Writing Three-Dimensional Characters in Fiction
Inside Voice, Outside Voice: Tips & Traits for Great Characters
Jul 15, 2009
Writing good characters in fiction is an art with many aspects. Writers are familiar with "three-dimensional characters" and "two-dimensional characters": so what makes a character three-dimensional? Think about it, and it becomes pretty clear: a three-dimensional character has an inside and an outside.
On the inside, a well-written character will have motivating forces, desires, fears and ethics that drive their inner life; on the outside, this character will display habits, personality traits, mannerisms, cultural tendencies and styles that are visible (or audible, tangible or perhaps unfortunately odiferous!) to others.
Two different writing techniques fit within this paradigm. Below, find out how to build interesting characters from the outside to the inside; then, alternatively, learn how to write great characters starting with their inner selves and extending out to their surfaces.
Writing From the Inside to the Outside
This technique develops external character traits from character emotions and personal qualities. As always, write from life: contrary to popular belief, this doesn't mean only using concrete personal experience, however. An emotion or a connection with something the writer finds compelling works just as well. Internal attributes include morals, ethics, emotional responses and general personality traits like those found in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
As an example: Jane the writer lives a quiet life, but she's always been fascinated by war stories. She reads the accounts of veterans and their devastating experiences in battle, and decides to write about a character who has been in a war and was traumatized by the experience.
Her character, she decides, has a self-destructive impulse: if he's afraid something bad will happen, he tries to bring it on himself to end the uncertainty. Because of this, he doesn't hold jobs for very long. He's also an extremely honorable man and would never practice deception or desert a friend in need.
In this example, there are two internal traits (self-destructive impulse, extremely honorable) and an external trait (doesn't hold jobs very long.) There is also a seed for a plot: what if he were in the perfect job at last – then discovered a company conspiracy that could hurt one of his friends?
In order to make sure she gets the details right, Jane makes certain to read up on the experiences of real war veterans while beginning and drafting her story.
Writing From the Outside to the Inside
This technique uses external attributes to reach for internal character development. Examples of external traits include the character's job, dress style, habits, mannerisms, facial expressions and sometimes physical attributes (the latter leads to the question: When is it correct to assign a character personality traits based on what their body looks like? The answer to that question is complex, but the simple version is that the writer should take care to remember and avoid cliches and stereotypes. A stereotype is almost never a three-dimensional character.)
Dave the writer thinks up a picture of a character in his mind: A female doctor who has a weakness for expensive shoes, speaks nervously, and always dates losers.
In this case, the question to ask is why? And two writers asking why will come up with different sets of reasons. Let's say Dave asks Jane to come up with a character profile from this description while he also writes his own profile. "Okay," says Jane, and sets out to write.
Jane writes a character who comes from an affluent family where both parents were doctors, and faced pressure to succeed from an early age. This character likes expensive shoes because they let her relax and "just be pretty" for a while; she speaks nervously because at a young age she was surrounded by people telling her she was wrong; and she dates losers because she doesn't want to marry, just have wild flings and then kick them out of her life.
Dave's character, on the other hand, comes from a poor neighborhood; she buys expensive shoes because they remind her that she'll never have to starve again. She speaks nervously because she unconsciously feels like an imposter, and she dates losers because knowing she's superior to them makes her feel more deserving of the good things in her life.
The advantage of this character development method is that it can generate many different three-dimensional characters and many different stories by starting with a few ideas.
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