Making Memorable Characters

What’s this I hear about you wanting to make a memorable character? What have you got? Wait…wait did you say…a cynic who actually has a heart of gold? The books will literally fly off the shelves into people’s hands at that point. You also have a brooding bad boy; why are you only just now telling me this? Put him there next to all the others. 

Cut.

Print.

Bestseller.

Enjoy the limelight, there’s a cocktail party at my house later.

It’s unfortunate that we live in the literary apocalyptic wasteland that is 2014, where just about every character archetype has been done to death and has faded into cliché. It forces up and coming writers to ravage the carcasses of other characters just to make their own, stitch two together and call it a new one. Think of it like Mad Max, except everyone’s a more financially successful writer than you are.

There he is kids. The sweaty, bloodstained author of The Maze Runner. Don't look it up; just take my word for it.

                                    

                              

Everyone wants their characters to have impact. On a smaller scale, we want them to mean something to somebody. We want our audience to laugh when they laugh, to cry when they cry or for the very least, feel for them as they do so. On a much larger scale, we want them to be remembered. We want what they say and what they do to transcend generations. We want to put pen to paper and scribe the next Tyler Durden but we live in world where we try so hard to be original that we forget all about the execution. You are Jack’s conscientious use of recycling.

Sorry to say, that we can’t make the next new character because they’ve been updated and reused time and time again. Instead of conveying originality to your readers, you should be convincing them that the people they’re reading about have a beating heart. Your character needs to know joy, they know to sadness, defeat, envy, hatred, loss. This is less about making something new and more about making something believable.

Put your brooding bad boy under the spotlight. What scares him? Who does he love? What does he love? Go shopping for your character: what does he wear? Where does he shop? Put him in situations:

• A job interview.

• A first kiss.

Make him succeed, make him fail. Each response will resonate as your own, these simple quirks and traits that make your character real and believable. Rinse and repeat with your cast, of course you’ll go into more depth depending on their significance to the plot- so what you do with each will vary. A different take on something familiar allows you as a writer to make the best of what you know. It convinces your audience that there’s still millions of ways to breathe life into something that’s been done time and time again. It’s not about making your character compete with greats, it’s about making them your own.

The Seriousness of Comedy

Comedy is an important part of storytelling, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Beyond pure comedies, careful insertion of humour can be good for many other stories.

"But Sketchley," I hear you hypothetically say, "My story is far too serious and deep to include anything that might make someone laugh!"

Fair enough! Comedy is not for every story. I couldn't see books like 1984 or Lord of the Flies being improved by humour, but still, there are interesting and useful applications which should at least be considered.

The main appeal of comedy in otherwise serious situations is that of 'comic relief,' the concept that too much emotionally heavy material will weigh down on the audience, and that comedic breaks can help combat this. As well, a bit of comedy can help make writing more believable. After all, comedy occurs in real life. People make jokes. Funny things happen. That being said, one should always be careful not to overdo comedy, insert it into inappropriate situations, or make it obnoxious.

In her article, Kay Reynolds suggests three main forms of comedic relief: situations, dialogue, and recurring jokes. While all three are viable options, the main form I personally think requires the most focus is dialogue, as it presents many choices in method.

There are a few ways to go about comedy through dialogue. You can give the bulk of the cast a sense of humour (as seen in Firefly or Homestuck), have a smaller group of characters prone to joking around who still fill vital roles in the plot (as seen in Game of Thrones or The Avengers), or include one or two characters whose primary role in the story is that of comic relief. While comic relief characters are often despised in principle, and for good reason, when done properly, they can actually serve to further serious narratives.

Please don't think this is what I'm advocating

An excellent example of an effective comic relief character in such a manner is Cabaret's Emcee for a highly specific reason: what happens when he stops being funny. The Emcee is the flamboyant, gaudy host of the titular cabaret in Weimar Germany, whose dialogue is rife with innuendo and flirtation towards anyone he sees (including the audience). At the beginning of the play, he is a cheery, colourful character, but as the story gets progressively darker, so does he. With the subtle rise of the Nazis, the Emcee follows the story's more serious, depressing turn. In his single appearance outside of the cabaret, he reveals how devoid of hope he has become, and his final appearance, in harsh parallel to his first, is as bitter and defeated as the rest of the cast. This transition, the most powerful moment of the play, drives home the message of the play's bleak ending. While one might argue that this makes the Emcee ineffective as comic relief in the second act, I would say instead that he has gone beyond his basic role, using his previous comedy and present tragedy to strengthen the play as a whole.

Voice: The Underdog

When I was six, my grandfather made this pink notebook for me. “Kathleen’s Love Stories” was its title. I wrote some pretty ratty writing in it. A few years later, he and I started writing together; mostly short stories that I’d make up and that he’d edit.

He had been the editor of a small-time magazine in our hometown. After reading something that I’d written, he’d tell me not to use such big words. “It’s bogging your story down. Your voice isn’t coming through.” I'd muddled this over and decided I completely disagreed, at 11 years old. Using big words made me look smart! I now appreciate the lesson my grandfather was trying to teach me.

Voice is probably one of the trickiest things to master as a writer. In theory, it sounds simple. How hard can using your own voice be? But when you sit down and start writing, the autopilot editor in your brain takes over. Then when you’ve read over what you’ve sat down and written, you see that the voice is foreign. Who is it?

The foreign voice weakens the writing.

If you’ve struggled with “finding your voice” in your own writing, look no further for help than Annie Dillard or J.D Salinger. Both authors have extremely different voices, but both are extremely true to their writing. 

Dillard’s novel The Writing Life is one of my personal favorites. Dillard writes of the trials and tribulations of leading life as a writer. She’s brilliant. Salinger wrote Catcher in the Rye, a story with zero plot lead by the lovable fuck-up, Holden. Dillard is whimsical in her writing while Salinger is choppy and blunt. Both styles work for different reasons. Namely, the form of the writing fits the content of the writing.

Writers achieve these different "voices" not just by what is being written, but how it's being written. A writer's sentence structure, grammar, and use of punctuation all influence how a line is internally read. Experiment with these devices. Read them out loud to yourself and make different variations of the same sentence. But most of all, relax. Let your voice come through. It's the best one you've got.