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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38522
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38522
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

There are whole books on characterization; it is difficult to treat in a few hundred words.

What makes characters stand out from each other is what makes the people around you unique; their attitudes, skills, upbringing and background (life up to when we meet them), morals, to some extent their education/training, how emotional they are, how fearful they are, what they fear or will go out of their way to avoid, what they love or will go out of their way to engage.

Attitudes can relate to how much they respect law and order, constituted authority, do they respect the rabble or only the well-educated, or vice versa? How do they feel about racial issues? What are their sexual standards? For example, female spies often engage in sex acts with targets to gain information; and become what the target wants in order to get close to them. Her attitudes toward who she is willing to get naked with and what she is willing to do for them have to be pretty unconstrained, even more so than a common prostitute. (Because the prostitute can find another John, the spy must seduce a specific person.)

Think about each character's background, it is a product of their personality, and it should all be consistent with what they have become when we meet them. If I have a hacker, I have somebody that has spent countless hours alone, every day growing up, fiddling with code and computers and teaching themselves to hack. That requires a certain personality, a willingness to put aside friends and socializing to GAIN those hours alone. Also a disregard for privacy and the law. What entertains them? Solving puzzles and finding weaknesses, victory over another mind.

If I have a warrior, I have somebody that has spent countless hours training with weapons, fighting without weapons. They have become accustomed to being hurt, bruised, perhaps even broken, they can endure pain and keep on fighting, they have panic and fear trained out of them. That takes a resolute personality.

What are they good at? Why, and how did they get that way, what aspects of their personality lets them endure the 10,000 hours of practice it takes to become an expert at it?

What are they bad at? Why? People bad at something have given up on getting good at it. So what in their personality **prevents** them from succeeding at this? Is it a lack of intelligence or understanding? Is it a fear of physical pain? Is it a fear of emotional pain, rejection or ridicule or embarrassment? Impatience? These traits will pervade the rest of their lives and relationships, too.

You make your characters distinct by making them distinct people. Even if they play stereotypical roles (the fighter, the hacker) you don't have to give them a stereotypical background. For example, your hacker might be quite expert with a handgun, not because she grew up with them or loved shooting -- She did neither -- but because in college after a walking-home-at-night fear, she was certain somebody was definitely following her. Perhaps she is a little paranoid, too. She made a conscious decision to arm and protect herself, and treated shooting like a puzzle to solve, and by dint of intelligence she became an expert at it. And she is a solitary person, alone most of the time, and her gun comforts her and allays her fears. There is a **_reason_** our hacker is a good shot and has a handgun in her purse, and another under her mattress, and one in her car, and one in the kitchen drawer. And why none of them will fire without her palm print on the handle, because she is a hacker.

Like this example I just made up; avoid the easy, empty motivations. She doesn't love guns because her daddy raised her that way; that's an empty excuse. So is "She just loves X." Or "I am just that way." Those are easy ways out for you, the author, not explaining what _should_ be explained. Look for something deeper, and harder for you to invent. Too many characterizations on paper fall flat because they are incoherent, and they are incoherent because there is no good back story for them.

If she is suspicious of strangers, why? Invent a concrete reason, an event, or something that happened to her mother or friend. Have a reason ready, she was conned out of $5000 by believing a stranger. That may turn into half a line of explanation, but it's there. If another character asks "What's wrong with you?" in regard to her distrust, she can tell them, "I have experience, I've been conned and robbed and I don't make the same mistake twice." This little micro-conflict between two characters doesn't have to go anywhere or become a feud; but it adds momentary tension and helps build two characters: They are obviously distinct if their core beliefs produce a disagreement. And that is what you want.

Every little brick you struggle to invent in this story goes into a wall of creativity. That is much of the secret of a good book; condensation: that you labor for six months or a year, to make something somebody can read at a page a minute, and find in that minute a few hours worth of your creativity.

Original score: 7