It’s been a terrible week. The car is in the shop again (no worries, I expected it) and my father-in-law is still in the hospital. Despite the fact that the prognosis for him is good, anytime you mix an 80+-year-old man, a hospital, and the word “aorta,” you’re going to have a Bad Situation. My husband is still up in Seattle attending to his dad, and being the calm emotional centre is not something I’m particularly good at. We’ve had a terrific amount of support from friends and family, and that’s what is carrying us through.

I haven’t managed to write a lick, and I’m under deadline, dammit.

Yeah, I know. Get over it, suck it up, and write. And it’s Friday, which means I was sitting here staring at my screen, trying to think of an appropriate subject for blogging. You guys seemed to like the Five Rules of Plotting I did last time, so Inspiration says, “Hey, why don’t you put some of the stuff you’re always saying about characters in a blog post? That counts as writing! Whooopeee!”

Ah, Inspiration. Several times in the past two years I could have cheerfully strangled her. But sometimes the bitch does come through.

So. Characters. If plot is the engine that drives a story, the characters are the pistons, oil filter, and transmission. Without them, the engine might be nice, but it’s not going anywhere. All those horses will spill out onto the sand, leaving you wondering what happened. It’s hard to write good characters–really hard. Why?

1. Your Characters Are Not YOU. A lot of writers overidentify with their creations. This leads to Mary Sues, Gary Stus, and Kardboard Kutouts up the wazoo. It also leads to pale characters without the zip and zing of real life.

The number one problem when it comes to writing characters is overidentification with them, in fact. When you are afraid that people will see you in your characters, the temptation to make them Perfect or to draw their teeth is overwhelming. Don’t give in. Do not make the mistake of making your characters superhumanly perfect, or of being afraid of them. They’re just people. They put their trousers on one leg at a time, as my Nana used to say. Let them be flawed and imperfect. Let them get mad and bloody and bruised and nasty. Let them be real.

But how do you know what “real” is?

2. Watch People I tell all my students to eavesdrop. Take your journal and go to a public place–a mall, the racetrack, city streets. Sit down, buy a drink, get comfy.

Then listen. Listen to the conversations, to the spaces between what people say, what they mean, and what they don’t say. Record little snippets of dialogue. Watch body language. See stories developing. Make up stories in your head about the people you see.

I actually prefer casinos. More human tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, and comitragedy goes on inside casinos than you would ever believe. I can nurse a drink for hours and watch people do the craziest things, and hear the most wonderful conversations. Let’s face it–writers are voyeurs. We love peeping inside other people’s heads and analyzing their motives. That mill needs grist to run it. Grist is so easy to get–any public space is a rich lode of material just waiting to be mined.*

This will help you make your characters real. There’s no laboratory like real life.

3. Real People Aren’t Perfect If they were, there would be no stories. Who are the characters that endure? The ones with tragic flaws. Madame Bovary. Oedipus. Kerouac. The Sacketts. Schmendrick the Magician. Ritchie Tozier. Mercutio. Why are these characters so compelling?

Because we identify with them. Who hasn’t had an affair turn out wrong, done their best and yet gotten screwed, wanted to travel, had a family, tried so hard to be good at something, had their brain and mouth go too fast, or loved a friend and gotten caught in the crossfire? Each of those characters had a very human situation, in type if not detail. The stories that survive do so because the characters are in a situation we can understand and empathize with. However outlandish the trappings of that situation, it works because the character is struggling with something very basic.

Example? Dante Valentine. In Working For The Devil, the revenge storyline is actually not what draws people into Danny–though it is satisfying to imagine taking a katana and lots of ammo to one’s everyday problems. No, what draws people into Danny is the way an inhuman creature teaches her to be vulnerable and human again, to care about someone despite the cost. I slapped myself on the forehead once I realized that’s what I was writing–and it took Japhrimel to show me. Go figure.

4. Know Your Archetypes If you didn’t see the recent Romancing the Blog post on archetypes, you’re missing out. Archetypes are around because we recognize them. They are great pigeonholes for characters, and once you understand what archetype your character is channeling you can apply the electrodes to make them jump.

But you absolutely must know your archetypes, fairytales, and myths in order the recognize them, and also so you know how to break the rules in order to turn an archetype into a living breathing person. Very few of us are just one archetype. We’re messy bundles of at least four or five, with some aspects of each coming to the fore in just about any situation. If you don’t know this, you can’t write it.

People need a “handle” in order to grab hold of a character. Archetypes serve that purpose. But you go too far into a ‘type and your character turns into that dreaded Kardboard Kutout. Which is why you absolutely must know these rules in order to effectively break them, muss their hair and turn them loose on an unsuspecting world.

It’s just like grammar. No fun in subverting the laws if you don’t know them, right?

So there it is, four rules on characters. Your mileage may vary, of course. Just remember: they’re real people too. You can even get into arguments with them at the grocery store. Believe me, that’s a good sign.

Just don’t get overheard doing that. The men in little white coats take that seriously. They have no sense of humor. *grin*

* Note: this will also do wonders for your dialogue. People have a rhythm, and they say the craziest things…but that’s another blog post.