3-Dimensional Characters: Helping You Make Them

I have been contemplating the characters in quite a few of older original and fan fiction stories, and I have realized that a lot of the things that I learned in my creative writing classes really need to be applied to them.

I used to be the kind of person that knew my character not because of the person they are but because of the event they went through. For instance if you were to write a teenager struggling through school they would be anti-social in confrontational situations. An example being silence in class, freezing up in front of people, and in general an avoidance of people. But why not take a moment and write that same teenager interacting with their dog, their mom, or just someone personally close to them? Put them in a situation where they are comfortable with themselves but all comfortable with something else living around them.

You learn a lot about your characters when you put them into smaller situations that you were not originally gearing them towards. It creates a more 3-Dimensional character that not only you know better but the readers can relate to. You do not necessarily have to put that scene you created into your story, but it does give you a better understanding of certain reactions. After all you are not just building a character when you are writing a story, you are making a completely new person. Someone that has their own thoughts, feelings, reactions, and actions. You might be ultimately creating an extension of yourself to live vicariously through, but in the end that character is going to amplify the things that you wish you had in yourself.

In the end you do not even have to like your character. I realized that a lot of the character's that I wrote were not people that I would get along with in real life, but in the end it is not about making a perfect example of what you think a person should be, rather it is about telling the story with the correct direction of the character that you have put on paper.

So try writing a scene that involves one of your characters. Take them out of their regular existence in your story, out of the expected norms, and involve them in a situation that brings out different reactions. Test them as people in different scenarios and really, truly, think about how they would react. In the end did your character do something even you weren't expecting? Do these developments make your character more exciting, entertaining?

Do not follow an expectation or requirement either. If you were to put that teenager into a crowded room, and they were to have an extreme case of nerves what would they do? Would they socialize, would they hide, or would they have a nervous breakdown? Each reaction comes with a different background and a different way of thinking, which contributes to your characters structure. This exercise is merely here to help you "illuminate" different things about your character that you originally never thought about. It helps to develop a stronger person in the eyes of you and in the eyes of the reader.