Writing Advice: Breaking the Mold
This month’s question comes from @XojacStudios on Twitter: Friend of mine is having trouble breaking from their usual character mold. Any advice on how to do that?
Hey, a question about characters! I’m down. All right, let’s talk about varying your character types.
A critique that a lot of beginning writers (and some more experienced writers) get is that all their characters feel the same. Or, for example, that all their characters are foxes. Ahem. Often this is because we are writing from our own experience when we start out, and our characters handle problems the way we would handle problems; the arguments they have are arguments we’ve had with ourselves; the villains are our own worst impulses brought to life.
This is always going to be true to some extent. What changes is that we learn how to better distinguish those parts of ourselves, and we observe and empathize with people around us to find the parts of ourselves that harmonize with them so we can then access their points of view. Our characters will never be completely unlike us, but they can be less like us than they are when we start out.
I wouldn’t recommend basing a character specifically off of one of your friends or family; the few times I’ve tried that it has felt artificial, like I was trying to cram this fictional character into a box they weren’t meant for. But you can take traits from your friends and family, or from other people you know or read about, and give them to your characters.
If you’re stuck for sources of inspiration, read some advice columns or listen to advice podcasts. There you will hear real people talking about real situations and (usually) real conflicts. Think about both sides of the conflict and what might drive a person to take either side. See if you can come up with a fictional character who would reasonably take either side.
Now, the way to craft that character on the page: Character is revealed through action, so rather than nebulously thinking, “this character is very concerned with their image,” picture a decision they would make that shows the reader that choice (ideally something your “standard” character wouldn’t do). Shakespeare’s Iago famously expresses his devotion to his image by comparing it to his money:
“Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.”
Place the character in a position where their beliefs or needs conflict with others. Sometimes they won’t do the right thing, and their mistakes and blind spots are often where the really interesting parts of characters come out. These are things that they can learn from as the story goes along. There’s a temptation to make your characters make the best of every situation, but that leads to a less interesting story. In Star Wars (the first one, if I have to specify), if Luke does as Obi-Wan ordered and stays with Han in hiding so they can disable the tractor beam on the Death Star, he never rescues Leia and probably doesn’t witness the death of his mentor, and then maybe he doesn’t have the patience to trust the Force at the end of the movie.
And people make mistakes in different ways and for different reasons. Han goes along with Luke’s plan not out of the same sense of heroism that Luke has, but for the reward. In fact, Han and Luke’s character differences are revealed in concrete actions (as I mentioned above, a way to reveal character) and through conflict. Luke is a frustrated kid who wants to do something great; Han is a businessman, basically, who wants to get paid for what he’s doing. Luke is idealistic; Han practical. These differences come out clearly in the simple argument about how Luke and Obi-Wan are going to hire Han to fly them to Alderaan. Luke thinks Han should do it because it’s the right thing; Han insists on being paid, with a few scoffs at Luke’s idealism for good measure.
In summary: the trick to varying your characters is to look at decision points and think about all the different possible actions someone could take. These actions reveal character, and every action shows a different possible character. Work through several of these and you’ll be coming up with a spectrum of characters to choose from. If you get stuck, turn to the real world for inspiration. People make decisions that you or I might never consider. And we shouldn’t, but it’s okay—and necessary—for our characters to.