Hey guys! Here we are at another Friday. I’m actually kind of surprised that this post is on time considering it is a holiday weekend in the U.S. right now. I almost didn’t think that I would make it. But luckily I do have a lot of free time to myself this holiday. Interspersed with a lot of peopling. So, without further ado;
Building Better Characters: Things That Go Bump in the Night
Every person is scared of something. I’m scared of lots of things. I’m scared of some pretty major things like how to pay bills, finding a job after Uni, and starting a family. I’m also scared of small little things like picking up a penny when it’s facing the wrong side up, dark hallways (especially ones with a light at the end), and running out of books to read. Every person is made up of tons of fears. Sometimes these fears are huge like being afraid of letting all the people on your team down. Sometimes your character is scared of pill bugs. But whatever they’re scared of they need to have more than one fear.
My character Kira has some pretty major fears, fear of losing her only remaining family member, fear of getting everyone in the rebellion killed, fear that she’ll never find peace in a world that’s full of hate. But she also has small fears. She’s afraid that she’ll lose her lucky wrench, she’s constantly afraid that she’ll trip while giving speeches, and she’s afraid of falling down stairs. All of these little fears are what make my character a character. But what’s really important is that all of her fears are relevant. Even the small ones.
The fears of your character need to be relevant to the situation. If your character lives in the middle of a barren desert it would make sense for their fear to be something along the lines of being afraid that they might not find water before they run out. It wouldn’t make sense for your characters fear to be something like fear of chocolate. If you do make them afraid of chocolate then something needs to happen later in the story that involves chocolate. Even if they are scared of it and have some tragic backstory as to why they are afraid of chocolate you still need to have something happen with chocolate later or it isn’t relevant at all.
The fears of your character are what makes your characters more human. Even a villain should have fears. In my story To Kill a King, my main villain, the evil King has a fear. He’s scared of red curtains. There was a red curtain around his bed during one of his most terrifying assassination attempts. Later in the story, my character uses a red curtain to keep the King trapped in a corner of the room. Even though he is a strong villain and a great character he becomes more human when he’s huddled in a corner, unable to escape because he’d have to push past the red curtain.
A character who has fears is more relatable to other people. Especially when you don’t know what fears your reader has. Maybe you’ll have one reader who’s scared of pill bugs. When your character is scared of pill bugs then your reader finds something to connect with.
As an example, in Harry Potter, Ron Weasley is afraid of spiders. Deathly afraid of them. There are a lot of people in the world who are scared of spiders. When Ron and Harry are talking to Aragog, the giant spider, and are surrounded by other large spiders Ron is terrified. The readers who are scared of spider can relate to Ron’s character and the character becomes more relatable. That’s the goal when introducing fears to your characters.
That and later they can make really good tools for plot twists.
So that’s all I have to say on character’s fears. Next week I’m going to be continuing this series by talking about a characters history. Why it’s important, what you need to know, and how to incorporate it into a story. So that’s all I’ve got and as always,
Get Up, Get Writing, and Get Published. See you next week!