Sweating The Small Stuff – Focusing On Details To Make Your Character More Real And Rounded

In this post we look at how to make characters more real and rounded by sweating the small stuff.

Books fall into two categories – plot-driven or character-driven. But plots with poor characters are boring plots. The worst kind of character is one who is a cardboard cut-out. Bland, predictable, and lacking in personality and two-dimensional.

First time writers often make the mistake of making their characters bland. Even if they’re vampires, hit men, or doctors. Tall, dark, and good-looking, or blonde, blue-eyed, and spunky, seems to be the extent of their characterisation. It’s not enough. It’s often said that you should give your characters a flaw because no one is perfect.

But random flaws without reasons are meaningless. Depth of personality comes from the details of where, why, how, and who, that live in the character’s background, mind, and heart. And these details need to be revealed slowly throughout the book.

The Two Parts Into Which Character Details Can Fall

  • Past actions taken against the character, or experiences that the character went through, that he or she had no way of affecting. These are the character’s back story as a child.
  • Character traits that the character now has as an adult because of these actions and experiences are shown through:
    • Physical or emotional expression – For example, was your character badly beaten, or worse, as a child and has developed a desire to be invisible which show by the way he walks with a shuffle and keeping his head bent, or rage that erupts at unexpected moments, or a lack of compassion for other people?
    • Decisions or ways of interacting – Does he make choices that, at first, are great but, somehow, he always manages to blow it? Does he never admit he was wrong? Does he play the victim? Does he always walk away from a promising relationship? Does he use people for his own ends? Is he a doctor with Doctors Without Borders because he wants approval from his father that he never gets?

Humans Are Complicated Creatures

It’s the complication that makes us so interesting. Our fictional characters need to be just as complex and interesting. That way they will be enjoyable to read. It’s important to spend time creating fully formed characters. There is a bonus to having fully rounded characters. The more you know about all your characters, the more ideas for your plot’s development will open for you.

Character Back Story And Quirks Can Be Plot-Drivers

For example, what if your hit man always carries a book in his coat pocket? But not just any book. What if he carries a worn-out copy of Pride And Prejudice, Sense And Sensibility or Persuasion by Jane Austen, or Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte? And what if he had one of these constantly with him, and read them while he waited for his victim? It would be a quirk at first, but as we move through the book, we discover that these were his mother’s favourite books that she used to read them to him as a child. But she died, leaving him an orphan. Having them with him helps to keep her alive in his memory, reminding him of the only time he ever felt loved. It also affects the way he talks to and interacts with women. And what if his next victim is a kindly English Literature professor whose name is Jane?

Accents Are More Than Just A Way Someone Talks

Giving your character an accent just for the sake of it isn’t making them three-dimensional. If you want your character to have an accent, he will also need to have the history and presentation that goes with that accent. His phraseology, tastes, dress sense, music and food preferences, cultural references, etc., will need to reflect that. And it’s still important not to fall into a cultural trope.


Show, Don’t Tell!

It’s the most important rule in writing! Showing your reader what your character is like is far more engaging that telling them. Does she walk with a limp? Don’t tell us that. Describe her careful choice of walking stick every morning before she leaves the house, how she leans on it as she waits for the bus, how climbing the stairs to the library’s open door makes her hip ache.

Later in the book we might discover that she takes the bus all the time. People assume it’s because she’s claustrophobic, but she’s not. She’s pathologically terrified of being in a car because she was in a terrible car accident, trapped under the smoking wreckage for hours in the dark, with the dead bodies of her family around her. When she was finally rescued, her hip was torn out of its socket, ripping her tendons in half, and they never healed properly. It causes many social engagement problems for her. She won’t accept lifts from anyone. If the bus doesn’t go there, neither does she.

None of this has soured her though. In fact, she’s quite a kind person. Her English Literature students love her.

While you may start creating your novel with, ‘hitman and his female victim fall in love’, sweating the small stuff can give you a book that goes beyond two good-looking people with the hots for each other.

6 Other Things To Consider When Creating Believably Three-Dimensional Characters

  1. How other characters see them – Do others see them as forgetful, arrogant, dull, annoying, friendly, kind, funny, ignorant, vulgar, well-mannered, educated, polite, or rude? How does your character feel about that and react to that?
  2. Appearance – Few women are supermodels, and there are very few men who look like Henry Cavill. Most people are average. The memorable ones are unforgettable because their personalities make them stand out. Think of the roles Tom Hanks plays. While not unattractive, Tom Hanks is by no means a contestant for the Henry Cavill stakes. He’s the everyman. And his looks don’t matter because the characters he plays are so rich. You don’t have to write every hero as a Henry Cavill. Show us heroism in other ways. Dig deep.
  3. Creativity or Intelligence – bearing in mind that there’s a difference between ‘knowing stuff’ and ‘intelligence’, true geniuses, in any field, are rare. A true genius has no need to describe their cleverness. Anyone who does is boring and or, more probably, lying. But a shy baker who delves into, learns about, and creates historical cakes and breads is interesting. Especially when his knowledge and skill bring him to the attention of the head of the archaeology department at the university.
  4. Humour – your character’s ethnic background, upbringing, and education will dictate their type of humour. As will the era in which they live.
  5. Is your character cowardly or brave? Bravery seldom means wearing one’s underpants on the outside, being muscle-bound, carrying a shield, or waving a gun in people’s faces. It can be refusing to tell ISIS where you’ve hidden the treasures of the museum knowing they will behead you if you don’t. It could be going into war-torn cities and rescuing animals from the zoo. It can be choosing to be cheerful every day, despite being in dire financial straits or having a terminal disease. In small ways, normal people can be, and are, heroic every day.
  6. Social status – Can you write a Regency romance where the main characters are not Lords or Ladies and not lose one iota of the charm of the genre? Social status needs to be grounded in era and includes financial realities, use of language, education, dress, and family dynamics. Plot and character can be shown and driven by placing characters in social situations that are different to those in which they grew up.

Sweat the small stuff by digging deep to find ways to show character that are unexpected and yet relatable. It’s the small stuff that delivers big results in character creation. And it’s the small stuff that will inform your plot.

The Last Word

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Elaine Dodge

by Elaine Dodge. Elaine is the author of The Harcourts of Canada series and The Device HunterElaine trained as a graphic designer, then worked in design, advertising, and broadcast television. She now creates content, mostly in written form, for clients across the globe, but would much rather be drafting her books and short stories.

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Posted on: 21st October 2024
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1 thought on “Sweating The Small Stuff – Focusing On Details To Make Your Character More Real And Rounded”

  1. Regarding this excellent article laying out the importance of developing the details of characters in our notes and mind when writing, it is also important to allow the reader room to develop the internal picture of those characters. Even books with tremendous accolades can have flaws and each reader must make decisions on their own. Prime example: having recently purchased a copy of the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Annie Proulx’s ‘The Shipping News’ and after having painfully read almost half of the book, I made a decision to put it aside and give it away, something I almost never do. Two main flaws ruined the book for me. First, immediately describing repulsive physical characteristics of the main character (and subsequently almost all of the rest) in great detail to the point that I could never relate to them without visual repugnant feelings and thus never related to them on any level. Second, using every word in the English language known to man gave me, as the reader, an awareness of an author showing off their verbal usage skills. Contrast with books like ‘The Edge’ by Dick Francis where the characters are never physically described in detail and yet the reader develops a clear picture in their mind of each through their thoughts, words and actions. Lesson here was that less is often more and we need to allow the reader freedom to journey with our characters.

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