How To Write Bad Characters
By Greer Macallister | July 9, 2018 |
image by neskita_flickr
How many ways are there for your characters to fall short of the compelling, three-dimensional ideal? A nearly infinite variety.
Flat. Two-dimensional. Thin. Stereotype. Underdeveloped. Implausible. Placeholder. Caricature. Insufficiently complex. Not fully fledged. Mere outlines. Sketches. Functions, not people. Poorly thought out.
For our purposes today, let’s call them “bad,” and let’s talk about the best ways to make your characters as bad as possible.
(Of course, what we really want is “good” characters – compelling, interesting characters who feel as real as people – but sometimes the best way to figure out how to do something is to start with how notto do it.)
Make your characters stand-ins for ideas. All novels have themes, and plot and character serve to reinforce those themes, but that doesn’t excuse characters who exist only to embody an idea that you want to advance or debunk. Unless you’re writing allegory – and even if you are – you’ll want characters with more complexity. Any character whose only purpose is to make a point or counterpoint is going to come across as tissue-thin. If that’s what you’re going for, great. If not, beware.
Base your characters exclusively on people in your life. Fiction is fiction, and fictional characters are characters, not people. There’s nothing wrong with taking some inspiration from real life – physical appearances, snippets of dialogue, roles, conflicts – but the key word there is inspiration. If your imagination is caught by a man on the street with dark red hair the exact color of a copper penny, and that unusual physical feature sparks something you want to use in your novel, why not? Go ahead. But if you make the main villain of your novel a sharp-tongued, sharp-chinned woman with the exact physical characteristics of your irritating next-door neighbor and no redeeming qualities or inner life, you’re setting yourself and your novel up for trouble.
Define your characters only by function. Your story probably needs a protagonist, antagonist, and supporting characters of various kinds. Maybe your main character wants to rescue a love interest, or protect a family member, and all these things are just fine as decisions. But if the pretty teenage love interest is only a pretty teenage love interest and no more? If the dying grandfather has no personality, complexity or history? Then you’re delivering bad characters up on a platter, and readers will notice.
These are only a few of the ways to make sure your characters are bad ones – and obviously, failing to develop the character beyond an initial kernel is a common thread across all three.
Q: What are some other ways to deliver thin and uncompelling characters? (And how do you take steps to make them truly compelling instead?)
Raised in the Midwest, Greer Macallister earned her MFA in creative writing from American University. Her historical novels have been named Book of the Month, Indie Next, LibraryReads, Target Book Club, and Amazon Best Book of the Month picks and optioned for film and television. Her latest novel, The Thirteenth Husband, is inspired by Aimee Crocker, the Paris Hilton of the Gilded Age. Macallister also writes the ongoing Five Queendoms epic fantasy series as G.R. Macallister. A regular contributor to Writer Unboxed and the Chicago Review of Books, she lives with her family in Boston, MA. www.greermacallister.com
Interesting post on a topic of perpetual interest to fiction writers. It may be the novels I choose, but I do not find any flat main characters. The problem can arise, however with the secondary ones. IMHO, it does not take tremendous amounts of info on secondary characters to make them come alive. Flashes of insight into personality, tidbits of backstory, dialogue, etc. can reveal a lot about non-POV characters. The rub may come with providing rounded secondary characters through the eyes of the POV character, presumably the MC in most instances. Your thoughts?
Thanks for a post with permanent relevance to all fiction writers.
You identify three key pitfalls: the mouthpiece for an idea, a character lifted like a Russian nesting doll from the writer’s life, and characters moved into position a la a child’s action figure.
For me, the overall reason for bad characters derives from the writer failing to pay attention. For whatever reason, she is not in the moment, but has floated up and is directing from above, instead of being down where the action is, with the unruly people she’s responsible for.
Thanks for keeping us mindful.
My villain has plenty of reasons for being so bad, but it’s a little too easy to ascribe them all to his childhood. Heard just last night on the radio: “Everyone’s a psychoanalyst these days” (sorry, no attribution). How to escape that trap? These points are a good start, especially the third (defining by function).
Excellent post, Greer. Sometimes in fleshing out a flat secondary character, I find him more compelling than the main character. That forces me to develop the MC further, which means developing their relationship, history, and plot lines, which improves the story.
Timely post. Working on fleshing out all my secondary characters. Will refer back to this blog to remember what I DON”T want to do!
I find it helps to remember that every character, no matter how minor, has a life outside the story – at least from their own point of view. They don’t pop into existence when the story calls for them and then wink back out of existence when the story moves on. Glimpses of that life reduce the likelihood of them being merely mannikins manipulated for the sake of plot.