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The magic happens when your characters are together
Your characters don’t exist in a vacuum, but as a complex ensemble. So choose their friends and enemies carefully
There’s a game going round on Facebook – write down as fast as possible 15 fictional characters who have influenced you and will always stick with you.
This is the list I rustled up:
1 Cordelia (surname probably Lear)
2 Catherine Earnshaw (Wuthering Heights)
3 Jill Crewe (from Ruby Ferguson’s Jill pony books)
4 Doctor Who (Jon Pertwee incarnation)
5 Charles Ryder (Brideshead Revisited)
6 James Bond
7 Lucy Snowe (Villette)
8 Bathsheba Everdene (Far From The Madding Crowd)
9 Eva Khatchadourian (We Need to Talk About Kevin)
10 The narrator of Tanith Lee’s Don’t Bite The Sun
11 Alexa (from Andrea Newman’s eponymous novel)
12 The gay vampire in Fearless Vampire Killers
13 Ray (hitman in In Bruges)
14 Robert Downey Junior’s Sherlock Holmes
15 Purdey (The New Avengers)
I thought of the list in a hurry, as per the rules, and as you can see some of them have nothing to tell a serious student of storytelling. But my choices aren’t the point of this post. The point is, I found the exercise surprisingly difficult.
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Characters in a story are like an ensemble
Only one character?
In each case, I didn’t feel it was fair to single out one character – because their memorable, influencing journeys relied on other characters too.
A character makes a lasting impression because of the other characters they spark off.
To look at my list, who is Cordelia without peevish Lear, scheming Goneril and viperous Regan? Who is Eva Khatchadourian without the terrifying Kevin, sweet Celia and straightforward Franklin? Who is Charles Ryder without his dreary father the divine Flytes?
Characters in a story are like a choir. It takes the whole ensemble to bring out what is in the MC and they deserve the credit too.
What about Lizzie Bennett?
Some characters are so iconic that you could argue they deserve the spotlight to themselves. Lizzie Bennett, for instance – where was my head when I left out her? She’s good value wherever she goes. But we see that only because her sparring partners are so well chosen. Indeed in that respect, Mr Collins and Lady Catherine de Bourgh are even more delightful than the essential Mr Darcy.
No character operates alone
No character goes through a story alone. Part of the writer’s fun is putting characters with others who will bring out the best, worst, be their opposites, nemesis, thwart them, push them to the edge and put their arms around them.
Who makes your main character most interesting? Who makes them do things? Who gets under their skin? Who completes them – or might destroy them?
So let’s play this game my way. You’ve seen who some of my favourite character combinations would be, and why – tell me some of yours.
Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
