Traits of Characters.

Thinking about the next book is a favorite pastime when working on the current book. Not just brainstorming plots, themes, characters, but also trying to get a better grip on how to write. One approach I have been thinking about is a semi-quantum approach in choosing character traits.

The idea is, you want a character. What attributes will make that character flexible, interesting, useful to a narrative? So you start with a list of possible attributes you’re considering, and you write down a handful of ways that it could be used.

An example will serve. You need a sibling of the main character, because it will help with exposition to have someone else who knows things about the main character, and can bring those things up in an organic way. But who should the sibling be? They can be short or tall, married, single, divorced with or without children. What occupation, what personal psychology, all these attributes?

So you start by writing some out:

• Famous
• Smart
• Missing a finger
• Always early
• Smells like toothpaste
• Carries a yo-yo wherever they go

Whatever you want. Specific or not. And then you game it out. Write down a few things that could happen if you posit the character is or has or does some thing.

The yo-yo string breaks, and the yo-yo crashes into something. A lost dog recognizes the toothpaste smell and follows the sibling home thinking it’s where the owner is. The sibling is late—a violation of always being early—something’s wrong! The sibling blames the main character about that finger. The sibling is on a quiz show. The sibling gets recognized at a lunch with the main, leading to a chance meeting with a new character.

I haven’t done this formally before, but it seems like it would be useful to do. Usually I feel it out, and let it be arbitrary, and let the choices not be too impactful because they are minor characters that aren’t there for plot, but for world-building. For some stories that’s how it is. For others, which are more dramatic, less plotful, you want the players to act and react, so even minor characters’ traits can and should influence the directions things go.

The other piece of this is that I feel like there should be a big list somewhere of all the possibles. Like those old commercials for correspondence courses where they would list the things you could be: TV and VCR repair… There could be role-playing game style lists of everything about a person that’s possible. Hair color, texture, type. Eyes, ears, piercings, make-up, complexion, height, weight, athleticism, education, all these things.

Some of it depends on what you want the story to be like. If you are going for comedy, you make zanier choices than if you want a historical drama. Time periods, all sorts of factors limit or expand what choices you might consider.

I think one of the biggest advantages of this approach is simply the work of thinking through. It’s practice. You might have an idea you can use in another story, for example. Or you might get a better feel than I have of what sorts of choices are better, which ones are more or less consequential.

I’m still working through the muck of the first-draft-done, last-draft-not stage of my current effort, but at some point I’ll be giving this a go. Even if you aren’t a writer, you can spend some time thinking about it, too. Creativity and writing start with simple building blocks like characters and their traits and backstories.