This document provides guidance on developing complex and engaging characters for short stories. It discusses that characters should want something to drive the story forward, be realistic yet imperfect, and be sympathetic to readers. Key aspects to develop for each character include their background, personality, goals, flaws, and relationships. The document emphasizes making characters feel like real people rather than perfect icons. It also warns against directly copying real people or oneself as characters.

1. How to Build Characters in Short Stories
English 120-122 Creative Writing
Lynn Pollock

2. Characters are the reason…
…readers love short stories. Without
interesting, engaging and realistic
characters, stories have nowhere to go.
There are basically two kinds of interesting
characters.
– Heroes who act out adventures and follow the
hero’s journey motif.
– Ordinary People who are thrown into extraordinary
circumstances.

3. Character Essentials
• Characters want something
• Characters are realistic
• Characters are imperfect
• Characters are sympathetic

4. Characters want something
Getting what they want is what moves the story
forward.
Sometimes what they want is
– simply to stay alive
– to get the girl or boy
– to make peace
– to get revenge
– to remember
– to forgive and forget
Another way of looking at it is that your character has
a goal, motivation.

5. Characters are realistic.
Even in fantasy or speculative fiction,
characters need to resonate with
readers.
Give your characters real emotions, real
feelings, real conflicts like heartbreak, death,
job, marriage, kid, or parent problems,
health issues, worries over hair loss, weight,
their clothes matching, making the mortgage
payment

6. Characters are imperfect.
Nothing is more boring and unrealistic than
perfection.
Do you know any people that are without flaws or some type of
weakness? Granted, there are those that would have us believe they are
flawless with a fortress of steel built around their hearts. But all humans
have some vulnerable characteristics, some misbehavior.
Heroic characters like Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark is afraid of
snakes.
Even bad guys are not perfectly bad. Hannibal Lector in Silence of the
Lambs, a very bad serial killer, helps Clarisse, the FBI agent, catch a
serial killer.

7. Characters are sympathetic
Just a few ordinary traits are vital to creating sympathy.
• An important one is simply the will to get through. If the
character refuses to quit even when he/she may desperately want
to, then the reader won't be able to quit caring, either.
• It's important that the character takes his own feelings
seriously. How the character feels about what's happening in the
story telegraphs to the reader how to feel about the same events.
• Inner weaknesses are indispensable because everyone has
weaknesses, understanding is assured for a character inwardly
struggling. If we can understand, then we will sympathize with
them.
• We actually sympathize more with reluctant characters, those
who have to work to be good and who allow us to see the effort
involved.

8. Sympathy Saboteurs
Writers sometimes mistake character suffering for struggling. Colleen Coble suggests
that "dark and depressed and full of angst" doesn't necessarily equal memorable.
"A dark, flawed character needs to realize she's in trouble and try to change, not
wallow in self pity." But having a character throw a pity-party is only one way to
steer the reader toward the nearest story exit.
Other things that undermine sympathy for a character:
– * "Woe is I!" dialogue.
– * Moral perfection.
– * Snobbery.
– * Scenes of "goodness" unrelated to the plot.
– * Friends telling everyone how wonderful the character is.
– * Back story worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize.
– * Back story worthy of Jenny Jones.
It's okay for characters to whine, act selflessly, be snobbish, have loyal friends, be
philanthropic, or use their past to excuse present actions--for a little while. That's
how real people are. But, it's best if none of these things become the dominant
impression of the character for more than a couple pages. By that time, the
characters and the story should move on.

9. Building Characters from Spare Parts
The best characters mix factual and
fictional aspects. This means
combining traits of people you know
or have encountered in real life with
purely fictional character inventions.
Call it the “Spare Parts” approach. It’s
a way to make characters who fit a
story and vice-versa, and it lends
them a fact-based reality.

10. Back Stories
Every major character needs a biography – or a back-
story in movie parlance – that includes all the major
events in that characters life, right up to the moment
the story begins. Birth date and place, family situation,
childhood traumas, school, work, relationships, and all
the other critical facts. This is not just a matter of
developing basic information. What your fictional
characters have gone through in their lives will
determine who they are and how they react when
there’s a conflict. And conflict equals drama.

11. Describing Characters
Once you have characters you know and
understand, it’s time to introduce them. This
means describing them in physical terms.
There are two important points to be made.
Once again, perfection is not only a bore, it’s
unrealistic. Second, readers don’t need a page
of detail about a character’s appearance.
Usually a few strong, descriptive sentences will
do the trick and the reader will fill in the blanks.

12. Character Danger Zones
Don’t create characters that are Xerox
copies of real people.
And don’t base characters on yourself. From a
truly objective standpoint, very few people
have had lives that are interesting enough to
make them worthy of a main character. In fact,
basing characters on real people has the effect
of limiting them to that person’s life outline.

13. Your Turn:
• Before you begin your new story, take a little
time to create fresh new characters that are
your own. Think of yourself as the Master
Planner -- this is your story and only your
characters are going to fit in it. Custom build
them to suit your unique story-world. If you
really must use real people you know, then try
to disguise that person's identity as much as
possible.
• .

14. 1. What is your character called
Begin by giving your main character
(protagonist) a name that you are comfortable
working with and one that promotes your
purpose. According to novelist Elinor Lipman,
"Names have subtext and identity. If your main
characters are Kaplans, you've got yourself a
Jewish story, and if your hero is Smedley
Winthrop III, you've given him a trust fund.
Names done right contribute to
characterization." Your character's name
provides a lot of information -- not only about
ethnicity -- but about your character's age,
background, and social class

15. 2) Create a short biography for your new
character.
You'll need to decide which physical aspects
best suit your protagonist -- height, weight, hair
and eye color and age. But these alone will not
be enough. Consider creating a personality
outline as well. Include:
• temperament
• moral/ethical/religious beliefs
• political stance
• hobbies
• habits
• quirks or eccentricities
• likes/dislikes
• fears or phobias
• short and long term goals
• hopes and dreams

16. 3. Where does your character live?
It's definitely true that character and story
grows out of a sense of place. What
country does your character live in?
What region? Does he live alone or with
a family? In a trailer park or an estate?
How did he end up living there? How
does he feel about it?

17. 5. Where is your character from?
In a similar vein, where did your
character's life begin? Did she grow up
running around the woods in a small
Southern town, or learning to conjugate
Latin verbs in a London boarding school?
Obviously this influences things like the
kinds of people your character knows,
the words she uses to communicate with
them, and the way she feels about a host
of things in her external world.

18. 6. How old is your character?
Though this might seem like an obvious
question, it's important to make a clear
decision about this before you begin
writing -- otherwise, it's impossible to get
the details right. For instance, would your
character have a cell phone, a land line,
or both? Does your character drink
martinis or cheap beer? Still get money
from his parents, or worry about what will
happen to his parents as they get old?

19. 7. What does your character look like?
Is your character tall enough to see over the
heads of a crowd at a bar or to notice the dust
on the top of his girlfriend's refrigerator? Does
she deal with weight issues and avoid looking
at herself in the mirror? Though you need not
have a crystal clear picture of your character in
mind, physical details help your readers
believe in the character, and help you imagine
how your character moves through the world.
It sometimes helps to scour newspapers, magazines and even the internet to find a
picture of someone that fits the character you are creating. Tacking an image onto
a corkboard at your workstation with a brief bio beneath it can give you a wonderful
visual image to work from

20. 8. What kind of childhood did he or she have?
As with real people, many things about
your character's personality will be
determined by his background. Did his
parents have a good marriage? Was she
raised by a single mom? How your
character interacts with other people --
whether he's defensive or confident,
stable or rootless -- may be influenced by
his past.

21. 9. What does your character do for a living?
• As with all of these questions, how much
information you need depends in some part on
the story, but you'll need some idea of how
your character makes money. A dancer will
look at the world very differently from an
accountant, for instance, and a construction
worker will use very different language from
either one. How they feel about a host of
issues, from money to family, will be in some
part dependent on their choice of careers.

22. 10. How does your character deal with conflict and
change?
Stories involve some element of conflict
and change -- they're part of what makes
a story a story. Is your character passive
or active? If someone confronts her,
does she change the subject, head for
the minibar, stalk off, or do a deep-
breathing exercise? When someone
insults him, is he more likely to take it,
come up with a retort, or excuse himself
to find someone else to talk to?

23. 11. Who else is in your character's life?
Relationships -- how people interact with
others -- reveal character. They're also
excuses for dialogue, which break up
exposition, offering another way of
providing necessary information. Think
about who will best help you convey this
information, and what kinds of people
would realistically be in your character's
world in the first place.

24. 12. What is your character's goal or motivation?
Many of your character's actions will
result from the intersection of what she's
trying to achieve and her personality,
which is composed of everything you've
invented so far. When in doubt about
how your character should behave, ask
yourself what your character wants from
the situation.

25. So now you have a character to work
with, but this information is not enough to
bring him or her to life. Using the
principle that all good stories are about
unique, individual complex people, you'll
need to map out a few more points.

26. Strengths and Weakness
• When you are creating your character's
personality description, decide what his
great strengths are. Give him several
strong traits and then add one major
glaring weakness. Your character must
still be at least likeable, but the glaring
weakness must form the underlying
tension that drives his behavior.

27. Staggering problem
Now create a staggering problem that preys on
that weakness. It must be a difficult or
fearsome problem for your character to
overcome, so that the story can recount his
struggle to turn his weakness into a form of
victory at the end. Above all, never let the
protagonist know he is going to succeed. That
way he can not win unless he surrenders
something of inestimable value to himself.

28. Your character must have a complex set of
problems.
• The primary goal must always be in sight, but giving your character a few
obstacles along the way will highlight the character traits you have chosen
to help or hinder him.
• Choose your crisis points. Give your character an agonizing decision to
make. If he must make a morally wrong choice in order to succeed and
survive intact, your character will gain everything he wanted, but the price
for this success must be high.
• He could lose his (soul/conscience/freedom etc.) However, it must be
clear in a scenario like this that choosing the morally right path would only
result in his downfall or defeat.
• Allowing your character the reversed scenario is easier (choosing a
morally correct path), but making the cost a worthwhile challenge is much
more difficult.
• If he does concur on the side of 'good over evil', be sure he is forsaking all
he holds dear. He survives the struggle intact, but still must pay the price
for making the right choice. Even though he is spared the downfall that
threatened originally, he will ultimately lose all that he cherished/believed.

29. Finally, by the end of your story, your protagonist must
have survived an enormous struggle, or moral
dilemma, to arrive at the finale having undergone a
fundamental change. He may have lost his beliefs, or
his conscience. He may even have overcome that
glaring weakness you assigned to him when he was
created. Whatever the change, it must be noticeable.
When you have all these pieces in place, you'll have a
complex, empathetic character that your readers will
remember and hopefully come back for more!