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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29275
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29275
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

In a nutshell, the answer is, humanity. A more human character is more memorable. The great authors are those who seem to have the greatest insight into what it means to be human. I don't think that comes from anything one could reasonably describe as technique, it is more a matter of careful observation and reflection on human experience and behavior.

But I do think there is one very basic thing you can do to make your characters more human, and that is to approach your story character-first. Look at it this way: if you are interviewing candidates for a job, you make your decision based primarily on their ability to perform certain roles. To a greater or lesser extent you may also look at their ability to fit into the team, but it is their ability to fill a role that is paramount. Personality is second. And in many cases, you would actually prefer a little less personality in your employees. It would let you get the work done faster.

But this is not how you choose your friends. You choose your friends based on their personalities and interests. You are much less likely to choose a new friend based on their ability to play a role in your social circle. You make friends with them because you like hanging out with them. When you plan an activity for the group, you choose the activity based on what your friends would find fun, interesting, or challenging. Character drives action.

Introducing a character into a novel is very like this. If you plot driven, you are hiring a character to fill a role, to do a job. Subconsciously, at least, you don't want them to have a character beyond that required to play their assigned part in the plot. If you are character driven, you are writing about a character because you are interested in them. You then design your plot to challenge that character.

Plot and character can often conflict. Your preconceived plot requires your MC to take the low road, but everything you have established about your MC to this point says they would take the high road. The reader knows that they would take the high road, and so when they take the low road, they feel the inconsistency (even if they can't identify it) and the characters becomes more of a plot worker rather than a person.

There will always be characters in your books that are plot workers. They exist to fulfill a role. Most of them can be given a character that is consistent with the plot work they have to do because they will not be around long enough for any inconsistencies between character and action to become apparent. Often you need plot worker characters in order to change the circumstances for your MC so that they end up taking the low road even though they would normally take the high road. Thus plot worker characters allow you to preserve the humanity of your fully human characters.

This to me is what great plotting is really all about. It is not about designing an exciting sequence of events on paper. In fact, reading the Wikipedia plot story of some of the great works of literature often makes them sound contrived and chaotic. But they do not seem so at all in the books. I believe the reason for this is that what makes a plot seem improbable is never improbable or convoluted events, but characters behaving out of character. A great plotter is someone who can create a great character and can then manipulate events (using plot worker characters if necessary) to bring that character to their personal Waterloo.

So, it sound like what you have now are one MC and three plot worker characters. The problem is, they are companions on a quest and so they are around for the whole story, and that is far too much page time for a plot worker character. So you need to make them real people and then deal with the fact that this will probably make some of your current plot untenable. But the great advantage of a quest is that your characters keep moving, which means you can introduce them to new plot worker characters along the way in order to push the direction of the plot back on track. But you need to design these incidents to make sure that all of your fully human characters and engaged and that their engagements all lead them in the same direction despite their differences of character. Sometimes this will mean you need a different plot worker character for each MC at a particular plot point.

Original score: 4