Building Character
Shoveling snow. Mowing lawns. Sacking groceries. Tossing hay bails. Detassling corn. Babysitting. All of these things are said to "build character." In this case, well-meaning adults like Calvin's dad in the "Calvin and Hobbes" comics specifically mean that these activities help a person to learn the value of hard work and develop a work ethic. But what do those qualities have to do with who someone is at their core? Can you really hang a person's "character" on whether or not they're willing to do potentially unpleasant or challenging jobs?
According to the Oxford Dictionary, "Character," as it relates to this topic, means "the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual."
Hmm. Ok, so maybe doing the work itself isn't the deciding factor here. Maybe we should dig deeper?
How about instead of the activity itself we look at the willingness or unwillingness to do the job, the motivations that drive that action (or inaction), the attitude that the person has towards the work or the results?
Hold on a second. That's starting to sound like character development. Could we be on to something here?
Holy crap. Maybe Calvin's dad was right! By providing a stimulus (i.e. the request to shovel snow) the character (i.e. Calvin) is faced with a developmental trigger that forces a response. While most of what happens here occurs on a subconscious level, it creates a cascade of thoughts and decisions that ultimately shape who this person becomes and how they interact with their environment - read here as "mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual." In the case of our snow-shoveling youngster, they may determine that they hate snow, dislike the cold, resent their parental overlords, feel grateful for the quality of their cold weather gear, look forward to a warm shower and a cup of hot cocoa, or find themselves motivated to move somewhere that doesn't have snow and ice for four months out of the year.
All of those thoughts and feelings are unique to that person and their circumstances. When added to all of the other life experiences and personal development that they process on a daily basis, it continuously shapes who that person becomes and how they see the world. So, as it turns out, shoveling the driveway or doing farm chores does, in fact, build character.
Huh. Who knew? Here I thought it was just a catch phrase that parents used to stops kids from arguing about doing chores.
"But, C. Robert, what does this have to do with writing?"
I'm glad you asked!
There's a distinct difference between words on a page that describe a person and words that actually develop someone's character. Descriptions of how someone dresses, the way they wear their hair (or the lack there of, thank you very much), and even their physical traits like skin tone and eye color help to paint a picture of the person you're referencing, but they do very little for actual character development. Until you, as the author, express why these aspects might be relevant, you're pretty much just providing a snapshot in time of what that character looks like.
Believe me, this picture does nothing to describe how ornery, funny, supportive, or talented these folks really are.
...here, on the other hand...
As illustrated above, action is one way you can see a person's character. Dialogue can also show a person's character. Internal thoughts or monologues show a person's character. Decisions made and how someone deals with the resulting consequences are how you see a person's character. These are the things that demonstrate who a person really is and will make them either relatable or repugnant to your reader, both of which can be powerful tools in creating your story.
When you're building a character, especially the lead character, it's important to get them out of that two-dimensional mode rather quickly. You need to show your reader who this person is and why they're somebody worth following for the duration of a short story or novel. Without that connection established, your readers are going to have a hard time investing time and energy into finishing what they started reading.
The most important thing to consider when building your characters is that they are "people" above all else (maybe not human people, depending on your genre, but still "people"). As such, you should try to keep in mind that people have feelings. People have desires (thank you, Lynn Main). People have motives. People have thoughts and ideas. People have needs. People have quirks. People have preferences (sometimes even prejudices). People have goals. People have life experiences and histories. People have varying degrees of education. All of these things build and shape who your character is. In turn, who your character is will help to build and shape how they should be interacting with and responding to their world and the events of your story.
Consider this scenario for example:
It's 1:00 AM when the fire alarm goes off in a college dormitory housing 300 students. The following three students live on the third floor and are in their respective rooms when the alarm sounds. How do you think the story will change based on which character the story follows?
1. Mike is a loner. In short, he isn't a fan of people. Some say he barely even likes himself. He has a roommate named Jeff, but only because he can barely afford to pay his room and board on his own. He rarely talks to the other students on his floor, including said roommate. He just got home from delivering pizzas all night. He spent most of his shift between deliveries in a text argument with his stepmother about his plans for Thanksgiving break. She thinks he should come home. Mike doesn't see the point of going home just to be ignored by his dad while the old man drinks his way through a case of beer by himself and screams at the nonstop football games blaring through the TV. He wouldn't even be considering it if the dorm wasn't closed over the holiday weekend. Mike just walked in the door and hasn't even had a chance to shower or change his clothes when the alarm goes off.
2. Darcy is a senior and part of the ROTC Airforce program. She is studying premed and currently on track to graduate near the top of her class. She plans to spend her active duty time as a medic before completing her medical degree. Success is extremely important to her and she strives for it in pretty much everything she does. Her dormmates respect her dedication, but she gets frequent comments about needing to "chillout" and to "take the stick out of her a**." As usual, she finished her homework by 11:00 PM and went to bed so that she can get up early for PT the next morning.
3. Andy is a journalism student and a junior at the college. He was popular with his dormmates up until this week's edition of the "Collegiate Courier" went out. His expose about the college covering up alleged sexual assaults by football players led to the termination of a beloved coach and the expulsion of a number of nationally ranked team members right before this season's championship playoffs. Even more players are still under investigation for their involvement or failure to report what they knew. To some, Andy is a hero. To others, he's a pariah. For Andy, it was just another story that needed to be reported. As of 12:59 AM he was still working on an essay for English Comp describing the harrowing tale of losing his family home and older brother to a house fire when he was 12-years-old. His efforts to remain detached and objective in this writing assignment have proven...problematic.
So, here we have three dramatically different characters, each with their own life experiences, motives, and ways of looking at the world. Each person has different things that have shaped and built who they are coming into this scenario. As a writer developing this story, how these characters react and what they do next should be heavily influenced by what we know about them already. This is why it is so important to build your character as a "person" rather than just a static element of the story. Just because they start out in a certain way doesn't mean that they are locked into a specific set of actions or behaviors, of course, but how they begin should certainly color how their story develops.
Mike might push his way down the stairs and say "to hell with everyone else" as suggested by his "loner" status, or he may become an unlikely hero and meet someone who gives him a better alternative to his unhappy holidays. Darcy could easily be the hero we expect, she might be the hero that cracks under pressure, she might be both, or perhaps she might become something entirely different as her story unfolds. Andy will be forced to face his own childhood traumas regardless of how the story plays out, but how he goes about that could easily go any number of directions and with a whole host of different results depending on who he interacts with and the decisions he makes. With each of these options, it all really depends on the story we wish to tell and the characters we want to create.
However you go about it, whatever prompts you use, whether it's easy for you or an ongoing challenge, just remember: It all "Builds Character."
