Bringing Characters to Life on the Page
The most exquisitely developed characters in the world won’t make an impact unless those characterizations are clear and vivid in the pages of your story.
Bringing characters to life on the page comprises a myriad of context and detail that, if done well, may seem invisible to readers, but which work together to create a full, cohesive picture in their minds of who your characters are, who they have been, and who they are becoming.
It’s not an exaggeration to suggest that character is revealed in every moment, in every choice, every reaction. Every detail in your story can be used intentionally to create and convey character and character arc.
Elements of Characterization
We learn who characters are the same way we get to know people in real life: We are introduced to them, we get a first impression, we see how they act and behave, what they do, how they react and interact, and little by little we form a composite, ever-deepening picture of who they are.
Every thought, preference, motivation, preoccupation, behavior, interaction, etc., can convey something about them: what they drive, drink, wear, eat, listen to, watch, do, love, hate. Their mannerisms, habits, verbiage and dialect, vocabulary, grooming, demeanor, affect, expressions. Their actions and inaction. What they say and how they say it, and when they say it, and why they say it—and what they don’t say. Their ideology, worldview, beliefs. Their illusions and assumptions.
But creating complete, fully fleshed characters doesn’t happen believably and effectively in swaths of info dump or long passages of description or information. Like an Impressionist painting, characters take on depth, dimension, and texture with countless layered brushstrokes of detail, and every single moment of the character on the page is a chance for you to lay in another stroke of color.
There are two main avenues for conveying character on the page: show and tell. And each one plays a key role in bringing your characters to life for readers.
Revealing Character Through Show
One of the most immediate and vivid ways to convey character on the page is to let readers see their actions and behavior for themselves and form a picture of who they are based on what they do.
Let’s say we meet your protagonist for the first time in the middle of a date, and the scene unfolds like this:
His hand is a little unsteady as he pours the last of the cream into his coffee, and some of it splashes onto the expensive designer jeans he just bought. Idiot, he thinks.
His napkin sits untouched on the table, so he surreptitiously tries to blot the damp spot on his jeans with the hanging hem of the lightly frayed T-shirt he wears from a famous 1990s indie band tour.
A quick frown flits over his date’s face.
“You want dessert?” Our Hero says quickly. “Let me get Johnny FiveFingers’ attention over there,” he cracks about the server’s Vibram shoes.
His date glances over at the door without reacting, and he laughs loudly at his own joke, even as his stomach curdles. The check can’t come fast enough—for both of them, probably.
This is only a quick beat or two of story action, but there’s a lot of information densely layered into it.
The plot it conveys seems clear—this date is not going well—but these deceptively simple scene beats also use a lot of “show” techniques to layer in character detail.
Action and Inaction, Reaction and Interaction
Just like in life, we learn who characters are by what they do—and don’t do.
This is more than just the actual action of the story. It also encompasses the vast array of subtextual signals we all send and receive constantly beyond surface events and dialogue, including nonverbals like body language/gestures, expression, affect/demeanor, eye contact, etc.
Let’s dissect our snippet above for these elements:
The character’s unsteady hand could imply he’s nervous. We don’t know for sure yet, or why, but we don’t need to; the author is painting the picture one brushstroke at a time. Add in the brand-new, high-end jeans, though, and we might begin to conjecture that he bought them specially for this date from a desire to impress, which might reinforce the notion of his nervousness—as might his attempt to swab at the spill without calling attention to his clumsiness. These details may also begin to suggest to us that this is a newer relationship, maybe even a first date, rather than a couple with the ease of long association between them. What about that dated T-shirt worn with a pair of expensive jeans? Was the seeming stylistic mismatch intentional or unconscious? In either case, why? Is he trying to convey an attitude of casual style, as if he didn’t try too hard, even though he did? Did he actually see this concert, or is it a mass-produced faux-vintage knockoff he found in a chain store? Is this a favorite band of his, or does he perhaps know it’s her favorite band? Or does he just like the aura of cool that it lends him? He uses the last of the cream—does that indicate thoughtlessness or selfishness? Or maybe just anxious obliviousness? His date’s frown and looking toward the door also convey something about her character and state of mind—is she disapproving, distant, embarrassed, or even distracted by something unrelated?
Readers may not yet know the full answers to these questions, but from the moment we “meet” your characters, every detail is a clue to understanding who they are, a puzzle piece for us to begin to put together—a process that engages readers directly in the story and makes them an active part of it, rather than a passive audience. As we begin to fit the pieces together, they gradually create a composite picture of character.
Dialogue and Subtext
What your characters say and what they don’t say, how they say it, and what their words may actually mean or imply are potent ways to show their personality and state of mind.
Our Hero asking his date about dessert may suggest to readers that he interprets her frown as unhappiness with something and is trying to fix it. The haste with which he does so suggests the level of his concern. His cracking a joke about the server might read as a nervous reaction—defaulting to humor to defuse tension, or anxiety in response to his date’s frown, or a panicked effort to turn around what might seem to be a date going badly—or maybe it’s a central personality trait or habitual tic the character has. The joke itself—seeming to make fun of the server’s choice of shoes—might indicate mean-spiritedness in that he punches down, anxiety or insecurity about himself that he is deflecting onto someone else, or trying to make himself feel superior. Or it might be a verbal hemorrhage he regrets that adds to his nervousness or self-recrimination. His loud laugh afterward at her nonreaction could indicate insensitivity to others’ state of mind, smug self-importance, or a self-conscious defense mechanism against rising feelings of vulnerability or insecurity. Beyond the verbal reactions themselves, tone and volume can convey shades of meaning and context. His date’s lack of response is another clue to her potential state of mind, and Our Hero’s reactions to that help reveal his. Silence is a fantastically potent tool to convey character and story—don’t underutilize it by letting silences be empty with beats like “He paused” or “Silence fell between them.” What does that silence contain? What emotions, reactions, “vibes” might add yet another stratum of depth to your characterizations and scenes?
Inner Life
What’s going on inside characters is probably the area where authors most often neglect a powerful way to reveal who they are.
Readers need to be privy to what characters make of events, how they process them, what impact events have on the character, and what change those developments may have on their attitudes and actions. Inner life is where readers most intimately and vividly see how your characters are moving along their arcs.
Let’s go back to the above example.
Idiot, Our Hero thinks—a single word of inner dialogue that tells us much about his state of mind and reaction, as well as about his self-image. His twisting stomach after his joke falls flat tells us he’s got a lot invested in this date or this woman, and that what seems to be his failure to win her interest is becoming painfully evident to him. We see that confirmed and that he’s essentially given up on the effort in that last line: “The check can’t come fast enough—probably for both of them,” showing the shift that results from this disastrous date. That’s one incremental degree of movement along his arc, but these small shifts add up across the course of your story as impactfully as one tiny degree of difference in a ship’s course will eventually radically alter its final destination.
Writers often fear that showing too much inner life will stall momentum and result in a navel-gazing, overly internal story—but you can see from these examples that we don’t need huge swaths of interiority. As with all elements of showing character, painting in small incremental brushstrokes is how you create a fully dimensional portrait.
Other Characters’ Reactions
Don’t neglect the potency of showing how other characters react to your protagonist—and how their reactions in turn affect that character.
Throughout the scene, it’s his date’s reactions that help orchestrate Our Hero’s actions, reactions, behavior, and inner life. Her frown makes him leap to please her, and his fear of what it implies sparks a nervous joke—one he seems to immediately regret when it fails to have the desired effect and she again avoids eye contact, this time looking at the door, suggesting she wants to escape. He clearly picks up on that, realizing they’re both ready for this awkward date to end and hoping the check arrives.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, readers are clocking every tiny clue the author provides in figuring out who these people are and what’s happening in the scene. And authors can unlock this enormous potential for vivid character development by using these small, telling details intentionally to convey the character’s personality, background, and current situation; their motivations, goals, and the stakes; their relationship history and dynamics with other characters.
Labeling is reductive—“he is selfish”; “she’s brassy and ambitious”—and leads to flat characters who feel like props, not people. Let readers see for themselves who your characters are through what they show us and other characters and themselves, and they will draw their own conclusions. That’s how you make readers an active part of your stories.
But as powerful and revealing as it can be, show is just one tool for revealing character. Authors can harness the power of tell as well to deepen characterization even further.
Revealing Character Through Tell
“Show, don’t tell” is good advice only if you’re making silent movies (and even then, filmmakers knew tell was necessary in title cards conveying essential dialogue and description). Showing is certainly often the most immediate and visceral way to reveal who your characters are—but telling plays a key role as well, often in paving in context and backstory, and deepening and clarifying the story and the character arcs.
There are three main perspectives for using descriptive tell to reveal character: the character’s own, other characters’, and the narrative perspective.
For example, tell might be used effectively in conjunction with the scene above to convey something of our flailing protagonist’s history or current circumstances, how he came to ask this woman out, or details about how he feels about her, his usual MO with women, or some other element of his personality.
Let’s say the above scene continues like this:
He knew she was out of his league when he saw her onstage. But when he waited after the show and in a rare moment of vulnerability found himself telling her how her last song moved him to tears, instead of being repelled, she smiled like he’d just given her a puppy, and somehow—whether she was just flattered or throwing a fanboy a bone—she agreed to go out with him.
We see elements of all three perspectives of descriptive tell here: Our Hero’s recognition that he’s punching above his weight is his perspective on who he is, as is his self-mocking “fanboy” description. The “rare moment of vulnerability” may indicate a narrative perspective—it’s unlikely he thinks of himself in those terms, but the fact of it tells us something about his usual MO. The conjecture of her motives might be her perspective on the protagonist, depending on which POV this scene is told from.
Point of view is often key in which descriptive perspective you use. In closer POVs—first and deep third—characters may tell readers something about themselves directly, and they may also relate other characters’ view of them through things they’ve said or done. More removed POVs—omniscient and limited third—may rely more on a narrative perspective to fill in and deepen characterization, as well as on the characters’ view and that of other characters.
These same techniques help paint a picture of other characters in the story as well, whether through the eyes of the protagonist, the direct perspective of those characters, or the narrative overview. In the above snippet, her reaction to his approach after her show drops a breadcrumb of context about who she is.
Adding Depth and Complexity
The finer your brushstrokes of characterization, the more nuanced, layered, and rich your characters will be. Keep in mind a few other key elements that help paint a vibrant, dimensional picture:
Consistency: What actions and behaviors might be cohesive with this particular character’s traits, personality, background, situation, identity? Contrast: How could you use seemingly out-of-character actions and behaviors to reveal something about the character, their state of mind, their reaction, their progress along their arc? Clarity/specificity: Vague, generalized writing leads to vague, generic characters that fail to come to life or deeply resonate with readers. Perhaps counterintuitively, the more specific and focused you are with your character choices, the more universal and relatable they will seem to readers. Originality: What makes your character unique? What fresh take or unexpected layers can you infuse into your characterizations that create characters as distinctive and singular as each individual human being?Verisimilitude and authenticity: Rather than simply showing a character’s physiological reaction or describing it from an external point of view, let readers share how whatever you’re hoping to convey affects your characters, and what specifically is causing what they’re feeling. No one really “swallows back bile” unless they’re suffering from food poisoning, for instance. Dig deeper into characterization than easy clichés or labels—what might their disgust actually feel like? Draw from your own experiences of that reaction, and from what you may have seen in other people when they are feeling a specific emotion.
You don’t need to create an exhaustive “character bible” before you know who your characters are or can write their story. You discover more depth and clarity about them as you put them into action in the story—moment by moment, choice by choice, reaction by reaction.
And letting readers see those subsequent preferences, behaviors, actions, thoughts, habits, interactions, words, and countless other specific details in deliberate cumulative brushstrokes creates a vivid and memorable portrait of people who spring off the page with texture, dimension, and nuance—and live in readers’ minds long after “The End.”
This live webinar will take a deeper look at subtext–how to build indirect but important meaning, foreshadowing, and imagery into your scenes. It will also look at the realm of indirect communication: body language, cryptic dialogue, and even thoughts to deepen characters and create tension. Jordan Rosenfeld brings her experience as a writing teacher and coach, and author of six books on the craft of writing and three novels, to show you how to infuse a richness of character and the right mood into your book.