Creating Characters in Concert

Designing the characters around your protagonist to contribute to their growth

How do you create characters? Do they come to you intuitively, or do you design them? How do you flesh them out from your initial sketches? For a lot of people, it’s with character questionnaires. You’ll find questions like:

• what is your character’s favorite childhood memory?
• what kinds of clothes do they wear?
• does your character have a good relationship with their parents?
• when is their birthday? Do they like to celebrate it? How?

Adding these kinds of details can bring about realism to small moments, perhaps, but once you’ve done this for the, say, six main characters you have planned, how do you fit them together? Do you try? How do you know they even belong in the same book?

Haphazard character development can make it harder to achieve story goals. Just like we talked about when it comes to intentionally building a world, having characters around your protagonist who believe different things about the theme will force your character to go through the change you want her to.

The solution to this is, once again, found in Truby’s The Anatomy of Story. One of his main, and perhaps more controversial, topics in that book is about character development. He says,

The single biggest mistake writers make when creating characters is that they thing of the hero and all other characters as separate individuals. Their hero is alone, in a vacuum, unconnected to others. The result is not only a weak hero but also cardboard opponents and minor characters who are even weaker. (Truby, 57)

What is his solution? Creating characters as part of a web.

Introducing the Character Web

Truby continues from above, saying, “A character is often defined by who he is not. Each time you compare a character to your hero, you force yourself to distinguish the hero in new ways.” (Truby, 57)

Truby recommends starting with an idea of the role a character will play in the story — antagonist, sidekick, love interest, etc. — and then fleshing them out from there based on theme. “Theme,” he says, “is your view of the proper way to act in the world, expressed through your characters as they take action in the plot.” (Truby, 71)

Theme, in Truby’s definition, isn’t a grand concept like love or adventure. it’s the message your story tells, intentionally or not, so you may as well make it intentional. This isn’t the same as setting out to get a message across, and forcing the characters to be “mouthpiece[s] for your ideas.” (Truby, 109) Rather,

Good writers express their moral vision slowly and subtly…Your moral vision is communicated by how your hero pursues his goal while competing with one or more opponents and by what your hero learns, or fails to learn, over the course of the struggle. (Truby, 109, emphasis mine)

Some examples of themes he provides (pp 112–113):

• When you find your one true love, you must commit to that person with your whole heart.
• A little lying and cheating are OK if you bring down an evil man
• Sacrificing for family is more important than striving for personal glory
• A man who tries to force everyone to love him ends up alone
• A person lives a much happier life when he gives to others

These are all far more specific than “love” or “happiness,” but you could probably write a dozen stories about each one.

When you’re first designing a story, you probably won’t have a super fine point on what the theme is. This is totally fine. I firmly believe in, well, building a novel layer by layer and taking it one step at a time.

Four-Corner Opposition

I wouldn’t be who I am today if I had different parents, or a different sister, or dated different people. Have you ever heard that you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with? That’s going to be true for your characters as well. They’re shaped by the people around them, whether it’s the people they’ve known their whole lives or the people they meet on the way.

The way Truby recommends showing this on the page is by what he calls four-corner opposition. This is a fancy term for “make sure the characters on the page disagree with each other.” In that way, we can define our characters by what they disagree about, and then use those disagreements to help them grow.

In four-corner opposition, you set up not just a protagonist/antagonist line of conflict, but conflict that extends to four people in the group who know (of) each other. Think about how in a family of four, you have not only conflict between husband and wife, but conflict between husband and son, husband and daughter, wife and son, wife and daughter, and son and daughter, all of which influence each other.

Look at the four main characters in your story. This will often, but not always, be some combination of protagonist, antagonist, mentor, sidekick, and love interest, although a secondary antagonist or a second mentor is also an option. We’re then going to learn about them not via a questionnaire akin to a census, but by comparison.

There are five criteria Truby sets up (pp 95–99) for how to use four-corner opposition effectively.

1. Each character should attack the protagonist's weakness in a different way.
2. Ideally each character should be in conflict not only with the protagonist but with each other.
3. The values of each character should conflict with the values of each other character.
4. Push each character to the corner — make them as different from one another as possible.
5. Extend this opposition to every level of the story. For instance, within a family, within a society, and within the world at large.

Let’s look at an example of this below, starting with defining characters by their relationship to the theme, and then moving into the four-corner opposition steps above.

Creating a Character Web

Defining Characters by Their Relationship to the Theme

When I built up the world of Enchantress, the thematic question became “What does one do with power?” As I’ve worked through revising it, I’ve made certain that every character has an answer to this question. Everyone but Celeste is certain of their position at the beginning of the book. Two of the cast change their minds by the end of the book, and two do not.

I made sure that each main character has a line on the page that defines their relationship to the theme fairly early on, too.

Celeste’s mother, Catherine: Women do not have power except in how they influence the men around them, so they should marry someone who will let them lead from within the home to wrest what power they can.

“You have good and just ideas and, with the right access to power, you could change not only your situation but the situations of everyone in the chateau and the villages nearby. There is no better way for a woman to access that power than by marrying the right man, one eager to mold, one intent on pleasing his bride. … I’m telling you, what you seek to gain through magic can be gained in significantly less risky ways.”

Celeste’s brother Adam, the bastard “prince”: Power is given by birthright — to men — and should be exuded to keep what we are due. Power that belongs to others should be taken and exploited.

“You tell me you have power like the fairy godmother and you think you can disappear? You, Celeste, have given me the best birthday present I could possibly have received. Thank you.”

The mentor enchantress, Marie-Louise: If people are born with magical powers, they should use them.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think your mother was intentionally leading you astray, mademoiselle. She told you your magic was to be used on objects and not people? To work calmly? And rarely?”

…

“Your magic is powered by your emotions, and tuning in to them is the only way to effect great change. You must feel the magic in a way that is beyond words, beyond understanding, and it will flow through you.”

“Just feel it,” Celeste said. “Just feel? How is that advice for how to control this power?”

“You’re saying that as if they are different, Celeste. What I’m telling you is they’re the same.”

Renee, the scientist who lives as a man for the sake of her work: Power should not be used for selfish gain, but for the greater good of a community.

Renee does not express her feelings on power explicitly in the first half of the book, but her feelings are mirrored in a minor character in the first scene of the book. By the time we get to her stating it outright, it is clear she has always believed this.

When asked why a master artisan in a local village, doesn’t move to Paris where he can make more money, he says:

“The nobility are a hassle. No one and nothing is worth weaving myself into their games.”

He insists playing games to siphon power from the nobility isn’t worth it, and this is an opinion Renee the scientist shares.

Creating Four-Corner Opposition

Now that we know how everyone feels about the theme, we can develop them deeper, and push them into corners. I’m listing five main characters here, but below I’ll show which four-corner oppositions they fall into.

It’s also worth noting that when I originally did this exercise, after my first draft and before my second, I had different answers here, and the duke played a much more important role. I also think that this can be a little bit oversimplifying, and it will grow in complexity on the page. It might look hollow when set up this way. That’s fine. Completing this also doesn’t mean it’s definitely the way it will turn out, but it gives a jumping-off point for organic relationships to grow.

Celeste:

• Weakness: people-pleaser, content to follow
• Values: justice, magic, learning, family
• Conflicts with the other main characters: with her mother over her choice to marry, with her brother over who calls the shots with her power, with Renee over when justice should be exacted, with the duke over their wedding.

Catherine:

• Attacks on Celeste’s weakness: molds Celeste by wanting her to marry the duke
• Values: control, power, family
• Conflicts with the other main characters: with Adam over his own use of power, with Marie-Louise over their rules for magic, with Renee over her relationship with Celeste

Adam:

• Attacks on Celeste’s weakness: tries to mold Celeste to do his bidding, annexing her power to be his
• Values: himself, money, status, power
• Conflicts with the other main characters: with the duke over who gets control of his chateau, with Catherine over the decisions he makes, with Marie-Louise and Renee whenever they try to do something outside what he wants them to do

Marie-Louise:

• Attacks on Celeste’s weakness: encourages her to use her power often, and for whatever she wants
• Values: magic, connections, family
• Conflicts with the other main characters: with Catherine and Renee, separately, over how Celeste uses her power.

Renee:

• Attacks on Celeste’s weakness: encourages her to figure out what she stands for and draw lines in the sand around them
• Values: science, love, a simple life
• Conflicts with the other main characters: with Catherine over the decorum of her relationship with Celeste (further complicated by no one but Celeste knowing she’s female), with Marie-Louise over Celeste’s growing affinity to magic, with the duke over Celeste (kind of).

Combinations of four-corner oppositions:

Managing the Chateau Conflict: Celeste/Duke/Adam/Catherine

In this combination, the four characters disagree on how the chateau should be run, and who should run it.

“Love Triangle” Conflict: Celeste/Duke/Jean/Renee

In this combination, the four characters end up in conflict because of conflicting goals in love and marriage.

Magic Conflict: Celeste/Catherine/Adam/Marie-Louise

In this combination, the characters disagree mainly about why and when magic should be used.

Final Thoughts

Much of the conflict and character arc in this book is about the two opposing influences of Marie-Louise and Renee on Celeste’s magic. If she listens to one, she’ll learn one lesson, and if she listens to the other, she’ll learn something entirely different. Who she becomes is shaped by the people she chooses to associate with. If neither of them were in her life, the story wouldn’t happen.

Applying This Technique

Whether you’ve started to develop characters for your book already or not, look at how they relate to each other. How can you use one character’s values to show how another character is different? How can they be in conflict with one another?

Remember, too, that the values of whoever wins the conflict will be assumed as the theme of the story, so take into account how your protagonist and antagonist approach the central problem. Whose method of solving the conflict works? Does that method working lead to the message you want it to?

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