This is number 129 in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
“PRIDE GOETH BEFORE A FALL.” So says a proverb that often summarizes what we refer to as a tragic flaw, or hamartia. A person is so sure of himself and so prideful that his well-intentioned actions bring about his own downfall—all because he can’t see past his own certainty. In this case, it is called hubris, or excessive pride, originally toward the gods.
It is only one character trait that might lead to a downfall, or serious misjudgment or crisis. Insecurity, guilt, depression, cowardice, cruelty, trust issues, judgementalism, perfectionism, narcissism, and over competitiveness are all traits that might lead to a conflict. But what role do they have in developing a character for your novel?
My personal opinion is that the most important aspect of writing a novel is to have characters who are so well-developed and real that people fall in love with them or into intense hatred of them. A character that doesn’t inspire a strong emotional response is a wasted character.
Here’s why: Character drives action. Action drives plot.
It’s really that simple. Once you have great characters, their actions in whatever circumstances you place them will automatically drive the plot of your story. Creating such characters should be the first and foremost priority in writing your novel.
That’s all, of course, my opinion. You’ll certainly find other opinions that disagree. But since it’s mine, I’ll talk about it as the most important.
When I decide on a story to tell, I start by figuring out whose story it is. Is it Tony Ames (Model Student), Brian Frost (Living Next Door to Heaven), Dennis Enders (Team Manager), Jacob Hopkins (The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins), or perhaps Nate Hart (Photo Finish)? These characters are referred to as protagonists. They are the ones around whom the stories revolve.
I needed to start by defining who those characters were and what made them tick. I described them on paper. You can start just about anywhere with this. What does the character look like? Five-ten, 160 pounds, blue eyes, brown hair, somewhat athletic, glasses, large hands, straight nose. What’s next?
If it helps, you can do an image search that matches your description. You might actually see the person you described. I invented this description and then looked it up at Shutterstock.
In finding images, you might even further your development of the description. Does he have a beard? Is he Chinese? Is he very unsure of himself? Long hair? Short hair. Snappy dresser? All those can go into your bank of character descriptions.
When I wrote Nathan Everett’s (Wayzgoose) City Limits, back in 2017, I researched and developed every character in the story in detail. I used 3x5 index cards to record the details so I could tack them onto a cork board as I plotted the story. I also developed a web page with every character on it, complete with a photo of most. With a cast as large as that in City Limits and Wild Woods, it was helpful to me to remind myself of what a character is like when it was a chapter or two between times he or she was mentioned.
The significant thing about this is that every character was consistent with the description I’d created. Not every character description was explicitly included in the text of the novel. You don’t have to spell out the description all at once if you create a believable and consistent character.
City Limits and the sequel Wild Woods are available as eBooks at ZBookStore, and in paperback at online retailers.
So far, all you have is a physical description. The character goes much deeper than that. It’s time to dig into who that person really is. My obsession with that started with my first draft of Devon Layne’s A Touch of Magic back in the late 1970s. It was the first ‘novel length’ story I’d written and I discovered that I’d really short-changed it in terms of character development.
Walking home from my first ever critique of my writing, I started asking questions of the most problematic character. I’d spouted off a number of questions about his situation in the novel and during a pause at a traffic light, distinctly heard him say in my head, “If you’d just be quiet a minute, I’ll tell you all about it.” That began my first “interview” with a character. It is a technique I have used frequently over the years.
When I wrote Nathan Everett’s Seattle Noir series, I actually created a journal site for the lead female character and several young women agreed to participate in helping create her. Not only was I not female, I was thirty years older than the character. The participants conducted interviews with the character, shared life stories, and made her real in my mind.
When I wrote Devon Layne’s Model Student series, I actually conducted interviews with over fifteen of the characters to find out what was really going on in their heads. I published those as The Triptych Interviews so other readers who were interested could dig deeper into the characters. I found this to be a very effective way of developing a character that people really relate to.
Why? Why go to all that work for something that won’t actually appear in your novel?
Part of being convincing in the pages of your novel is having characters who behave consistently in your head. If I have a character, for example, who is a true atheist, I really can’t have him spout religious affirmations or even curses. What is he likely to yell instead?
The same is true of any other aspect of the character’s life. And somewhere in that investigation, you will uncover the character’s tragic flaw. Remember that? You will find that his intense loyalty to another person causes him to hurt an innocent bystander. His over confidence leads him into a situation where he is badly beaten. You will find his belief that his marriage is a kind of everlasting tower that he can step outside of and still get back in, leaves him weakened in the face of a tempting woman with whom he cheats on his wife.
It is the underlying flaw that will often determine the action and the result of the action the character initiates.
And that is where we will pick up next week. Character drives action. How do you match the character with the action you want in your novel?