By – John Sammon
When it comes to creating a character, truth is often stranger than fiction.
We’ve been talking about creating characters for your novel that are realistic, full-dimensional figures, figures that the reader comes to identify with, or loathe (if the character is a bad man). A character who provokes in some way an emotional response from the reader.
A multi-faceted character behaves in a way that is interesting and sometimes contradictory. Who exhibits irony, a character for example with differing and competing alternating traits, brutality, self-pity, righteousness. Who often considers himself a victim, but at the same time professes to others gentility or love for them, which in reality can be a form of contempt.
This could also be called “narcissism.”
A character like this is likely to be interesting to a reader. The reader might have known someone like this in real life.
Rather than a character who is boring, bad all the time for no reason that is explained to the reader, or a hero who is always good for the same non-reason. Because as an author, you perhaps haven’t shown the reader why the character acts the way he or she does.
Do not as an author simply tell the reader why a character is good or bad. Show the reader why through the character’s actions, thoughts and dialog.
If you’re a good fiction writer you may be able to dream up a multi-faceted character out of your head.
If you can’t invent a character’s traits and background, you can use real people that you have known or met to make a character in a book more interesting. You can attribute the traits of those real people to the characters in your book.
Do not use a person’s real name in a fiction book or expose their real job so they can be identified by a reader, especially if the portrayal is unflattering. That can get you sued for libel (I’ll talk about libel in a later installment).
Let me show an example of using a real person for a book character.
Back in the 1970’s I was an actor in Hollywood mostly just a bit player, the kind who appears on film for a few minutes and says perhaps a line or two. I appeared in some of the worst films of all time including Deathsport in 1978 and It Lives Again (also 1978, something about a demon baby with big teeth who goes around eating people).
To survive (there weren’t enough acting jobs to make a decent living which is about 99 percent of the SAG Screen Actors Guild members in Hollywood). To support my acting and have a dingy apartment I took a job selling office supplies of dubious quality and was a failure because I’m honest. I’m not a good liar over the phone. You have to talk people into buying the products.
In this job I met Lance.
Lance was a Canadian who had immigrated to the U.S. I think to pursue an acting career (they come from all over the world). It was clear pretty soon that Ralph was a person with some very unpleasant qualities. Lance had a hard edge. He was perfectly at home lying and cheating customers.
That was just a part-time job. The rest of the time Lance was a gardener at the mansion Hollywood home of Canadian singer Joni Mitchell.
I got into it with Lance when I suggested to him it would be better to deal with the customers honestly over the phone. He got in my face and I thought I would have to fist fight him, but I wasn’t going to do so in a business office.
Lance was a ruthless, dishonest bully and a braggart.
But when he talked about Joni Mitchell his manner changed. He became affectionate and sweet. I can’t remember his exact words, but he portrayed some kind of relationship with her. I was highly dubious.
As he described Mitchell in saintly terms, you could tell it was an act, his boastful manner dripped with insincerity. But you could also realize that even a bad and violent man can have a softer side.
I’m certain he was more interested in Mitchell’s money and fame than he was in her personally, and he hoped to become her consort for those reasons. I’m also pretty certain his described exaggerated relationship with her was pure invented fantasy.
In reality Mitchell hardly knew who he was.
Let’s say I’m wrong about Lance. If I am I apologize.
But here the potential scenario for a book character is……
A foreign immigrant with delusions of grandeur becomes a gardener for a celebrity and in imagining a false romance with her….to steal a little of her for himself, ends up stalking her.
You could build a whole book around that kind of character.
The point is, make your characters full of contradictory neurosis and foibles to make them interesting.
