Category: Character Building

Is your character a good person?

Anti-heroes become more popular with each passing year. And I’m not referring to heroes with negative qualities like Tony Stark or Deadpool. That’s an example of a character who has personal failings, but still overall does heroic things.

No, I’m referring to characters who are bad guys. Dexter, Hannibal, Ray Donovan, The Joker. These are all characters who are not seeking to do good in the world but are hurting others based on their selfish wants.

Lots of bad guys are getting their stories told. And I love this, even if the execution isn’t always fantastic. The Joker was a fantastic movie. Cruella, not as much. But it was still interesting to see the world from her perspective.

While I wouldn’t be thrilled if my fiction content was full of bad guys, I do love that we are seeing more and more of this. I do think, however, it takes a bit of creative bravery and imagination to write these sorts of characters. Writing Jim Gordon is easy, and makes the writer feel good because he’s doing everything just like we hope we would do. Writing The Joker is harder because he’s doing everything we’re disgusted by.

So, this sort of character is worth some consideration.

Bad guys are cathartic

Still picking on The Joker, I mentioned that most of what he does is disgusting. But some of what he does is also cathartic. There’s a part of us that roots for him when he abuses bank owners and politicians. When he’s punching up, terrifying, and abusing people in power, that’s great fun. It allows us to get some of our anger out. No one’s too upset when The Joker is harassing Bruce Wayne’s rich buddies, I’m sorry to say. So, that always feels like a good time.

No one is ever the bad guy in their own life. Or are they?

Most of us would consider ourselves good people most of the time. But, not all of us. Some people genuinely do not like themselves. Some people feel like they’re trapped making a series of bad decisions over and over again. They’re hurting themselves and the people around them, and they do not know how to stop.

Even if you don’t feel like this all the time, we’ve all felt like it some of the time. We have all not liked ourselves. We have all made stupid, selfish decisions. We have all struggled.

In that case, a character who’s doing the same sort of thing can be inspiring, if they eventually pull themselves out of it. When that character who’s spiraling asks for help, goes to therapy and gets away from the life they’ve been living, that should inspire all of us. Because we can always choose to be better tomorrow. It’s not easy, but it can be done.

You can explore the different morality levels

There’s bad, and then there’s bad. One good example is the title character in Lucifer. He openly encourages people to give in to their most selfish desires. Cheating on their spouses, drinking too much, and gambling. All the things we know we shouldn’t do, but they feel so good in the moment.

And while this is damaging, there are worse things. Murdering people, for instance.

Bad characters can give an example of moral hierarchy. Dexter, in the first episode, killed someone who serially abused and killed children. Lucifer tracks down murderers.

I think these bad characters give a good example of bad things because they hurt us, and things that are bad because they hurt other people. While neither is good, one is worse.

Your bad guy can learn a lesson

This isn’t a necessity. I think some of the worst fiction is created under the guise of teaching a moral lesson. The story should come first, and you don’t have to give any moral lessons at all if you don’t want to.

But if you want to give a lesson, then using a bad guy character can be a great way to do it. Let them heal. Let them grow. Let them have a breakdown moment and come back a better person.

Let us see that, in this dark and scary world, someone really can get better. That’s going to be a genuinely uplifting story every time.

But what about the morality question

So, what if you don’t want your bad guy to be redeemed? Are you endorsing bad life decisions? What if your fiction encourages someone to do something bad or wrong? Are you responsible?

Honestly, this could probably be a post all on its own, but I’ll try to keep it brief today. Our society loves to blame fictional stories for actual atrocities. And I absolutely call bullshit on that.

The guy who killed John Lennon didn’t do it because he read Catcher in the Rye.

The shooters at Columbin didn’t do it because of violent video games.

Ted Bundy didn’t kill people because of porn.

These were people who were just looking for an excuse to do what they already wanted to do. And they were going to find one. We as artists cannot blame ourselves for the actions of others unless we are actively condoning and inciting violence in real life. Otherwise, if someone watches Rick and Morty and then thinks it’s okay to become an abusive alcoholic, they probably didn’t need that much of a push.

So write what you want to write.

In the end, remember that we are making art. We are making a character, not moral decisions for other people. We are not preachers, teachers, or advisers. Our job is to tell a story that only we can tell. And that means that your characters should be as bad, or as good, as you want them to be.

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Adding new characters so people don’t hate them

If you’re writing a series, you’re going to find that your cast changes over time. This makes sense and is realistic in real life. If your MC is learning, growing, and changing then people are going to leave and come to their lives. They might move, go to school, change jobs, or get a new neighbor. Maybe a family member needs to come stay with them for some unexplained reason.

Sometimes this is great. Some fantastic characters have been added later in a series. Using some TV examples because they’re the best known, here are some later added characters I loved.

Patrick from Schitt’s Creek.

Kimmi from Rugrats.

Ben and Chris from Parks and Rec.

Alex from Chuck.

Natalie from Monk.

Chris from 30 Rock

Jessie from Burn Notice.

All of these characters were great additions to their respective shows.

But not all characters added later in a series are great. Some are Godawful. And the examples of that are downright cringy. Think of Dill from Rugrats, Suzie from Space Cases, Scrappy Doo, and the much despised Bobby from Brady Bunch. This horrible addition trend is so well understood, that it was mocked by the Simpsons in their eighth season.

So how do we do it right? How do we add to our cast without creating a Poochie? Well to me, this involves a series of do’s and don’ts.

Do add something to the story that was missing

Most of the characters in my ‘good’ list fall under this rule. Patrick added a straight man (comedic straight) to a pretty zany cast. Kimmi gave Chucky someone who admired him in Rugrats. Alex gave Casey a softer side that he needed in Chuck.

Do you have a character that is a little too silly? Too responsible? Too damn irritating? Give them a character that has the opposite qualities to balance them out. If your story is just a little too dark, add a character that can give levity.

Do give them a believable and sensible reason to be there.

How did this new character join your cast? Did they move? Okay, why did they move?

Kimmi’s a good example of this. She and her mom joined the cast after the Rugrats went to Paris. Her mom was working for the antagonist, fell in love with Chaz, and moved back to the States with him. That makes sense. Well, not in the real world. But in the lovely fictional world in which a school teacher can afford to keep her family in a house in the suburbs.

As a bad example, we can look at Scrappy Doo. Why is he hanging out with his uncle? Why did we never meet his parents? Why doesn’t he ever go home?

It needs to

Do make sure they fit the style and overall theme of the show

We all know that fiction content tends to have a certain vibe. Some shows are warm and cozy, some are more dark. For this example, let’s consider The Good Place with The Boys. In The Good Place, everyone seems to be a little messed up, but essentially decent people.

Compare that to The Boys, where no one seems like an essentially decent person except the two main characters, Hughie and Annie. And even they, if they were plopped into The Good Place, would seem far too dark and messed up to belong there.

So, as much as you’re trying to bring something new and different to your universe, you don’t want them to be so different as to feel like they don’t fit into the world you’ve already created.

Don’t force this character to take up too much space

Now, we’ve reached the don’ts. And this first one is a doozy.

If you’re adding a new character, you don’t want them to necessarily take over as the main character. So they shouldn’t be treated as such. Yes, they should have some storylines. Yes, they should take up space in the world. Yes, they should be important to the plot. But they shouldn’t be the new focus, to the detriment of other characters.

A great example of this done wrong was Rugrats. Dill took over too many of the storylines. Now that there was a baby who needed looked after and cared for by the rest of the cast, every story had to be about him in some way. Before, each episode told a story of one baby, or the assembled cast facing a problem. Now all the problems were about dealing with Dill. Or they were exacerbated by his presence.

Honestly, did Stu and Didi never actually watch their kids?

Don’t take the place of existing characters

This one is a personal issue with me. And it started young. I’m likely dating myself here, but when I was a kid I loved the show Space Cases. It was kind of like Voyager, but with a younger crew. A ship was lost in way outer space, carrying two adults and a group of teens. Scifi hilarity ensued.

My favorite character was Catalina. At the end of season two, she was replaced by her best friend Suzee, who until this moment most of us thought was an imaginary friend.

And I never got over that.

Of course, if you’re writing anything that requires actors, you’re sometimes going to have to replace people. I had a few actors leave my podcast between seasons one and two.

Some of the characters I recast. Some I simply wrote out and didn’t replace. But if you’re writing for TV, you can’t always just replace an actor.

(Yes, sometimes it can be pulled off.)

Then there are examples like Space Cases, or Charmed, where an actor leaves and their position is simply taken over by a new character. And that’s a jarring situation.

If you’re writing a book series, you don’t have to worry about actors leaving. So you do not ever need to shoehorn a new character in to take the place of somebody else. So, you know, don’t do it.

Don’t add a character just because they’re cute

Alright, you all knew this was coming. That’s why I saved it for last. I have some words of revulsion for the Scrappy Doo, Dill Pickles, and Cousin Oliver sort.

We do not need a character added just for the sake of being cute young and new. We don’t need it. If you find yourself writing a new baby, a new puppy, or a new adorable pet sidekick to keep things interesting and fresh, stop right there. Your story doesn’t need it, and it won’t be the saving grace you think it would be. That stunt has worked once and only once, and that was on Sailor Moon.

I hope this post has helped you. And I hope I didn’t trash-talk a character you loved. If I did, please let me know in the comments. And if there’s a later addition character I didn’t reference that you think deserves some love, please let me know about them too.

Paper Beats World is a labor of love. If you love what we do here, please consider supporting the site on Ko-fi.

And don’t forget that Nova, book five of Station 86 starts on Monday! And yes it does have one later series addition, a survivor from Station Central. See you then.

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Secondary Characters, Learn to Love Them

If you’ve never questioned my sanity, you might be after reading that title.  But I bet that I can say four names that will change your mind; Hermione Granger, Gandalf, Rue and Four/Tobias.  Secondary characters make the story.

If you’ve never really explored all the different ways to use secondary characters in your book, here are just a few things you can do with them.

  • Comic relief.  It’s obvious, maybe, but it’s really useful.  No matter how serious a story is, I expect to laugh at least once.  I mean really, what can’t benefit from a laugh?  Your main character might not be the right person for that sort of thing, though.  That’s why characters like Matt from Wheel of Time work so very well.  Rand’s got too much of a stick up his ass to me funny.
  • Crazy sub plots.  These are always fun.  You can do thing with subplots that you could never do with the main plot of a story.  People getting into crazy hijinks, racing horses, falling in love in such a way it doesn’t have to be complicated.  Whatever you’d like to do that seems to weird to put in the main part of a story, you can explore with a secondary character.
  • Extra conflict.  I honestly think I could do a whole series of posts about ways to add extra conflict with secondary characters.  I might do that at some point, but for now, let me just do a quick overview.  Extra conflict comes in many forms.  You can have a rival lover, a person who just doesn’t like your character, someone who wants the same job as your main character, someone who is teasing the main character’s kid.  It can also come in the form of a friend of your main character who’s running into their own trouble that your mc now has to help with.  Or at least is affected by.
  • If your books has different cultures, a secondary character is a perfect way to explore them.  Fantasy novels are a great example.  If your main character has never run into a person from some other country, they can ask all sort of questions, thereby giving you a great chance for exposition that feels natural.  The secondary character can ask the same questions of the mc.  And thus a whole bunch of information that your reader needs is there.
  • Your secondary characters are going to see the world differently that your mc.  At least, I hope so.  I mean, I assume your characters aren’t all cookie cutters or flat representations of people.  So, you should use them to show a different point of view than the one your mc represents.  There are very few times in real life that there’s a solid right or wrong answer to a situation.  Why should there be in your story?  You can use secondary characters to explore different viewpoints.
  • Your mc is a real person.  So it stands to reason that different people are going to see your character differently.  Their lover will see them one way, their parents another.  The guy who rings them up at the check out will see them a whole different way.  If you worry that your mc is too good, without some flaws that will round them out, a secondary character who doesn’t much care for her will do the trick nicely.  It’s also nice because rather than saying the character flaw is good or bad, it just puts the fact out there, and lets the reader develop his own opinion.  You’ll also show a lot about your character based on how she treats the people around her.  How does she treat her betters, equals and inferiors?
  • Finally, a secondary character can be useful to foreshadow events that are coming in an indirect way.  They’re the perfect tools for misdirection.  While your flashing your mc about, doing all that mc stuff, your secondary character can do all sorts of things undercover.  Or, the other way around.

Your secondary characters have to be there anyway.  Unless you’re doing some sort of strange proof of concept piece where you’ve only got one character who is in a room all by himself, there are going to be people around him.  Might as well use them to their full advantage.

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Writing Prompt Saturday- List character traits

So, I’ve got a thing about lists.  I really like making them, and reading them.  List the 20 best movies in the last fifty years, worst songs from the 90’s (that would be a really long list) most offensive things said by church officials.  They’re fun.

Lists are also a great way to organize thoughts and ideas when writing.  I’m going to try to incorporate at least one list every month.  This is a big writers notebook building exercise, as well a a great brainstorming technique and at least some fun.

Here, then, is our first list.  We’ll do it to 100, because that should be enough to get beyond the normal and really make you think.  List 100 character or personality traits.

Now, I think you should do this on your own, but it’s also something we can do together.  How about it?  Add ten character traits in the comment section until we get to 100.  I’ll start us off, with the first ten.

Generous, vindictive, optimistic, musical, creative, traitorous, foul smelling, faithful, grating, and finally, dependable.  What else can you think of?

This week’s affiliate sponsor is Shutterfly.  I get any pictures I have printed from them, and have never had a bad experience.  Everything I get is well priced, good quality, and gets to my home fast.  Which is good, because I’m not the patient sort. 

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Protagonist vs. Good Guy

Last week, we talked about what an antagonist doesn’t have to be. This week, we’re going to talk about the one thing your protagonist doesn’t have to be, a good guy.

Modern story telling has given us all sorts of examples of main characters who are not good people.

The bad guy with good intentions.

Example, Magnito. And yes he does count, because he’s the main character of his own comic recently. Magnito does really, really bad things. But it works for him, because he’s often the one doing the bad things that need to be done, allowing the heroes to keep their hands clean. This is a fascinating character, for any number of reasons, but the biggest one is that he’s deep. He’s also cathartic. It’s never going to be Scott Summers who decks the bigoted moron yelling racial obscenities. It’ll be Erik, or Logan, or even Emma Frost. We all hope to be the good example like Scott and Jean Grey, but we also know it wold feel better to be Erik and Emma.

The good guy with bad habits or dark past.

Then there are all the characters who are awesome now, but have a really dark past they’re trying to make up for. The sweet librarian who killed her husband. The wonderful doctor who used to work with the Nazis. My personal real life favorite example is Wernher von Braun. The man was a Nazis, which no one decent is ready to defend. Then he came here to America and helped found NASA, for crying out loud.

It doesn’t need to be just that. It can be a stand up guy who’s a little to quick to call his wife a dumb bitch, (like oh so very many of Steven King’s main characters.) It can be the iconic Iron Man, with the drinking problem. And the taking too many women to bed problem.

The bad guy with no good intentions at all, but who habitually does good things anyway.

Like House. He is not a good person, not even a little bit. He’s a drug addict who habitually uses the people around him for his own selfish needs. He must be tricked into saving people’s lives, because if someone’s just dying, it’s not interesting.

This is a great character because we want him to win, but not really. We want him to get better, but that would make it boring. We want, more than anything, to know what happens next.

The bad guy who is doing bad things, but we’re rooting for him anyway, for some reason.

This has been a popular character recently. Bad guys, just plain old bad guys, as the main character. Dexter, Ray Donovan, Breaking Bad. They are not trying to redeem themselves, they are not trying to make anything better, they are not good people. They are bad, just bad people.

But they are endearing because they are people. We care about Dexter when we see him trying to get along with his girlfriend. We want to see Ray connect with his kids. Because even though they are doing bad things for bad reasons, they are genuine people, and their stories are endearing.

Here’s the thing you’ve got to remember when you’re writing for grown ups. There is no need for morals. We are not writing to teach someone how to behave or be a stand up person. We are writing to tell a great story. And sometimes, the best characters are really, really bad people. That makes them the best protagonists

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What your antagonist doesn’t have to be

If we are to talk about characters at all, of course we must talk about antagonists. It won’t be a very exciting story without them. Not much fun watching your mc achieve all of their goals without any sort of roadblock, after all. Your antagonist has to be at least as interesting as your mc, if not more so.

Eh, but there are a lot of blogs that will tell you how to make a great antagonist, tell you all the things they should be. Here at Paper Beats World, I want to go a step beyond that, and shatter some illusions you might have about what an antagonist has to be. It’s your book, after all, you can make it anything you want. Just for the record, your antagonist doesn’t have to be-

Stupid or for that matter, smart

Someone’s intillect has nothing to do with whether or not they will make a good antagonist. Brillient authors have done it both ways to great effect. Take, for example, Saruman from Lord of the Rings. Great antagonist, really scary, really smart. Then, we’ll consider Buffalo Bill from Hannibal. He’s a freaking moron, but he’s still a really effective antagonist.

At the head of some group of evil do’ers with a bunch of henchmen

An antagonist doesn’t need to have anyone on his side to feel like the world is against your main character. Just any anybody who’s ever seen a horror film. The antagonist in those is almost always alone, but he doesn’t ever seem to have a problem ripping all those college kids to shreds.

Evil

This is a big one. You’ll notice, through this article, I’ve not said bad guy once. That’s because your antagonist doesn’t have to be a bad guy anymore than your protagonist has to be a good guy. He or she can be someone just doing their job, or maybe even someone who thinks your protagonist is the real bad guy and needs to be stopped. Remember, we’re all the heroes in our own minds. The same is true for your antagonist.

An actual person

Of course, you could just not have it be a person at all. Who’s says it’s got to be? Some of the coolest stories I know didn’t have a bad guy to root against. Jaws, Animal Farm, Perfect Storm. The list is endless. Nature can be a great antagonist, and animals are always a quick choice for science fiction slasher flicks. Then, there is time itself, the antagonist in all of our lives. Illness is another great non human antagonist. Want to see what I mean? Watch Contagion. Actually, if you’re just wanting a good movie to watch, watch Contagion.

So, to sum it up, there are only two rules about what your antagonist must be. It must be capable, and it must stand in between your main character and the thing he or she wants.

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Character Driven Stories

There are a thousand different kinds of stories, one for every star in the sky.  There’s fantasy, horror, science fiction, historical and all sorts of things that I haven’t the time to list and you haven’t the time to read.  But no matter the style, language, or theme, all stories fall into two broader categories; plot driven stories and character driven stories.  Given a choice between the two, I’ll always go for character over plot.

It can be hard to distinguish between the two at first.  Basically, though, a plot driven story is about something massive happening, like a plague or a riot, or an alian invasion.  This is a story that can be told from the pov of any number of people.  Like a riot, for example.  You can see that from the eyes of a riot officer, a pedestrian, an independent journalist who’s recording the action on her phone.  Each one will be a different story, but in each case the character is very reactionary.  Basically, this riot was going to happen whether your character was there or not.  A good example is Divergent. (Spoiler Alert!)  Even though the main character impacts the story, the whole mess was going to happen even if she’d never been born, let alone if she’d stayed in her original faction.  It just might have had a different ending.

In a character driven stories, though, it’s a different situation.  This is a story that just would not have happened without this character.  The story is about this character.  Think about Dexter, for instance.  The story is about a serial killer hunting serial killers.  Take away the main character, you take away the whole story.

How to build your very own character driven story

Step one- Make your main character.  When I started writing Woven, it sure didn’t start as a series.  It was all about one boy who liked to weave.  That’s it.  Take a person, and decide what makes him or her different from other people.  Devon liked to weave.  Alright, so he likes to weave.  What could possibly go wrong with that?  Well, maybe his weaving is magic!  That was honestly my first brainstorm for Woven.  Everything in the book stemmed from Devon and his sister Lenore, who was also given pov character status.  Without Devon and Lenore, there’s no story.

Step Two- Make your characters impactful.  Seems like a no brainer, but a character driven story needs characters that are, duh, driven.  This is not Shaun of The Dead, where the character just wants to sit back and play video games with his best friend.  Your character has to have something about them that goes against the grain, or a drive to make a difference in their world.  For better or worse, your character has to make the world ripple around her.

Step Three- Make your character fascinating.  I mean this character needs to really grab my attention.  I need to want to know more about him.  I’m thinking like Jonas from The Giver.  I want to know more about Jonas, right from the first.  I wanted to understand why he was so concerned with precision of language.

Remember, in a character driven story your character is in the spotlight.  He or she has to be the biggest selling point of the book.

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