Writing Excuses Transcripts

Writing Excuses 13.8: Making Characters Distinctive

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2018/02/25/13-8-making-characters-distinctive/

Key points: How do you make your characters flawed? Start with the characteristics you expect, the stereotypical stuff, for your protagonist or character. Flaws, or quirks, come from things that don't match that. Think about the character's situation, how does that affect their dialogue, actions, and thinking. Give your characters something to get in their way, and add texture. Look for try-fail cycles where the protagonist fails because their competency is not what they need to succeed. What flaw can they have that is important to the story? Do you use a tragic flaw, that causes the character's downfall, or just weird flaws that the character is constantly fighting? Tragic flaws are good when you want things to go horribly wrong. Think about flaws that can go either way. Use an ensemble cast to practice and play with flaws. Distinctions are not necessarily flaws. Look at Sanderson's second law of magic, what a character can't do is more interesting than what they can do. When you are creating distinctive characters, the flaws help! Sometimes flaws are what make characters lovable. How do you avoid just stapling a quirk to a character? Look for the things that are important to that character. Look at what's behind that quirk, what's the explanation for it. Find things in the environment or setting that differentiate this person from everyone else.

( Flaws, quirks, how is this distinctive? )

[Brandon] We are out of time. This is been a great discussion. Howard has our homework.
[Howard] Okay. We are talking about distinctive, distinctiveness, failings, quirky, whatever. Make a shortlist of five of the people you know best. They can be family members, they can be friends. Include yourself in that list. Imagine them as characters in a story. Then, next to their name, start writing the attributes that make them distinct from each other. The things that might be failings, the things that might be quirky, the things that might be weird. Include the things about yourself. Don't show this list to anybody else, because they'll find it highly offensive. You now need to keep this a secret for the rest of your life.
[Brandon] All right. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.