Characters

I have a friend who is reading Demon Knight and providing me feedback as he goes. He is the first person to provide feedback on any of my writing, really since college. So, it is kind of interesting. The things he is pointing out are things that I already knew were issues, generally, but I think it will be helpful to have someone else tell me what they saw that needs to be changed.

One of the biggest pieces of feedback that he has given (and admittedly he is only about a third of the way through the book so far) is that my secondary characters are interesting and vivid, but that my main characters seem more boring. Unlike some of the other feedback that he had to give (none of which was particularly harsh or at all undeserved) this wasn't at all hard for me to hear. My reaction was pretty much, "Yep."

I've noticed this phenomenon in my role playing as well. A character that only has to fill one particular niche can have all sorts of quirks and foibles. And let's face it, its the foibles that make a character lovable. One time I had an NPC that I created who was a dwarf, but the dwarves were at war, so all of their powerful magic users were out at the front lines, so I decided this would be the loser dwarf who was really only getting through magic school because he didn't have any competition, and he didn't really have any teachers to fail him anyway. He turned out to be a great character.

My players actually liked him so much that one of them decided to use him as a PC for his next character. What I thought was strange, though, was that this NPC had only been made to fill a very small part of their campaign. In fact, in all honesty, I think I spent less than 5 minutes coming up with the entire character, including the back story and quite a bit of hemming and hawing about his name. It ended up being Heinrich.

On the other hand, though, when a character has to have three fully fleshed dimensions, when it has to be able to fit into any situation that I want to throw at it, I find that those edges get worn off. That they become more...bland, I guess is a good word. They go closer to the middle.

So, how does one have a main character, who has to be able to be sympathetic for the reader and has to be well rounded so that they can deal with any situation, while still having them be memorable and have quirks? I don't really know for sure, but I think I achieved something like this with Jasin, one of my characters from Beyzl.

He is technically probably the 'hero' to Beyzl's heroine, but since it isn't really that kind of story, I think of him as more of a slightly less prominent main character. He is dark and brooding, one of his quirks, but he is also emotional and passionate. I think the trick is to determine what those quirks are going to be from the beginning and stick with them. Honestly, that's probably what works for the side characters, too. It's just that with them, I generally start with the quirk (You know what would be funny? A dwarf mage who's really crappy at magic!), while with the main characters I generally start with the more heroic parts of their personality (So, for this story I need a powerful sorceress who falls in love with a dragon.).

So, going forward, I guess what I need to do is have as part of my story prep, before I even get started, one or two personality traits that make that character distinctive. And, wouldn't it be great if those traits went completely against the conflict that they are going to have to resolve!?!  (I need a personality trait for the warrior who is going to take down the entire undead army...how about making him a pacifist!)