In order to connect and become part of your fictional world, the reader has to care about your characters.  The more the reader cares about your characters; the more committed they will be to your story, which is exactly what you want. 

How can you accomplish this?  There is no one right way, just ways that have worked for different writers.  I’ll present a way that works for me...

First of all, I prefer to think of my characters as people who populate the story rather than fictional beings.  They are people who look at me from their fictional world with disbelief or a disdainfully arched eyebrow because of a piece of dialogue or action I’ve given them.  They cross their arms and tap their toes with impatience when I re-write a scene for the zillionth time.  They want to move on with the story.  They have to live and breath, to be as real to you as your best friend. If your character doesn’t feel real to you, then he or she won’t to the reader either.  You have to love and respect your hero or heroine and love to hate your villain if you want your reader to do the same. 

Characters are much more than a physical description of eye colour, hair colour or they type of clothes they wear.  Just like real people, that’s only the proverbial iceberg.  Like so many of us, what people see, our outward appearance, is only a small part of who we are.  What makes us who we are is hidden and not distinguishable at first glance.

The critical elements that go into creating a memorable character, like the mass of the iceberg, lie deep beneath the surface.  You will know things about them, every dark secret or deepest desire, things that will never be revealed to the reader. 

Because I tend to be a visual person, I collect people.  I have a file in my computer desk drawer with pictures of ‘people’ I want to get to know better.  Avon catalogues, newspaper, GQ, and any number of magazines have all provided me with the physical characteristics. 

Ingredients of a Memorable Character :

1. A distinctive personality - shaped by their past – a past that you must create for them in detail.  A lot of what you learn about your hero or heroine will never grace the pages of your book but you have to know it to breathe life into your character.
2. Believable motivation – even the most bizarre behaviour will be accepted by a reader if the character’s motivation is sound.  Again, this will be shaped by their past.
3. Consistent behaviour – because of our past we react to similar situations in a similar way.  If a characters reaction varies too much from what we’ve come to expect it will jar us out of the story.
4. A bigger-than-life problem – if our character’s only problem is deciding what to have for breakfast, the reader probably won’t be convinced the story is worth reading. If that same character has twenty-four hours to save the world or rescue their child from terrorists, the stakes are much higher and the reader is going to be more committed to the story because they’ll want to know if the child lived or died.
5. Human traits – good and bad.  Just like the rest of us, our characters must be a blend of virtues and vices.  The best heroes and heroines are not all good, and the best villains are not completely evil.  In L J (Lisa Jane) Smith’s teen horror trilogy – Forbidden Games, she has the most memorable villain I’ve ever encountered.  He was a demon and the epitome of evil, yet the end of the trilogy, he dies saving the heroine’s life.  Through all three books, he was pretty rotten most of the time, yet I cried when he died.  His love for her was a vice and a virtue and his one redeeming quality.  At first, his love was selfish.  He wanted the heroine to join his world and become evil.  At the very end of the third book, his love became selfless and by his death, he freed her from the evil world he’d trapped her and her friends in.

Even if the characters are extra-terrestrial, it will be their humanity that makes us care.  Think of ET and ‘phone home’.  His whole motivation was to go home...to be with his own kind...a feeling everyone can relate to...that universal connection.

There are a couple of methods to create a memorable character.  Some authors write a journal type essay in the first person.  For example:  “My name is Jenny Thornton.  I go to high school and I live with my parents and little brother.  My boyfriend, Tom, and I have been together since grade two.” They write dozens of pages.  Another method is to fill out a character interview about your character.  (I have one that I’ve complied over the years from character interviews I have seen over the years, and I would gladly send it to anyone.)  The character interview I use usually takes me about three hours or more to complete.

The best method to learn about your character is the one that will help you become intimately acquainted with the details of your character’s life.  Whether you use a narrative essay or a character interview, it will take some time for you to make a complete biography of a character.  It can’t be done in an hour or two.  You have to live with this character day to day, jotting down the various personality ingredients as the come to you.  It’s not necessary to work in chronological order.  Whatever and whenever something comes to mind, make a note of it.

Once a story character is born, I start compiling a story binder.  I usually start to compile a story binder for my next story as I draw to the end of my current WIP (Work In Progress.) In the binder, I keep scene ideas, a synopsis, tidbits of information that I might need, pictures, maps, anything that helps me to help me make the fiction world and my characters more real.

A physical description is a beginning.  Then, you can describe the way they dress, characteristic mannerisms, their posture, the way they move, and the way they speak. This helps to keep your character from changing eye colour in the middle of the story, which has been known to happen.  Especially if you work on more than one story at once. <G>

Look through magazines, cut out pictures.  One author I know makes a collage on a cork board beside her computer.  Collect maps if you are setting the story in a real place.  In my story binder, I put pictures of furniture the characters might own.  I went to a website and found a home for one of my heroine’s.  It took me hours to find this home.  The selection of the home is strategic to the story because the restoration of the home parallels the healing of Brooke’s wounded spirit.

In Fool Me Once, my novel published by Black Velvet Seductions.  I found the hero’s home in an article of Costal Living.  Of course, I made a few renovations, but it was the basis around which I built his home.  Toni’s home was born from an article I read in Architectural Digest on the renovation of a condo near Central Park. 

Once you have a concise picture of what the character looks like, the clothes they wear, their car and home of choice, dig deeper. This will take longer, but I think this is a journey that most enjoy.  At least, I hope you enjoy it.  You’ll be spending months manipulating this character’s life, you have to love them or love hating them.

If you know their inner traits at the beginning of the story, and you know where you want them to be by the end of the story, you will know the changes that have to take place and you can litter their life with obstacles that will bring about that change.  Think about Joan Wilder in Romancing the Stone.  She was afraid of everything at the beginning of the story, but as she experienced challenging situations, she grew to the woman she always wanted to be.

Keep in mind that for every change or growth a character experiences, whether for better for worse, there must be a reason, a motivation.  It is the motivation that sparks the character’s change that provides the reader with acceptance of their new behaviour.

In real life, we may or may not know what another person’s motivation is – or what changed or modified a behaviour.  In fiction, you must always know what motivates your character’s growth or change.

          Where will you find these inner traits? 

1.     Observation – become a people watcher and a student of human nature.  Observe their behaviours try and figure out their motivations.  If you know them well enough, ask them why they behaved in a certain way. 

2.     Study – read about human behaviour and why people behave the way they do.  To name a few:  survival (a normally mild-mannered man might kill to protect his child,) a need for love, need for recognition or power, or a search for their identity.  Remember it is conflict that drives fiction and whenever a basic drive is blocked, there is conflict.

3.     Draw on your own life experiences – recall the meaningful moments in your life.

Okay...your character is coming to life.  It’s no longer a stick figure, but a person with dreams, fears, and desires as real as any flesh and blood person.

          How do you transmit all this information to the reader?

          When you are writing, you will have a wealth of information about your characters at your fingertips and oozing from your mind.  You want to tell your reader all about them – right?  Wrong.  You must be careful not to block the forward movement of your story by giving character information in one big chunk. 

Where description of characters is concerned include only the information that is pertinent to the plot at that point in the story.

The worst – the absolute worst – mistake you can make is to stop your story’s action to go on for pages describing what your characters look like, what they eat for breakfast, and what they are thinking.  These things bore the reader and slow the pace of the read because they are static.  They don’t provide any forward momentum for the story.  Show your reader the traits you’ve given your character through action and reaction.

          Here is an example of a static description followed by an active piece of description.

Static:  He was a tall, thin man with stooped shoulders and thinning grey hair.

Active:  He hurried along the street, a tall, thin man with stooped shoulders that drooped more with every step.  He ran his hands through his thinning, grey hair, as if he could brush away the pain in his eyes.

The second example combines physical description with plot action.  The man is hurrying someplace and emotionally burdened.  The gesture of running his hand through his thinning grey hair reinforces the idea he has a problem.  He is visibly troubled – there are outward signs of inner turmoil.

Always try to combine physical description with action that symbolizes the character’s thoughts and attitudes.  That way, you not only build word pictures of your character, but advance your plot at the same time.

Another method to make a character come alive is through his or her choice of dialogue.  A few words can transmit a wealth of information.  When you hear the words, “That’s cool, bro,” what is the first image that comes to mind?  Or “Are ya’ll fixin’ to go to the mall?” A word of caution, use phonetic spelling or colloquialisms like raisins – just enough to add flavour to your dialogue but don’t over do it or it will become tedious and might push your reader out of your fictional world.