How to Make a Character Matter

Characters are what drive your story. You can have the best plot idea in the world, but if your characters suck, no one will read your story.

Example:

Your character's name is Jane. Jane is an office worker. She is thirty. She doesn't have a boyfriend or any hobbies so to speak, but she has an interesting insight into the world around her.

Here's the thing about Jane: she doesn't matter. She lies lank on the page and while she has a basic background, she's still very two-dimensional. No one really cares about Jane.

As mentioned in my last post, you have to think about your characters and if they pose any relevance whatsoever to the story. The first step is to make them relevant, as previously discussed. After that, you have to dig deeper.

It's not necessary to know everything about your character to write a story. But it is necessary to know everything about them if you want to write a story rich with detail, full of characters that people care about. That is your goal for your characters. You want to create characters that people will care about. You want to make your characters matter.

Going back to Jane, it's true. She doesn't matter -- not yet, anyway. But she can. She can matter very much.

Dig deeper into the basic details you know about her. She works in an office. Where exactly does she work? What is her function there? How does she feel about her job? Does she get along with her co-workers? Does she have enemies? What about obstacles? (A good story must have obstacles.)

Jane is thirty and single. Has she ever had a boyfriend? Why or why not? Is she interested in anyone? Is anyone interested in her? Why would they be interested in her? Make her interesting in her own way. Make her someone someone would want to be interested in, even if she is a geek and walks around with pencils stuck in her hair and runs in her stockings.

Tell us more about Jane. Tell us exactly how she looks. Think of every little detail about her. Figure out her exact physical appearance. If her hair is brown, what color brown is it? She has brown eyes -- describe them. Make her stand out from all the other girls with brown hair and brown eyes.

Tell us more about Jane's personality. That will dictate how she deals with conflicts both external and internal. If Jane is very shy, she is not going to call her enemy out in front of everyone in the office without some major provoking and character development.

That being said, Jane will have to evolve (or devolve) in the story. She can't stagnate. Think about the end of your story. Where do you want Jane to be? Think about that and map out the emotional and physical journey she will have to take to get there. If she has not changed for better or worse by the end of the story, you have wasted your time. And believe me. I know that one of the worst feelings when you're a writer is to write two-hundred pages about nothing special.

But anything can be saved. I'm a firm believer in that. Jane can be saved. Give her depth. Make her real. Give her obstacles. Let her overcome some. Let some overcome her. Let her be happy. Let her be sad. Let her feel as though her world has ended, only for there to be a happy ending (or conversely, let her be on top of the world to have everything shatter). The choice is yours. You can do anything you want with Jane. You want Jane to mean something, then you better make her have meaning. Give her a purpose. Give her a story. Make her matter.

And that, my friends,is one of the most important elements to story-telling. I know it might sound like a reiteration of my last post, but it's not. Relevance and mattering are different things. You can be relevant, yet not matter. Think about Paul. He was relevant to the plot. But if he wasn't interesting and engaging, he wouldn't mean much. No one would care about him. Your characters have to not only be relevant, but they have to mean something.

-The Writer