There’s a cat lady in my novella, Great Expectations. She conforms to many aspects of the stereotype: she’s a misanthrope who lives alone with several felines. But Amanda Carey is so much more than a cat-lady. She’s smart and more sensitive than she seems; she is aware of the ridiculousness of her cat-situation (and has been known to curse at her cats and even handle them un-gently); and, unfortunately, she’s still reeling from some acutely painful past experiences. She’s a survivor and a fighter. Part of her embrace of cats (and her estrangement from other humans) is a response to trauma.
When I first started thinking about Amanda Carey, all I knew was that she lived in an old wooden farmhouse with a bunch of demanding cats. It was only as I continued to write her, to get to know her, that I began to see more clearly that the cats are important to her—they affect the rhythm and organization of her life—but that they don’t actually define her.
Just like real people, sometimes characters only gradually show us who they are and how they came to be the way they are. We have first impressions—this person is all smiles, that guy doesn’t smell great, this individual is gender non-conforming—but of course, in order to write compelling, memorable, convincing characters, we have to really get to know them, in all their complexity. Not unlike Hemingway’s “iceberg” technique, we should think about how we can create characters who give our readers the sense that although what they’re seeing is a fragment, there is a rich, substantial, complicated body of experiences and emotions underneath and informing that character’s behavior in each scene.
As a writer, sometimes I start with character and sometimes I start with plot. But either way, the fundamental question remains: how will X character act in Y situation? Here are some of the strategies and questions I use to coax information from more reticent characters as well as to establish for readers that the moments in my characters’ lives that they’re seeing exist within a larger context of diverse and important experiences.
Ask: what is your characters’ secret shame?
A secret shame does not have to be rational. Iffy, the protagonist of my novel Iphigenia Murphy has lots of secrets, but she feels most embarrassed when she makes a new friend and has to confess that she still sucks her thumb to get to sleep at night. In my short story “Elephant Realty,” a character named Cass is deeply embarrassed because she smokes cigarettes: Cass tends “to her addiction the way others tend to their feminine hygiene, their secret love affairs, their IBS: with great discretion and alternating tenderness and disgust.” Now, while smoking is definitely a terrible habit, Cass’ shame is tied up with her ambivalence about her class background as well some internalized self-hatred.
Your character’s secret shame is one of those characteristics that might never come up in the story or the novel; it might not even be something they’ve truly articulated. Still, they might be able to lie to themselves, but they probably shouldn’t be able to lie to you.
Find your character’s name.
When I started working on Iphigenia Murphy, I had a vague idea of the plot in that I knew I wanted to write about a teenager who had to fight for her survival, who was strong and resilient, but who also had to overcome trauma and other obstacles. And I thought of Iphigenia—a somewhat minor character in Aeschylus’ The Oresteia—a character whose story has always fascinated me. In the play, Iphigenia’s father sacrifices her in order to further his own fortunes. But later, her mother avenges her.
While my novel is not a rewriting of the Greek story, finding the name Iphigenia enabled me to lock in Iffy as a character, in part because it served to remind me of the themes and stakes I wanted to explore: dangerous parents, mother-love, revenge, and survival. The name Iphigenia also had the double-benefit of an evocative nickname: “Iffy.” I felt that the name Iffy perfectly fit a young woman who was unsure of her future, who was still in the process of becoming. And I wanted to trace that trajectory: from Iffy to Iphigenia.
So, give your character a name they can live up to and use those resonances and implications and evocations to help fill out who the character is. I like to keep a list of names for future use. Some are common names, and some are extraordinary or unusual. I have characters named Sue and Matt, and also characters named Cinnamon and Dignity. The point is that our names, what we are called or what we choose to be called, is crucial to our identity, our understanding of ourselves. Our names often affect our lives in ways that can be almost-invisible as well as obvious and profound. The question is, then, not only what is your character’s name, but why does it matter?
Remember, just like real people, characters don’t always say what they really think or feel.
Characters: they’re just like us. Sometimes they are not the most reliable sources when it comes to what’s going on with them. And yet how our characters perform or are perceived by others can be incredibly revealing.
The author Hillary Mantel does this so deftly. One of my favorite moments in her novel Bringing Up the Bodies happens when the protagonist, Cromwell, sees a portrait of himself and announces that it makes him look like “a murderer.” His son responds, “didn’t you know?”
I love this exchange, because it demonstrates a lack of self-awareness, as well as his son’s hyper-awareness of how Cromwell presents to others. It also reveals, I think, that Cromwell is the kind of father who can be (gently) teased by his son.
There’s a scene in Iphigenia Murphy when Iffy (who is the first-person narrator) thinks she is acting tough, but another character looks at her and says, “Don’t cry, honey.” This reaction is a surprise to Iffy (and perhaps the reader), but again, this discrepancy reveals Iffy as vulnerable, and also, at times, not as in-control as she might think.
So, ask other characters to do some of the heavy-lifting for you (so you can keep on showing and not telling).
In the end, be flexible. Sometimes, I embark on a story with a pretty fixed idea of what I want my characters to be like, but the characters have other plans. Allow the characters to reveal themselves by putting them in a variety of situations with a variety of other characters. Even if you wind up cutting scenes, this work will be valuable in that it will become part of your archive of information about your character, an archive that will be rich and complex and dynamic.
From the outside, the process of organizing a collection of work should seem the same no matter the project. While it’s true that the steps remain similar, each time a book comes to life, the experience is different.