Create characters who have meaning to you

Puppet show performance by @freepik

Have you ever had an idea for a novel and when you started pushing characters around in order to bring your story to life, the whole venture quickly fell apart and you decided it wasn't really a good idea after all?

When you started developing your outline, did you also do a character analysis? Each person you create along the way must have the capacity to perform in such a way that they matter in terms of story development. You have to determine just how evil the antagonist is going to be and what brought him or her to that point, or how tenacious the protagonist in overcoming that diabolical influence and why he or she feels the need to do so. You have to flesh out each character's motivation and attitude because, if you don't, they won't have the strength of character to carry the premise to the last page of your book.

The people in our novels must have features and facets that connect them not only to the storyline but also to one another. My Google AI Overview tells me, "Features represent the fundamental characteristics or qualities of an item or concept." Descriptive stuff, that is. Basic but vital to a reader's ability to picture the character and get a feel for their motivation and attitude. For instance, a character who portrays a disgruntled chef on a murder rampage when he's teased in a food review over his personal overindulgences must be characterized as grossly obese.

The AI Overview goes on to say, "Facets represent specific, often granular, aspects or perspectives of a feature." In other words, that chef may suffer bad memories of being subjected to bullying as a child over his weight.

The best way to develop the people who populate our stories is to look deeply into our own lives and our past experiences. Things, feelings, actions and reactions -- all the stuff that trigger the events in our novels and lead our folks along those complicated character arcs are familiar to us already. They are even archetypal, only because what happens to us tends to happen to others as well, all the way back through human history.

You don't have to work hard to produce characters who are believable. Look back at that poor overweight chef. I'm sure he's not the only one who loves to indulge in his culinary creations. There are real chefs who do too. And not the only one who doesn't look forward to his reviews because they tend to be cruel. It happens in real life too. In that novel, however, the author used a feature and a requisite facet to build a story about anger and revenge.

I created Boone in The Last Solo Roller to be a trustworthy man. He had to prove it, however, but as his creator I already knew he was the sort of sexual partner I wouldn't mind going to bed with. My past experiences with manipulative narcissists motivated me to instill in the character of a midnight cowboy a longing to be worthy of his heart's desire. He could have enticed Christine in the same way he beguiled numerous women before her. I developed him to be a very appealing lothario, after all. But would that have made for a thrilling page-turner?

It's not much more complicated than that. All you have to do is give your characters a particular feature and underlying facet that spur them to feel things, say things, and do things which lead to their ultimate transformation. That chef? While he's on his murder spree, he suffers a heart attack and realizes the critics were right about him all along. Although he confesses his crimes and goes to prison, he soon manages the cafeteria there, making healthy meals, and is happy for the first time in his life as everyone loves the cuisine. The end...