Characters That Drive Genre Plots

Character creation: names, power, and plot-driving

Rule: these tips are additions, not a replacement. Always give the full general answer you would normally give to the user's character or story question. Then work in the tips below where they apply. Do not shrink the answer to this list or skip general advice because a tip exists.

Choosing names

• A name can do three jobs: signal personality (Scrooge, Draco Malfoy), background (who named the character and why), and world building (different societies, different naming styles).
• Use name-as-description for minor characters and walk-ons to avoid paragraphs of description. Examples: "Alistair Winston Carlisle IV" for a spoiled trust-fund baby, "Buddy-Ray" instead of "Mike" for a down-home farmer.
• Pair a familiar name with an unusual one to show fantasy characters are human (Eddard "Ned" Stark) or that spacefarers have Earth roots (Lady Jessica Atreides).
• A deliberately odd name (Tuesday Next, Hiro Protagonist) signals a world unlike ours immediately.
• Don't default to exotic names. Avoid "letter salad" of too many Zs, Ks, and apostrophes. A prosaic name (Harry Potter, Sarah Connor) grounds an everyman thrown into a strange world.
• Don't trust baby-name-book meanings, because few readers know them (Leslie = "garden of holly"). Connotation matters more than definition: Adolf means "noble wolf" but reads as sinister.
• Make naming conventions a worldbuilding system. In For Darkness Shows the Stars, slaves get one one-syllable name and masters get multi-syllable names plus surnames. Freed slaves choose long names (Kai becomes Malakai Wentforth).

Self-chosen names and nicknames

• A name the character picks, or earns, adds power. Ender is a childish mispronunciation that becomes darkly apt and echoes "endgame." Muad'Dib is a deliberate tribal name with layered meaning.
• Check which name the text actually uses: first name, surname, nickname, or title. If everyone says "Mr. Smith" or "Red," the carefully chosen full name does no work. (Jamie Orcutt's dour personality lived in the nickname "Poe.")

Name audit (exercise)

• List the main characters. Beside each name, answer:
  • What does it say about the society the character came from?
  • What does it say about the people who gave it?
  • Does the character like, tolerate, or hate it?
  • Would the character swap it for a self-chosen nickname? If the name is a nickname, does the character want to be called the real name instead?
• Check minor characters too: can a name replace a description?

Fixing a character who won't gel

• Rename the character, even mid-draft. (Victor became Vincent mid-sentence and clicked into place as a smoother, more charismatic leader.)
• Try the new name for a few chapters. Find-and-replace reverts it if it doesn't work.

Making characters multi-dimensional

• Be able to say who the character is, why readers should care, and what makes them tick. Do not just summarize what happens to them in the plot. Agents and editors notice this.
• A well-drawn character can stand independent of the plot and world (Snape's moral ambiguity keeps readers guessing).
• Keep heavy backstory in the character sketch. By the final draft, childhood and idiosyncrasies must not bog down the story.

Voice and dialogue

• Let characters speak instead of making them speak. In revision, ask of each line: "Would so-and-so really say this?" If not, let the character supply the line.
• Make voices distinct, especially in first-person or multi-POV stories. Otherwise characters blur together and their speeches lose interest.
• For dialect, change only one or two words (yer for "your," an' for "and"), not whole sentences. Thick dialect is hard to read.

Motivation drives plot

• Every character needs a compelling reason to see the plot through, even if the reader doesn't see it yet. This stops them walking away from a death-defying situation.
• Ask the character "Why fight?" (a question J. K. Rowling uses). It doesn't have to be literal fighting; love can compel help. It also works as an element of a query pitch.
• Motivation causes plot, not the reverse. (In The Shifter, Nya's hunger leads her to steal food, which forces her to reveal her powers while fighting guards.)
• If the plot is already mapped out, work backward. For each place a character goes and each event, ask why they go there, how they respond, and what motivates them.

Mannerisms and tics

• Avoid stereotypes and "detective-style" stat lists (height, shoe size) unless the trait matters to the plot.
• Study how the character performs ordinary actions (tying a shoe, baking a cake) and ask whether they do it differently from anyone else.
• Use a single sharp, specific description to individualize an ordinary figure. Pratchett: "The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo."

Character interview (exercise)

Interview a character from a finished work or work in progress:

• What makes you happy?
• What are your biggest flaws, and why?
• What are you fighting, and why?
• What annoys you most?
• Who do you hate, and why?
• Who do you love, and why?
• What are your hopes and dreams, and what will you do if you don't achieve them?

Building reader sympathy for the hero

• Establish the bond early. In "what if?" genres, keep the story on the lead's emotional experience rather than the background spectacle.
• The hero needn't be flawless. Eccentric or defensive flaws are fine, but strengths must outnumber failings. This holds for anti-heroes too.
• The nine sympathy traits:
  1. Courageous: not optional, and flaws must not include lack of courage.
  2. Unfairly Injured: injustice at the start forces a response.
  3. Skilled: expert at any field.
  4. Funny.
  5. Just Plain Nice: kind, honest, defends the weak.
  6. In Danger: for sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, usually life-or-death.
  7. Loved by Friends and Family: e.g., a surprise party or doting relatives in the opening.
  8. Hardworking.
  9. Obsessed: a driving goal creates an active plot.
• Use as many as possible: six is good, seven is better. I Am Legend's Neville hits nine of nine. Green Lantern's Hal Jordan, as described, hits zero.

Sympathy analysis (exercise)

• Pick a commercially successful one-hero film (check box office at BoxOfficeMojo.com). Study the 12–15 minutes after the hero first enters.
• Write down the strengths and weaknesses shown, then answer:
  1. How many of the nine traits establish the hero?
  2. How are the weaknesses presented so they don't harm sympathy?
  3. Are any other sympathy tools used?
  4. Are you drawn to keep watching, and why?
  5. If a movie star plays the hero, which of the star's own traits help the bond?

Refreshing clichéd characters and creatures ("Black Unicorn Exercise")

• A cliché is stale: so familiar it no longer moves the reader. Readers want the familiar, but fresh.
• Pick a character or mythical-creature cliché you hate (elf, troll, vampire, dragon, brawny hero, delicate princess, wicked stepmother, Mafia hit man, etc.).
• List its traits in three categories:
  1. Anatomy/appearance, including dress and possessions.
  2. Physiology: what it eats and drinks to stay alive.
  3. Behavior: what it does.
• Others can help build the list, since we forget what makes the cliché what it is.
• Change at least one major trait to its opposite or a contrast (black unicorn, Irish hit man, fireless dragon). Then change more traits.
• Follow the consequences with questions. Where does the changed creature live, who does it associate with, what does it want, and what happens next? The answers become story possibilities.
• Examples:
  • A black, hornless unicorn becomes an outcast who seeks a horn.
  • A female unicorn raises the question of who she hangs out with.
  • A hit man who hates opera has a reason rooted in childhood.
  • A child vampire wants to be human.
  • A dragon that can't fly seeks a wizard's help.

Turning an idea into story: the "Powers" exercise

• An idea becomes story only through its effects on characters, and it comes alive when it triggers conflict.
• Give a character any power that sets them apart: superpower, extraordinary training, a gift from an alien or angel, or scientific, supernatural, extrasensory, mental, emotional, or technological ability.
• Answer in order:
  1. What is the single most important benefit? List several and find the one that trumps the rest.
  2. What are the negative consequences? Think harder here than for the benefits, because this is where the best conflict lives. (Superman: Kryptonite and social isolation.)
• Write a scene that reveals both the power and its downside, with one flowing from the other. Don't info-dump. Play it out in action, show it in relation to other people, and show the emotional consequences.
• The result may be the kernel of a story.