Yuffie's Writing How-To's

How to MAKE YOUR CHARACTERS DIFFERENT

Find out your character is very similar to another from a published work? What makes them similar? Their name? Their job? Their appearance?

Those might not be the worst things in the world, because those types of traits are superficial, and I hope you all know by now how I feel about putting any weight on superficial traits. ;)

So what makes two characters different? How do you tell them apart besides their name or appearance?

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to share with you the two biggest questions of your character's life:

1. What do they want, and what are they willing to do/risk/sacrifice in order to get it?
2. What do they fear the most, and what are they willing to do/risk/sacrifice in order to avoid or destroy it?

Seriously, almost everything about who they are then stems from there. Answer those for each of your characters, and make sure the answers are different. THAT'S how you distinguish characters from each other.

Keep in mind two characters can absolutely want the same thing, but how you distinguish them then falls on how far each is willing to go to get what they want.

I'll give you an example. Annie from my novel, Stray, is an orphan. Can anyone ever get her mixed up with the redheaded singing orphan Annie from the Broadway musical? No, because their goals are vastly different. My Annie wants to protect her suicidal, ex-gangster, best friend from getting shot by another gangster. Redhead Annie wants to escape the orphanage and find her real parents.

You can see how by creating different goals for each character, the stories you tell with them will be quite different. This method of characterization works well if you're a writer who creates characters first and then builds a story around them. Then those^ are the questions you absolutely must start with, and then go from there. These questions are still important to ask yourself if you create a plot first and then build characters to go with the plot.

Something else I've heard another author(s) say is that there is one sentence that will break every person. It could be an idea or something someone else says to them. (It doesn't have to happen in the story. It could be a 'what if' scenario.) Figure out that sentence, and you have the beginnings of the core, the heart and soul, of your character. As a writer, it's your duty to your characters to exploit their worst nightmares and hurl them into physical and mental states they absolutely don't want to be in. You have to break them to see what they're made of, so figure out what will break them--possibly a third key question to ask yourself to get to their core.


EXERCISE
Answer the key questions about your character:
1. What do they want, and what are they willing to do/risk/sacrifice in order to get it?
2. What do they fear the most, and what are they willing to do/risk/sacrifice in order to avoid or destroy it?
3. What one sentence will completely break them?