One way to flesh out your characters is through
Memories, Identities, and Secrets. You can first try this exercise by answering
questions about yourself to see how the details of your life reveal the larger picture of
who you are. You can then apply that level of depth to
your characters. First, think of three memories from your past:
one happy, one sad, and one mysterious—something that left you with an unanswered question
in your life. Be specific and choose moments unique to your
experience. For the unanswered question, you may put something
that happened in your past that you still think about, such as the identity of your
birth parents, the day you decided to turn down an ice-skating career, or what happened
to a teacher who was fired because of you—the lingering questions and what-if’s of your
life. A happy memory for me is sitting on my porch
in the warmth of a summer evening, eating a grape-flavored ice pop and waiting for the
neighborhood kids to come over so we could play bike tag around the cul-de-sac. A sad memory for me is freezing up on stage
while playing a violin solo in front of two hundred people and hearing the hollow praise
from my friends and family afterwards. A mystery I sometimes think about is what
my old friends thought of me—what kind of person was I to them? Creative, competitive, moody? For your characters, you can turn these memories
into short scenes. These scenes don’t need to find a place
in your actual manuscript, but they can help you test out your character’s reactions
in different situations. Next, name three identities that define who
you are. That might involve your nationality, geography,
religion, parenthood, career, education, gender, or sexuality. For me, I might say: 1. I am a writer. 2. I am a humanist. 3. I am a lifelong learner. To take an example from classic literature,
think of Elizabeth Bennet, from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Her three identities might go like this: 1. I am a reader. 2. I am a loyal sister. 3. I am an opinionated woman. Our past experiences and self-perception greatly
shape who we are. For example, I remember winning the writing
Olympics in 3rd grade, and I see myself as someone who sets the bar high and then surpasses
it. Going forward, I want to dedicate my life
to writing. Our future actions depend on the past, as
should your characters’. Then we arrive at the idea of the hidden self,
which poses a single question: What is your deepest, darkest secret? Of course, I can’t tell you mine, or it
wouldn’t be a secret, now would it? But secrets are excellent tools for creating
tension in fiction. Give a character a secret, and they become
infinitely more interesting. It’s no wonder that the Netflix adaptation
of Jay Asher’s novel 13 Reasons Why became such a binge-watching hit; almost every character
has a secret, and the urge to know the answers to certain questions keeps you watching. Secrets also add depth to a character, revealing
a part of them that wasn’t visible from the surface. Perhaps they’re in love with someone they
shouldn’t be. Or they’re guilty of a crime but were never
convicted. They could have a physical or mental illness
that they never let others see. Maybe it’s a more innocuous secret, like
the fact that they were the culprit behind the school’s most epic senior prank. PostSecret.com is a great resource for finding
real secrets to inspire your writing. People send in anonymous post cards describing
their most intimate thoughts, which are then published on the site and in book collections. So what is your character hiding? What would happen if someone found out? What would they do to keep that secret hidden? Once you’ve answered these questions, here’s
a writing exercise you can try to put your character in play. Come up with a hypothetical conflict and create
a list of ten options for how your character could respond. Say your character has been pining after his
best friend for the past ten years, and he’s finally mustered the courage to tell that
person how he feels—only for the friend to end their friendship as a result. What does he do? Does he: 1. Go home and cry himself to sleep 2. Get angry and dive into a monologue about
why their friendship shouldn’t end 3. Send a mix tape of nostalgic songs as a way
of mending their friendship 4. Delete every trace of the friend from his
life—social media, photos, texts, etc. 5. Trick the friend into attending a therapy
session with him so that they can talk 6. Become best buds with someone he hates and
post happy photos all over Facebook to make the friend jealous 7. Obsess about the friend to the point of becoming
a stalker, earning himself a restraining order and making him question his own moral fiber 8. Try to find a way to rewind time so that he
can take back his confession 9. Make an embarrassing-but-heartfelt public
apology in front of the friend’s family/school/country club—perhaps in the form of skywriting or
a gigantic cookie cake 10. Fall into a downward spiral of drinking and
drugs, until he shows up at his friend’s house one night and steals the friend’s
car, cat, or gun—or even all three The reason you should list ten is because
the good ideas usually come at the end of the list, with the beginning items being the
most obvious ones. After you have a list of potential options,
you can choose the one that’s most appropriate for the character based on their personality
and life experiences—the memories, identities, and secrets you listed earlier. If my character identifies as an introvert
and his worst memory involves embarrassing himself while trying to make new friends,
I doubt he would plan a public apology or try to befriend someone new, although it would
be interesting to see him forced to do something out of his comfort zone. If my character’s secret is that he’s
the son of a super villain and he has a time machine hidden in his basement, then maybe
he will choose to change the past and face the consequences later. The tenth option would be perfect for an impulsive
character, one who calls himself an adrenaline junkie and has happy memories of trashing
abandoned houses with his friends. This option also stands out to me because
I want to see what happens next—how the friend will react and how the main character
is going to get out of that situation. After you make your list and choose a favorite,
write a scene or short story about your character using this hypothetical scenario. Once again, this scene doesn’t need to end
up in the main book; the purpose of this exercise is to better understand why and how your character
will react in certain scenarios. Oftentimes, we discover our characters as
we go along, with their actions in previous scenes dictating how they behave in future
ones. Get to know your characters on a personal
level, and they will feel more real to you and to your readers. What did you discover about your character
after this exercise? I’d love to hear your favorite item from
your list of ten reactions. Whatever you do, keep writing.
