Fleshing out a character: decisions, decisions.

Adding details to a character can be a lot of fun and a lot of work too. Generally, fleshing out a character is more complicated than adding a detail to a story to make it more realistic. After all, a character appears for much more of a story than how to open a locked box or what a 1780’s woman would prefer in dress styles.

However, it doesn’t have to be complicated. Taken a piece at a time it’s no more difficult than opening that locked box (a big screwdriver as a pry bar?).  If you start with making a list of things you need to know about your character that is being developed the process is that much easier again. Let’s run with this using the protagonist of a story set in modern day Seattle. For now, we won’t worrying about what he or she does for a living, but we’ll decide that he or she is a he (just being arbitrary in my decision making, also being a he myself it takes a level of complexity out of the equation from the get go), comfortably middle class and other than mortage and car payment he’s debt free.

So, now we know he has a mortgage. What kind of home? This brings up another question, does the plot of the story require a specific home type to work? If it doesn’t then the decision can be arbitrary again. So, all aboard the bus to Arbitrary town. It’s a two bedroom condo, about 900 square feet, slightly on the upscale side, he’s been living in it for 10 years.

Next point to decide on: do we need to know more about his living situation? Probably. Does he cook or eat out a lot? Let’s say eats out lunch majority of the time, but rarely eats dinner out other than the weekend. Gym membership or does he use the workout room in the condo complex?

Did I mention taking notes? All of this should get written down, so the details stay consistant all the way through the story.

Think of the situations you will put the character into during all of this research. What little things for given scenes would make reading your story much more interesting? In the case I am outlining, does the character carry a cell phone all of the time, only having it out of reach while in the shower? Or is a cell phone a necessary evil that he only turns on when he leaves the house and half the time the first thing he does is plug it in to charge as soon as he gets to his car?

Speaking of cars, what kind does he drive? Something big and flashy? Average and reliable? Does he even care about cars? Whatever the decision it should be both useful and interesting to know and when the reader learns the fact it shouldn’t be presented in shopping list format. Now, if the character was a suspect in a criminal investigation and the scene was a detective running a briefing, a shopping list recital of the character’s traits could work.

Where does actual research come into the mix? Well, if the character drives a Camry or an F-150 it would not do to get a detail wrong about either of the most popular vehicles in North America. A walk through any grocery store parking lot would answer most questions about either of those cars.

Whether or not this character development is done in one session or as needed during the writing of the story, in my experience, depends more on the complexity of the character. A main character probably wouldn’t get written in one sitting, unless ideas have been percolating in my head for more than just an hour or two. In the handful of stories I have in various stages of development, I don’t have any characters completed. There are plenty of unanswered questions, Thomas Archer for example is a main character in a story titled “Angels Descended”. I have no idea what his political leanings are, the question hasn’t ever come up. I do know he’s a cat person, currently he has two, Potemkin (a Russian Blue) and Olso (a Norwegian Forest Cat).

There are lots of decisions to be made when fleshing out a character, no matter the level of their involvement in the story, it’s what we learn from the decisions that makes them interesting and by extension the story more interesting.