When thinking about our characters, it’s important to consider the difference between Deep Character and Characterisation.
Characterisation is observable traits - everything we can tell about our character by looking at them. For example, age, IQ, gender, sexual orientation, style of speech, choices of lifestyle, education, occupation, personality, values, attitudes and so on.
Deep Character though is something we slowly reveal during our stories, using these revelations to hook the reader. A clash between Deep Character and Characterisation is one effective way to create a compelling character.
So how do we create Deep Character in our hero? Theme, Need, Web ‘n’ Pressure.
What is the Theme of your story? What is it about? What is the idea that lies at the heart of your story, the question that your main character will have to resolve? We looked at the movie Insomnia, written by Hilary Seitz from the Norwegian screenplay by Nikolaj Frobenius and Erik Skjoldbaerg. The theme is Good Guys and Bad Guys. Chief Nybeck says that is a simple issue in small-town Alaska. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth, and the entire movie is obsessed with the question of who is good, who is bad, how can you get from one state to the other, and of course, is Will Dormer (the main character) a good man or a bad man? That question is only answered in the final scene of the film. The playing out of your hero’s relationship to the theme will help to create a compelling character.
What Need does your main character have? This should be something internal and unconscious, something that is harming themselves and / or others. Something that they will have to become aware of and face up to before the end of the story. Will Dormer needs to face up to his sins. He faked evidence to ensure a killer was convicted. He tells himself the ends justify the means. But he is literally haunted by his past, and will have to face his guilt at some point. Give your character an unconscious need that is hurting themselves or others and make them face up to it. This will help your character to be unforgettable.
Create a Web of Opposition to your hero. Every other character in your story should have a different relationship to BOTH your protagonist AND your theme. This web will highlight and reveal different aspects of your main character as the story unfolds. The main antagonist must be as complex as your hero and preferably even more powerful – this will force your hero to go to extremes to achieve their goal. They attack your hero through their weakness. We see Will Dormer going up against killer and crime writer Walter Finch. Walter knows every detective’s trick – so the moves Will used to unsettle other suspects don’t work on Walter. Crucially, Walter has a very strong and opposite relationship to the theme: he believes he and Will are both good men who made mistakes and should be forgiven. Will could choose to follow Walter’s path, and he has to take on the toughest fight of his life to resist. Of course it’s not just our antagonist who defines our hero. Every character plays their role and illuminates a different part of our hero’s deep character by forcing them to make decisions.
Which brings us to the most crucial element of ensuring your hero has a Deep Character. Decisions Under Pressure.
If our hero decides to cross the road when there’s no traffic, it tells us nothing about them. If they decide to wait to cross the road when a truck is speeding towards them, it tells us nothing. But add an oblivious toddler wandering into the path of the truck…whether our character dashes out to save the toddler, or stays safe and watches them get run over – either decision tells us something about that character. Decisions under pressure reveal Deep Character.
Our stories should start with our hero facing decisions under moderate pressure. Slowly that pressure is ratcheted up, each decision tougher than the last, each time revealing something more about our hero’s Deep Character. It is these revelations that will hook our audience. At the climax our hero must face the ultimate moral choice, the biggest choice they have ever had to face, something clearly black or white that will change their Deep Character profoundly and irreversibly. Will Dormer could return to his old life, all his sins hidden. Instead he decides to face Walter Finch and it costs him his life. In his final moments, the young detective Ellie Burr offers to dispose of the evidence that proves Will has done wrong, so that his reputation will remain intact. But Will stops her from following him onto a path that brings only pain and regret. He saves her from his own fate, and sacrifices his reputation in the process.
If we can give our heroes the complexity and profound final choice that writers Nikolaj Frobenius and Erik Skjoldbaerg created for Will Dormer, we will be delighting and gripping our readers in equal measure.