Pro Writers Swear by these 9 Character Building Techniques

these are the character building techniques that you absolutely need to use in your current book or in your next book and I'm pretty sure that you probably haven't heard of these before so let's go the first technique is laugh in the face of cannibals so the best way to create a really memorable character is simply by having them react to events in very counterintuitive ways now the reason for this is because if your character acts like everyone else would act like a tragedy happens and they react in a very predictable way then there's nothing about

their personality or character which is being developed we just understand like oh they're human no your goal is to give them a reaction to events that makes the reader feel like they know this character like oh wow that's how you react in that situation huh okay so you might know David Ben off's name because he wrote the script for Game of Thrones but what most people don't know is that he also had a few novels one of which is called city of Thieves and in city of Thieves we have two soldiers who are sent on

this like crazy mission to try to find eggs and War II when everyone's starving and nobody has eggs and during their journey to a try to find eggs they encounter cannibals they managed to fend off the cannibals and escape with their lives and right after as they are running away one of the characters laughs who laughs at that I don't know about you but if cannibals are trying to eat me I would not be galling on my way out of the room but that laughter in the face of hardship perfectly encapsulates Coo's character and that

detail along with many others in the book is what makes him one of my favorite characters that I've ever read I also think that counterintuitive responses to real events mirrors what people do in real life we don't always act the way that we're supposed to right I mean people laugh at funerals all the time another advantage of using this technique is that you avoid cliche if every single character acts exactly the way they're supposed to act in a typical manner then they are they're too stereotypical right but there are some risks with this technique and

I would say one would be overuse right you don't want to use this for every single situation use it spare ly just when it feels right and the other thing is that it does need to be believable still this can't be like a weird reaction out of nowhere it has to tell us something about who this character is if it's coming from their personality their authentic personality then that's believable the second character building technique is make your character carry something so I want you to look at your character's possessions specifically ones that they would carry

with them look in their purse look in their glove compartment look in their wallet look in their pockets what has it got in its pocket what objects do you find because all characters have possessions right and a character's possessions say something very important about them I think that these objects reveal things about these characters that it's really difficult to get in any other way and Cormac McCarthy is No Country for Old Men Anton shagar carries a coin everywhere and he uses this coin because he flips it when he wants to determine by luck or chance

or something whether someone's going to die or whether they're going to live essentially whether he's going to kill them I mean a coin is such an innocuous symbol but the way that he uses the coin tells you like this is a dangerous Psychopathic killer in the movie momento Leonard Shelby played by Guy Pierce carries around Polaroids everywhere and this is if you remember the movie because his memory is failing him and so these Polaroids are supposed to help him remember like oh this is your past and so those visual pneumonics are something that tells you

something very important about this character you can also move Beyond mere physical objects and move into object that characters carry that are more metaphorical or symbolical take this example from Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried I mean it's right there in the title right which is a master class in characterization through objects and so in it O'Brien's characterizing a whole Squad of American soldiers by the objects that they carry Michelle Sanders the RTO carried condoms Norman Bower carried a diary rat Kylie carried comic books kiawa a devoted Baptist carried an illustrated New Testament that had

been presented to him by his father and also carried his Grand mother's distrust of the white man okay so there we have some great objects that distinguish characters from one another obviously a character who's carrying condoms is very different than a man carrying a Bible but I like that this paragraph ends on something which is not an object but more symbolic like he is carrying distrust of the white man oh that's a weighty thing to carry a third character building technique that you need to be using is contradictory characters contradictory characters are just some surprising

element that you wouldn't be able to guess based on the stereotype for like a one- sentence description of the character so let's go through a couple examples here for instance say a billionaire whose wife still cuts his hair I mean you can buy the best barber in the universe but somehow there's some sort of intimacy maybe that he's still looking for with his spouse or say a leader of a motorcycle gang who likes True crochet that would be the last hobby you would expect right now you do have to make it believable right but adding

some sort of contradictory element to their Persona means that they're not just like the stereotypical oh tough dude but there's some other element that's surprising or say aerous grandma with a foul mouth right you don't quite see it coming you see her and think she's just going to be some like nice daughtering old lady and then she says something and you're way taken back so here's the assignment for you is to take your character and figure out one thing which is against type there are two good reasons to do this right one is that it

creates a mystery the reader wants to figure out how do these contradictory elements in this person resolve like do I really believe this is a real character I wanted see how this plays out and the second thing is it helps you to avoid stereotypes it makes the person into a person rather than into a character you might know Walter Mosley because he wrote one of the most famous private investigators of all time easy Rawlings but he also wrote this really fun book called Always outnumbered always outgunned which is such a fantastic title in that book

there's this guy called Socrates forlo and he's this excon he murdered people in the past he spent a lot of time in prison he's finally sprung from prison and he's just this sort of hard-bitten character so Walter Mosley takes that Persona and then he adds contradictory elements Socrates Fort low is also a philosopher I mean the first name should have tipped you off right he's a very contemplative person he's a very thoughtful person and in the end he ends up being a peacemaker if you're enjoying this idea of character contradictions and want to go a

little deeper in character building check out my course the triangle method of character creation it was my very first course that I ever made so it's a little weird it's a little odd it's animated for one but I think all the content is really really good for how to go deeper with a character and of course I also give great advice about how to build characters in my novel course on book boox academy so check that out the fourth character building technique is three things that you should do every time you introduce a new character

so every time you introduce a new character there's a challenge right you have to make sure the reader feels like they know this person as quickly as possible so here are the three things that you should do to help that process along the first thing you want to do is have your character say something thing why because the things that come out of a character's mouth help the reader get to know a character almost faster than anything else I mean this is something that we talked about in my other video the six levels of dialogue

that every writer must master so for example let's look at Sherlock Holmes and the very first thing that he ever says to Watson which is in a study in Scarlet they meet and Holmes says you have been in Afghanistan I perceive so the very first thing out of his mouth is a deduction how does he know that this man has been in Afghanistan oh Holmes you're acting so holmesian it tells you something about the character right away second thing you should do is have your character do something characters are defined by actions right what they

think defines them yes what they say absolutely defines them yes but what they do really defines them when we first meet Arthur Dent of hitch haacker guide of the Galaxy he goes out and lays in front of a bulldozer which is trying to bulldoze his home I love that right like he's the type of guy that says yeah you want to take down my house you got to take me down first and it doesn't have to be a big action right it can be a small action but having your character do something lets the reader

know oh this is the type of person this is and the last thing you should do when you introduce a new character is show what this character's problem is I think the natural default for writers is oh I'll get to the problem in a little bit right let me start by talking about hair color and eye color another like you know basic stuff but I would recommend letting us know what this character struggles with as soon as possible like in the first scene we meet them a character with a problem is human a character without

a problem is false just a fictional creation so look at John Green's The Fault in Our Stars we learn on the first page that Hazel is dying and she has cancer uh yeah that's a problem green doesn't delay he doesn't tell us at the end of the first chapter he starts with that information so the goal is to give an immediate sense of who this character is and if you do those three things you have a great chance of succeeding in making the reader feel attached to your character now I will say if you're resistant

to this idea and you're like I'm not going to do those three things right off the bat who is this John Matthew Fox guy anyway well I would say that these are recommendations first of all right I mean ignore them if you want to but I also say that in general the pacing expectations for stories in this day and age is a lot faster right you can't delay for a very long period of time and expect your reader to still be interested in your story because there are so many other competing mediums right your books

are competing with video games and with social media and with television and with a thousand other things so I think in general if you can start off with a bang with a certain character it'll make the reader say like I'm vested like I want to go on a journey with this person the fifth character building technique is how to make your character likable now I will say off the bat like characters don't have to be likable they only have to be compelling but if you look at the majority of books that sell a lot of

copies a lot of characters often are likable so if you have a character that you think should be likable here's how to accomplish that and I will say that likable characters doesn't mean Flawless character you don't want Mary Sue or Gary stews or whatever Perfect characters that have no flaws whatsoever likable characters often have relatable flaws like the reader sees their own flaws in the character and thinks oh that's excusable Sally Rooney wrote a book called normal people and in that book there's a character called Maryann Sheridan now this woman is rich but also deeply

weird and unpopular but I think her flaws is that she struggles with a sense of self-worth and she often allows herself to be mistreated in relationships so with those flaws we're like we almost sympathize with her more than condemn her for those flaws cuz we're like oh why are you doing this but we recognize that flaw makes her into a likable human being okay so here are four ways to make your character more likable one give them a strong sense of morality they should have virtues they should have standards they should have values if you

look at John Grady Cole and All the Pretty Horses he has very firm convictions about what is right and what is wrong and because of that we like him a lot as a hero to take care of animals in a man called UA we have this kinly old man but because he takes care of this cat we like him we're endeared to him and this is what the save the cat technique is named after right Heroes have to save the cat villains have to kick a puppy how people treat animals tells us a lot about

their character third way to make your characters likable is make them suffer offred in the handmaid's tale suffers an enormous amount and we tend to like her a lot because she endures that suffering and the fourth way to make a character likable is to show competence Elizabeth Salander in the millennium series doesn't seem on the surface like a very likable character she's sort of gruff and abrupt and does some pretty terrible things but part of the reason we like her is that she's just so dang smart she's This brilliant hacker and so good at research

and maneuvering online she's also really good at getting revenge you do not want to be on her bad side so that level of intelligence makes us like her so just being Wicked smart and just by being intelligent the reader is going to like her the sixth technique in character development is give your character an odd habit so let me tell you a story so there was this 7-year-old boy he used to tie string around everything he would tie it around chairs he would tie it around couches he would tie around bookcases and he even tied

it around his sister's neck at one point no matter what his mother did she couldn't get him to stop tying strings now you could stop there right it's certainly an unusual habit it helps us to get to know this little boy who creates this mystery like why is this kid doing that and it certainly sets this boy apart from all the other little boys out there but it would be a mistake to stop there right the trick with characterization is seeing why they have that habit so the boy's mother took him to see a psychoanalyst

and the psychoanalyst told the mother okay I figured it out the little boy's doing this because you speaking to the mother have been hospitalized for depression several times and been taken away for multiple weeks and the boy's trying to tie things down he's trying to tie string around things to prevent those things from being taken away he's having abandonment issues oh now the string has significance now that tiny little habit becomes like this broader bigger significance so my advice is first to come up with some sort of strange habit or tick or thing that your

character does they sleep in the closet or they use five different types of lip balm or they time the duration of traffic lights and report it to the city and then once you show them doing this thing come up with a reason why they would do this thing and obviously trying to come up with something that bucks the obvious right some sort of unusual reason why they're doing it number seven widen the perception Gap it is a fantastic idea to create distance between how a character sees themselves and how other characters or the reader perceive

them why does this technique work so well well one it enhances reader engagement readers have to weigh the evidence and figure out okay is this character telling the truth or are they telling me a slanted version of the truth there's also story sension because the reader wants to see is this character's perception of themselves going to be destroyed or changed at some point or are they going to persist in their delusion a great example of this is Walter White and Breaking Bad at the beginning he constantly tells himself I'm doing this for family I'm doing

it to provide for my family after I die for cancer but I think that perception of himself that lie he tells himself slowly gets eroded over the course of the Season until he comes to recognize like no I did all this drug running for myself for my own ego that is a huge character art in realizing his true motivations now that's a character whose perception of himself changes over the course of a story but you can also have characters whose perceptions are different than everyone else's but they never change look at Cersei Lannister in Game

of Thrones I think the way that she perceives herself is as the rightful ruler and a clever strategist I think everyone else though including the readers perceive her in a vastly different light as cruel as bitter as vindictive as paranoid as shortsighted like just this whole mess of negative descriptions there was actually tons of people naming their daughter Daenerys no one was naming their child Cersei another example of a big perception Gap would be from A Confederacy of Dunes right the dun in question ignacius J Riley is this huge Manchild right so immature idiotic opinions

about everything but how does he perceive himself oh he is a misunderstood genius and cultural critic I mean the division gap between his perception and the reality of things could not be broader the eighth character creation technique is to create foils what I want you to do is to think about the characters around your character the the ancillary the supporting characters stuff like the sidekick the mentor the antagonist and what I mean by foil is basically who your main character is influences those characters and who those characters are reflects back on your main character for

example an antagonist is often an inverted version of your protagonist think of leay miserab by Victor Hugo we have these two opposing characters Javier and Jean valon Von is a former Criminal Who believes in Mercy while inspector Javier is this rigid unyielding policeman who believes firmly in law and order some people have said that the inspector the policeman is more of an Old Testament version of a character filled with fire and brimstone Stone and rules like the Ten Commandments and stuff Well jean Von is more of the New Testament version of a human filled with

grace filled with forgiveness but those two characters really are opposite sides of a coin they're not completely divorced from one another they're mirror images they're inverted images for your companion or sidekick you have to think what sort of role can they play that complement my main character for instance if your main character isn't very funny then maybe that sidekick character needs to do some comedic relief like donkey in the Shrek movies or in CS lewis' Narnia series there's this character called puddle glum who is this very funny pessimist saying stuff like the bright side of

it is said puddle glum that if we break our necks getting down the cliff then we're safe from being drowned in the river I mean gez he's really giving Eeyore a run for his money now for your Mentor character you want to think how is this character an older version of my protagonist that establishes a kind of link between them where they're not completely separate people they are at different points in their Journey but they're probably more similar than different okay now for the last Point number nine and I kept this one for the last

because it is the most important number nine create a three-time character what I mean is that your character needs to exist in at least three different time periods the past the present and the future but I think the verbs are very important here right they have to be haunted by the past not just have a past but actually be haunted by it they have to be wrestling in the present obviously right you need conflict in the present moment they have to be looking at the future and uncertain how it's going to play out so first

let's look at haunted by the past for instance when it comes to backstory writers often believe that they need to give information about a character's past for instance where did they go to school where did they work who did they kill well I mean that last one is only if you're writing a certain genre but that focus on information can make for a very dull story now when I'm talking about the past I mean your character needs to be haunted by the past the past needs to be a problem for your character it needs to

be unresolved in some way in Clare Keegan's book small things like these we have a character who is haunted by the identity his father he doesn't know who his father is and that weighs on him through the whole story so when you're constructing a character's past you need to go shorten information you can often summarize a whole life in a paragraph you need to go long on angst like what does this character struggle with what are their main problems and third the past must spill into the present the past is only significant in as much

as it affects whatever your character is going through in the present moment second piece of advice for having your character exist in three time periods is obviously the present and my biggest piece of viice is not to have a singular problem but at least two layers of problem a main problem and a minor problem in Clare Keegan's book we Discover bill has two problems one is he discovers nuns have locked this young girl in an unheated tool ship his second problem is that he's really worried about money and providing for his family the first is

more of an external problem he is worried about this girl the second problem is more of an internal problem he has anxiety about providing for his family if you have those two levels of conflict your present moment story is off to a great start third thing for your characters they need to be wey of the future they should be anticipating in the future and be unsure of how it's going to work out ask yourself what is your character anticipating and what are they preparing for for instance in Clare Keegan's book bill is worried about the

future of his Five Daughters they are all growing up very quickly and they are about to enter quote the world of men so of course a man with five daughters is going to be worried about that but once again the future is only relevant in the way that affects his present moment story because he's worried about his daughter he doesn't want to offend the nuns by revealing that they're keeping this woman locked in the shed because he's worried worried that the nuns will mistreat his own daughters because Bill is worried about his own daughter's future

he doesn't want to get on the nuns backside because the nuns have such enormous sway inside the community all right I hope that was all helpful and check out the link in the description if you'd like to take some writing courses with me