Creating Characters: How to Build Story People by Dwight V. Swain Read Free Book Online

all such traits are abstract and general. Behavior is concrete and specific. “What does he or she do?” that demonstrates any given point is what’s important.
    To that end, you must devise incidents and specific details that show the trait in action. Never just say a character is irritating. Make him do something recognizably irritating. Telling simply isn’t good enough. If you want him to be likable, admirable, courageous, or such, figure out a way to prove it in action; that’s what writing’s all about.
    Also, to a degree, you may use what I term the testimonial technique—that is, let some other character recall or describe succinctly a convincing incident that makes the point.
    How far will he go in his efforts to attain a goal? What are his limitations? Will he lie? Steal? Kill? Reject a friend? Betray a loved one? You need to decide, because, for the duration of the story, you’re god. “What will he have to do?” you need to ask. “How can I make it believable that he’ll do it?” Is his behavior a matter of attitude? Function? Potential?
    Where do you get all this material? The answer, I must repeat, even though it grows tedious, is through observation and introspection—a study of living, breathing, human beings in their native habitat, and that includes yourself. Nothing will substitute for watching, on the one hand, and probing your own most secret thoughts, on the other.
    This is a subject we’ll discuss elsewhere in more detail. But it’s important to plant the thought in the back of your head early. Nor will it hurt to make contact with others’ observations, others’conclusions, as set down in texts on psychology, sociology, and other aspects of behavior.
    Neither should you neglect the work of other fiction writers. Their work offers insight on a wide variety of levels, as witness the traditional wisdom that novelists were the first psychiatrists, and that books like Robert Bloch’s The Scarf have been reviewed in psychiatric journals.
    A final question that sometimes comes up in regard to fleshing out story people is the matter of character dossiers, files that catalog the tags and traits and labels and other characteristics of your cast. To what extent should you develop them and use them?
    Later in your career, you may work with a series character—one originated and developed by someone else. Nick Carter is a recent case in point and so is Nancy Drew. A dozen or more writers have written books in these names, on assignment. As you sell more and more material, an editor or publisher may ask you if you’d be interested in doing a book using one of the house’s characters.
    In that case, the character has already been established, complete with tags, traits, relationships, and background. You receive this information in a statement, a dossier, termed a “bible.” The longer the series has been in existence, the more specifically the character has been defined—and the more you as a writer are boxed in. Once the character has been given a wife or a twelve-year-old daughter, you’re stuck with them. Same for a finger cut off, a phobia about ghosts, a problem with alcohol. You merely integrate this already existing person into a plot.
    But we’ll assume you’re not doing such a series. Should you work up character dossiers? And if so, how detailed should they be?
    Most writers give solemn lip service to them, and I’d be the last to say them nay. But I’ve noted in my contacts with a fair assortment of my fellows that they give more honor to such catalogs in the telling than the fact.
    My own tendency is to reverse the pattern most often recommended. Why? Because I get bored at what too often strikes me as busy work. (I remember one writer on writing who insisted that you should know whether your heroine prefers ice cream or pineapple ice.) I also feel that too many details decided early tend to lock you in and make it harder for you to adapt your character to story needs.
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