PARDON ME, BUT DO I KNOW YOU?

By

Ray Villareal

Details create the big picture. —Sanford I. Weill 

Students like to include their friends and family members in their stories. Unfortunately, we don’t learn much about these characters, other than their names and their relationship to the writer.

Whether your students write realistic, fantasy, sci-fi, or any other type of fiction, they should create characters whose personalities are believable and relatable; recognizable characters that will make readers think: I know someone like that.  

Sometimes characters come straight out of the writer’s imagination. Other times, they’re composites of people the writer knows or has met.

For instance, I taught a student who had an annoying habit of saying, “I was just about to say that.” Anytime I’d pose a question and no one spoke up, I’d give the correct answer. Right away, the student would raise his hand and shout, “I was just about to say that!”

His habit was irritating, but it became useful when I created the character of Bucky Henderson for my book, Body Slammed! 

Another student was a narcissistic seventh grader who never met a mirror he didn’t like. He marked his territory with the overwhelming scent of his cheap cologne, and every girl was a potential target for his bogus charm. I don’t know what became of him, but his personality made its way into the pages of my book, Who’s Buried the Garden?, in the form of Artie Mendoza.

To create realistic characters, your students must pay close attention to the people around them. What do they look like, act like, dress like, and sound like? What traits distinguish one person from another?

In lessons on character analysis, teachers often use lists of character traits and feelings, such as these:

Curious, smart, lazy, dishonest, impatient, nervous, happy, angry, lonely, embarrassed, arrogant, bossy, humble, shy, respectful, rude, mean, selfish, silly, courageous

Your students can use these traits, plus countless others, to create their characters. Please note that authors reveal the traits, rather than to say that a character has them. Instead of writing that a character is arrogant, your students need to show the arrogance and let their readers conclude that the character is arrogant. The adage, “Actions speak louder than words,” is particularly true with character development.

The setting determines which characters will appear in a story. In a school environment, you’ll find students, teachers, counselors, principals, office staff, custodians, cafeteria workers, and crossing guards. A restaurant might have servers, bussers, cooks, a manager, a cashier, a bartender, and a maître d’. Other settings can be a church, a synagogue, a mosque, a department store, a grocery store, an amusement park, or a movie theater. Guide your students in selecting the proper settings for their characters.

Like most writers, I keep a journal. It isn’t organized by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a private mess where I jot down titles, names, character traits, words, phrases, and story plots. If I experience writer’s block, I thumb through my journal. Usually, something will click that will get me writing again.

Encourage your students to keep journals where they can write down their ideas for future use. These journals aren’t for you to grade or to add comments. They’re not an activity to do during “journal time.” Your students should be allowed to write in their journals whenever a thought strikes them.

Here are some suggestions your students may want to include in their journals for developing characters:

Names

“What’s in a name?” Shakespeare wrote. Plenty, if you’re a writer. Authors devote a great deal of time deciding on names that fit their characters’ personalities. This includes nicknames and initials.

Body Types

Are the characters tall, short, fat, skinny, slender, stocky, paunchy, or muscular? Will their body types play a role in the story?

Hair/Hair Color

Is their hair short, long, curly, or straight? Do the characters have dreadlocks, braids, or pigtails? Are they bald or have thinning hair? Is their hair color blonde, black, dark-brown, red, or white?

Facial Features

Is their skin smooth, wrinkled, pimply, or doughy?  Do they have thick eyebrows, thin eyebrows, or a unibrow? Is their nose long, fat, pointed, or crooked?  What color are their eyes? Blue, brown, green, gray, black, or hazel? Do they have long side burns, a mustache, a beard, or peach fuzz? Are there scars, moles, or warts on their faces?

Clothing

Jackets, sweaters, hoodies, T-shirts, jerseys, blouses, vests, skirts, pants, shorts, sandals, flip flops, boots, pumps, sneakers, loafers

Personalities

Introverted, pessimistic, out-going, gregarious, friendly, caring, loud, bossy, bully, cruel, demanding, silly, jokester, class-clown, teacher’s pet, flirtatious, flattering, sneaky, conniving, gossipy, snobbish, busy body, smart, clever, witty, ignorant, dim-witted

Habits

Cracks knuckles, chews fingernails, talks fast, talks slow, talks loud or soft, burps or farts in front of others, eats with mouth open

One way your students can further develop their characters’ personalities is to use them in different stories, the way Tom Clancy did with Jack Ryan; Clive Cussler with Dirk Pitt; and Agatha Christie with Miss Marple. In time, your students will begin to think: This is what John would do. Mary would never say or act that way.

Until your students become adept at developing their characters, have them limit the number of people who populate their stories.

“But Brittany, Melissa, Karen, Nancy, Cecelia, and Rita really did go to the mall with me,” they might say. If that’s the case, talk to them about writing stories that don’t require so many characters.

You may want to select books your students have previously read to show how the authors created their characters. More than that, share with your students stories you’ve written to model your expectations.