Defining your characters
Goal + Secret = Story
I spoke about foreshadowing in an earlier chapter, and how identifying some of those upcoming plot beats can help you seed them in advance, especially when you’re doing a live serial and publishing as you go. Characters work in the same way, as a little bit of up-front work before you get started can make it a lot easier to build in satisfying character development arcs. Unless you write and redraft your entire thing before you start serialising, remember that you don’t get a do-over with a live write. You can’t go back and add satisfying character arcs after the fact. If you’re publishing as you write, you want to make sure that you’re building in the components you need ahead of time, so that readers get a sense of progress. We’re talking about the Chekhov’s gun equivalent for personalities and character development.
There are three quick techniques I use to help my characters lift off the page, even when writing quickly and publishing week-to-week. I started using these during the writing of my second novel out of necessity, and developed them further with the third. For my upcoming fourth serial, I’m going all-in to make sure I know what’s going on with my characters from the very beginning.
As with all writing advice, the details are likely to change as you write. I’ll come up with better ideas as I go along, weeks or months into the project. Always be happy to replace an idea with a better one! Changing a plan is fine; but you still need to have a plan in the first place.
Give each character a goal
Each of your characters should be given a goal up front. Some kind of singular ambition they’re driving towards. This can be big or small, but it immediately provides them with motivation. For example:
To survive an arduous journey across the mountains
To earn more money to support their children
To get married
To overcome their anxieties
To complete a painting
To visit Paris
To escape an abusive household
To solve a crime
To rob a bank
To become president
To get better scores at school
Et cetera. It can be literally anything, and it may or may not be important or integral to the main plot. But it gives that character motivation and agency and something to do - or at least to think about - while the main story is ticking along. It helps to avoid the character existing merely as a pawn on a board, nothing more than a device to advance the plot.
Give a character a secret
This is the really juicy one. This is the thing the character doesn’t want other people to know about. It could be something shameful, or something they find embarrassing, or a dream they have, or a secret crush, or they’re having an affair, or are in the middle of an identity crisis. As with the goal, it doesn’t matter what it is, only that it is there.
The secret is different to the goal. While the goal provides the character with motivation, the secret provides them with subtext. It’s something happening between the lines, behind the eyes. It goes unsaid. When they say something but mean something else.
Combine a goal with a secret and you’re already a long way towards having a compelling character, even without doing any other work. Let’s take two of my random examples and combine them:
So we have a man who wants to become president; that’s his goal. The problem is that he’s secretly having an affair. What steps is he going to take to hide the affair, to get rid of anyone who knows about it, so as to maintain his public persona of being squeaky clean and a family man? Sure - not terribly original, but just those two elements, the goal and the secret, have effortlessly generated a Character that can be built upon.
What about someone who wants to become an artist and learn how to paint, but they’re struggling with gender identity issues in part because of a restrictive and old fashioned upbringing. How are they going to create truthful art if they’re not honest with themselves? There’s a story there.
Goal + secret = story.
The personality matrix
This is a trick I learned about while writing The Mechanical Crown. It is an epic fantasy adventure which meant a huge cast to wrangle. A handful of core characters, half a dozen supporting characters and then many minor bit parts. I wanted a way to rapidly define new characters, who might only appear for a single chapter. I needed a way to get a handle on characters without needing to create full breakdowns and backgrounds for every single one. I wasn’t interested in creating lore here - I wanted attitudes, and personalities, and the timbre of someone’s voice.
That’s when my friend Mike Miller introduced me to a shorthand way of defining characters that he’d developed for use in tabletop roleplaying. It immediately seemed like something I could use in my fiction.
You might already be familiar with the classic Dungeons & Dragons matrix, which looks something like this:
When creating a D&D character you can slot them into one of those cells to define them at a high level. The problem is that this is far too morally simplistic for me to use in my stories. I don’t tend to adhere to the concept of ‘good vs evil’, instead preferring to assume that everyone has a bit of everything. It’s stark and reductive, even if you blur the edges of the definitions.
Mike’s alternative is this:
It still takes the form of a grid of personality cues. The difference is that instead of picking a single option, or a general position, instead you go down the rows and have to pick from one of the options. Is your character selfish or altruistic? Aggressive or passive?
The choices on each row tend to be diametrically opposed, creating interesting juxtapositions and characters in conflict and contrast with themselves. The system embraces the chaos of real humans, who are often contradictory. Our personalities often don’t make complete sense. So let’s make a quick character using the matrix:
So who do we have here? Someone selfish and aggressive, which doesn’t sound great. Although ‘aggressive’ in this context doesn’t necessarily mean physically aggressive, of course. It can mean whatever the story wants it to mean. But they’re also honourable? How can someone be both selfish and honourable? Perhaps they’re a warrior who lives by a code - hence honourable - but nevertheless works primarily for themselves. A mercenary of sorts, who people hire to do jobs? Dangerous jobs, for which being aggressive can help? They’re disordered, so maybe don’t keep things tidy? Or maybe their life is disordered and lacking clarity? They’re always on the move, have nowhere to settle down. A wandering warrior. They’re a sceptic and are restrained, never jumping into a situation without assessing the risk and always assuming that people are untrustworthy. Despite all that, they’re still honourable, remember - beneath their gruff demeanour and reluctance to get involved, ultimately they’re driven by their code, which requires them to help those in need - ideally for a fee. But they don’t take on assassination jobs, or steal. Their inquisitive nature makes them ideal for their line of work, which requires research and deep knowledge of their targets. They’re a monster hunter, perhaps?
In fact, we’ve just described Geralt of Rivia, one of the protagonists from The Witcher books, games and Netflix show. I didn’t intend to do that, but after selecting those personality matrix traits at random, I realised that it matched.
Hopefully this demonstrates how it can be useful for very quickly establishing a seemingly complex character. If you intend to have them be a major player then you’re going to need to do more work, of course, but I’ve found the matrix massively useful for supporting roles, such as characters who only appear occasionally or who will be in and out of the story fairly rapidly. It helps to lift them from being ciphers or simple exposition spouts, or plot devices, and builds conflict and nuance into their behaviour and dialogue. Even your most minor characters can have something going on inside their heads.
It’s a shortcut, for sure, but it’s a very useful one.
Thanks for reading, as always. Tales from the Triverse, my weekly serial (essentially me putting my money where my mouth is) continues to go out each Friday. If you’re an early access subscriber you’ll have the very latest in your inbox, and if not you can now read all the way up to chapter 12, which unlocked last week.
It’s a detective thriller with heavy doses of science fiction and fantasy, and you can get started here if you’ve missed it so far:
