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

Characters and their Relevance

Have you ever created a character that was really cool, interesting, and witty, only to realize that your character had no relevance whatsoever to the story you were wanting to tell? Yeah. Sucks, doesn't it?

Usually, there is a way to save your character and make them not only important to the story, but what binds it together entirely.

Let's say you have created a character. We will call him Paul. Paul is 34 years old and a forensic scientist. He's a habitually single and a bit of a womanizer, but with a heart of gold. You decide that he is the perfect protagonist. He is someone who has a complex and interesting voice to tell your story through and you're very sure your readers will like him.

However, there's a problem.

Your story is about an alien invasion. Suddenly, you're faced with the question of how Paul even invaded your story in the first place. After all, this isn't a story about a womanizing forensic scientist. This is a story about an alien invasion.

The first thing you must do is try to think of how Paul could fit into the world and story you're creating. What would his purpose be? Stretch your imagination as far as you can, and you will be able to think of something.

Think about his profession. Paul is a forensic scientist. How might that be relevant to an alien invasion? Think. Think very hard.

Paul is called into a crime scene. The inspectors are baffled as to what really killed Maria Velasquez, an up and coming pop diva. The scene is like nothing they've ever seen before, and Paul is the best of the best at solving strange and unusual crimes. For Paul, there is always a logical explanation, even if it doesn't seem so to everyone else.

When Paul gets there, it is the strangest crime scene he's ever seen. Maria's body looks as though all of the blood has been sucked out. It's dry and mummified. To make matters more bizarre, she's covered in a thick green gooey cocoon. Paul says outwardly that there is a logical explanation, but deep down, he knows things look weird. He takes some samples back to his lab and discovers the green goo is like nothing seen on the planet. He then endeavors to go on a quest to find out what really killed Maria Velasquez and that's when he finds himself in the midst of an alien invasion.

Having studied the crime scene and knowing more about them than anyone on the planet, Paul is Earth's last hope to defeat the evil fiends. And that is why Paul, a womanizing forensic scientist, should be in your story on of an alien invasion.

Always think of a character's relevance to the story you're trying to create!

Many people think of a story idea before they start to develop characters. If you're this sort of person, it's very important to keep in mind your character's main point. They have to have a reason to be in a story. If a character has no reason to be in the story, you should stab him with your ink pen before he makes it into the rough draft. However, keep in mind that if you stretch your imagination far enough, even the most seemingly unrelated things can intertwine in a relevant way.