by simple cause-and-effect theories.

Think of the recent presidential election. Regardless of which side you were on, did you really understand why others felt so differently from you? Were you tempted to get up on your soapbox and point out how those other folks were just wrong? Could you describe the election from someone else’s point of view? Do you understand that their point of view is really true for them?

As a writer you don’t have the option of using a soapbox. You have to dig deep within yourself and find understanding. You need to be able to write out, on paper, your offensive character’s thoughts on the conflict at hand. You don’t necessarily have to know why he feels as he does, but you do have to know that these are his real feelings. Remember, he sees the world through a different lens. Can you imagine how the world looks to him?

Does your character have any idiosyncrasies that reveal his true nature? She uses lots of air quotes? He overuses use of words like actually?  You can use these to enrich the picture and bring the conflict into sharper focus.

A lot of people subscribe to the idea that children are blank slates, and the adult is merely the result of what the world has written on the child’s mind. I’m not sure it’s that simple. But you should think about what has made your ornery character like he is, and it helps to think a bit about his childhood. You don’t have to include it in your story, but you may want to try writing it out just for yourself.

And while I’m thinking about it, give your main character some flaws and foibles as well. Perfect people are boring.

TEN PERKS OF BEING A WRITER By: Kimberly Thorn

The Top Ten Perks of Being a Writer 

10. Research means you have a great reason for spending countless hours wandering around on the internet.

9. You can travel to interesting places for research and count it as a business expense.

8. You get to learn some interesting and maybe strange things doing research for a story idea.

7. You get to be every character you write.

6. You know what is going to happen next.

5. Your characters must do what you say, or write.

4. You can make money for doing something you love.

3. You get amazing support from other writers.

2. You can take your frustrations out on real people in your life by killing their characters in your stories.

1. And they will NEVER know!            

NAMING YOUR CHARACTERS by Maria Hudgins

 

I feel like some writers give their characters random names. Maybe they throw darts at a phone book or something. But this system would now be obsolete. (What's a phone book, Daddy?) But in fact one famous writer did just that. Allegedly. Somerset Maugham is said to have named a couple by the phone book method and chosen their address from a street map of London. It is said that Maugham was threatened with a lawsuit when a couple with a similar name actually lived at a similar address and took exception to Maugham's version of the shenanigans going on at their house.

CAPTIVATING CHARACTERS by Maria Hudgins

The only thing better than discovering an epic fictional character is creating one yourself. How is that done? How did Conan Doyle think up Sherlock Holmes? Did Agatha Christie know a Miss Marple? How did Johnny Depp know that portraying Captain Jack Sparrow like Keith Richards would be more fun than the old "Arghh!" growling pirate? If only we knew the answer we would all be millionaires. but usually the act of timeless character creation is chalked up to "genius" and we assume we can't do it. Can we look at this a bit more? Who flies off the page (or the screen) and grabs you? A great story needs characters that grab you.

CHARACTERS, CONFLICT, AND THE MYERS-BRIGGS TYPE INDICATOR® - (Part II) by Michael Rigg

 

Myers-Briggs (careerfitter.com)

Wow! How time flies when you have great blog posts to read every week! Seems like only yesterday when last we chatted. But it was eons ago—the beginning of June. We’re already in August!

My previous blog provided an overview of how I’ve come to understand the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator^® (MBTI) and its use as a tool for developing characters and conflict in your stories. Feel free to take a couple of minutes to review it by clicking here.

In the meantime, here’s a quick refresher:

Katherine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers developed the MBTI. According to Introduction to Type^®, published by CPP, Inc., the MBTI springs from the psychological type theory of personality developed by Swiss psychiatrist Carl G. Jung to explain normal personality differences between healthy people.   

CHARACTERS, CONFLICT, AND THE MYERS-BRIGS TYPE INDICATOR® by Michael Rigg

King Neptune
Virginia Beach Oceanfront

Writers, and readers, know the importance of characters. In Characters & Viewpoint, Orson Scott Card reminds writers of something we should know almost instinctively: “… readers want your characters to seem like real people. Whole and alive, believable and worth caring about. Readers want to get to know your characters as well as they know their own friends, their own family. As well as they know themselves.” 

But having characters worth caring about isn’t enough, is it? There has to be more to keep readers turning pages and saving their pennies to buy the next installment in your series about a serial-killer-turned-nun who runs a detective agency out of a convent. That something else is conflict. As James Scott Bell tells us in Conflict & Suspense, “Conflict has long been recognized as the engine of story. Without conflict there is no drama. Without drama, there is no interest. Without interest there is no reader. And no writing career.”