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Characters Define Story

Sean Howard
9 min readJun 4, 2018

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I’m always working to improve the characters in my stories. When I started, I focused on structure and plot. But improv and recent experiences have taught me that while those things are important, for our audience the story is defined by the characters.

I will be approaching this topic with a serialized Audio Fiction lens. New to audio fiction? Start here.

As a listener of audio fiction, I’m willing to overlook a lot of things. Production values can be close to non-existent. Sound design can be heavy-handed. Levels can wobble erratically. I’ll even put up with using tape recorder or audio log framing devices (all my rants aside.)

So many of the shows out there have really great ideas at their core. And this is super awesome. But ideas and even plots are not what hold me as an audience. The stories I wait for every week with bated breath are the ones where I am attached to the characters and their stakes in the story.

I can be in love with them or utterly despise them. The valence doesn’t matter. There just has to be a strong emotional connection. And those are the stories I am addicted to.

I certainly haven’t mastered creating powerful characters, but I do have some rules-of-thumb that I’ve gathered from much more talented people and that help me to create stronger characters, on stage and in my writing.

Strong Characters have Strong Points of View

In improv, we have to get up on stage and create a story out of nothing. And so we spend a lot of time exploring what makes for a great story. And time and again we come back to one thing — strong characters with strong points of view.

Strong characters have distinct and non-negotiable points-of-view. They see the world in very specific ways. And they process the world they see through their emotions, background and social influences. They might not see an unfolding situation the way the audience or their scene-mates expect them to. So their emotional reaction might surprise us or concern us.

A character with a strong point of view stands out from the other characters. Their point of view directly affects their actions and emotional state. Add in their needs and wants and a single other entity on stage and you have the opportunity for instant conflict, comedy, tragedy or drama.

Here are some questions you can ask to help define your characters and the points of view:

  • What do your characters want and how do they justify this? Or better, what do they need that others might judge harshly?
  • How far will they go to get what they need or want? What would they risk their lives to get? What would they jump through a glass window to get?
  • And if you are writing comedy, what crucial skill(s) are they lacking to achieve what they are driven to accomplish or acquire? How are they unaware of or compensating for this lack of ability?

Some signs that your characters may not have a strong point of view:

There is a lack of conflict in your scenes. We all have insecurities and unspoken needs that drive our behaviour. What is your character desperate to get, but also afraid to ask for? How can you heighten this? Try giving a character a trait, as an exercise, where they want something socially unacceptable to the situation. Is your character a doctor? Give them a sudden urge to run around buck naked. Are they a child? Give them a desire to perform live surgery. What happens? If the scene improves, then you just need to work on making this character’s motivations and needs/wants stronger drivers of their behaviour.

Readers/listeners aren’t sure why your character is in a scene. In improv, we call this “being nice.” It’s a common problem as we all just want to get along and help each other. But this is not how the world works and certainly not how interesting comedy, drama or tragedy happens. Is one of your characters being nice to just help the scene move along? What happens when they stop being nice? There’s nothing wrong with having a character sit nicely through a scene and then suddenly step forward and make their needs felt as a way to drive a scene forward. But if they don’t add anything, cut them from the scene.

Conflict and Raising the Stakes

This is really a continuation of the strong-point-of-view conversation.

You know a character is strong when you can drop them into just about any scene and immediately find conflict or the stakes increasing. Your characters have wants and needs and even perspectives on the world that should not mesh perfectly with other characters. There is no such thing as two people who always see eye-to-eye and who will always get along.

In the Alba Salix writers room, we are always pushing back on early draft scenes for more conflict. It’s a fairy tale world of sunshine, pet werewolves and incompetent but friendly staff. And it’s easy to just write a feel-good scene in this world.

But comedy, drama, tragedy and pretty much any story, rely on conflict and the raising of stakes. In B-movie horror films, this would be an external conflict — a disaster or monster striking the downtown. “What now, Doctor Herzang?!”

You don’t need natural disasters or monsters. People raise the stakes on each other all the time. Characters are no different.

They do it by not seeing eye-to-eye: Magnus thinks he is ready to be a surgeon in Alba Salix, Royal Physician. This never ends well, but it makes for great comedy and conflict.

They do it by sharing their deepest fears: Caleb shares his fears and feelings regarding Adam early on in The Bright Sessions. It’s just Caleb speaking to his therapist and it is some of the most gripping audio storytelling on the planet.

They do it by letting the world know they are not being given what they damn well deserve. See ANY scene in Attention Hellmart Shoppers.

Here are some questions to ask if you have a scene where there just isn’t enough conflict happening and the pace is dragging.

  • Who is doing or saying something that doesn’t really align with how they see the world? What if they are trying to say something to you? What if they are just playing nice to fulfill the story you had bulleted out, but really they need to say something dangerous or angry or scary in this scene?
  • How are each of your characters feeling about this situation? Walk through and look at each of them. Write out what they are feeling. Now write these feelings into the script but make them bolder, louder and more present. What happens? Does conflict start to emerge? Does your scene start to pick up?
  • Sometimes a character just needs to drop a bomb into a scene. Maybe it’s a pleasant chat over tea, but you feel like the scene is stuck and not moving. Before you cut it, which is always an option, try having one of the character blurt out something they’ve been afraid to say for some time. See what happens next.

Some signs you may want to review your character’s stakes in a scene:

The scene lacks oomph or seems to be dragging. Check in with your characters. What do they REALLY want from this scene? Is that congruent with how they are acting in the scene? Or have they become “nice” to help move the plot forward?

You can’t answer the question: what’s their relationship? We are social creatures. It’s all about relationships. And if there is no relationship between the two or more characters in your scene, then there is likely a challenge in creating stakes that matter for your character. See the next section.

Relationships

Characters interest us as a result of their relationships. An angry, incompetent man is potentially of some interest but it would be hard to hold that interest without relationships. Place this man in a dysfunctional family with a loving wife, an out-of-control son and a scientist/jazz musician daughter and we have a show.

It’s in the relationships that the stories and conflict come to life. It’s also when we start caring.

We shouldn’t ask our audience to care about a story more than the characters do. If our characters don’t have any strong relationships, then they aren’t emotionally invested. Full stop. They have to be invested if you want your audience to be invested.

Some signs you may want to review the relationships in your show:

Your character can take it or leave it. When you are writing your character interacting with others, there should be moments where they feel extreme emotion in their relationships. They could feel trapped, confused, scared, unstoppable laughter, out of control, etc. If instead, they really don’t feel that strongly about anything that is going on, then you may need to focus less on character quirks and more on why this relationship with the other individual is critically important to them.

You can’t sum up the relationships of your main characters. First, don’t beat yourself up. This is a normal part of the process for many, if not all of us. Even when we think we have nailed it all down, something will happen and we will realize we’re no longer sure what the motivations are of a couple of characters in a scene together. And time and again, this is because their relationship has changed and we didn’t see it happening. So we spend some time defining their relationship and the scene starts to move again.

A Consistent Voice

One of the biggest mistakes I struggle with when I write is what I call character drift. An individual starts being seriously concerned and driven by something in the world only to forget all about their motivation in order to serve a cool plot device or idea I had for a scene.

It feels worse than a character who has no direction. When a character starts out with such a strong sense of self and motivation, the audience feels the loss of this clarity all the more markedly. It’s as if clarity and purpose has been ripped away.

This is a hard one to catch.

Some signs to watch for:

Your character is suddenly agreeing with everyone. It’s easy to just want to be nice with our characters. To have them help an old lady cross the street or help out a really stressed character having a meltdown. But if your character is OCD and late for a dentist appointment, don’t be afraid to have them bump that little old lady out of the way as they scramble to cross the street, or give them two opposing things to achieve!

Your character is just shouting at people. This has happened to me a few times. A character begins with a very clear point-of-view and set of needs in the world that were at odds with the others around them. And with time, they just become the argumentative one. The answer here is not to lose their motivation, but to bring them back to their relationships. Even insanely needy people and insane types need friends.

A Writing Group

One of the best ways to find out how much of a handle you have on your characters is to hold a weekly writing group where you review your work. I recommend a group of fellow writers whom you trust and have rapport with.

The idea is to share drafts, not final pieces. This takes a lot of trust and vulnerability, but in the right group, it pays off in spades. In my writing group we read our latest drafts out loud and then we get feedback on where the story worked, didn’t work or stood out for them as listeners/readers.

All humans are built for stories. While writing a good story takes years of endless effort, listening to a story is hardwired into us. Your fellow writers should be able to point out immediately when your character’s motivations aren’t clear or are drifting in a scene. Because to them, the character is a real entity and any behaviour that surprises them is worth taking note of as a writer.

“Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”
– Neil Gaiman

I don’t believe in extensive critiques that are overly harsh. Instead, we just raise where a story thrilled or excited us or where the story lagged or if we noticed characters lacking motivation or acting in unexpected ways based on the story told so far.

One last note. If a scene is just not working and you have a bunch of characters in it, try taking it down to just two or three characters. Get the core of it working and then work back in additional characters, as needed. But now the core relationships should be defined and working.

Your Thoughts?

There are so many ways to create compelling characters and I am anything but an expert. I look forward to your ideas, rules of thumb or suggestions!

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Sean Howard is the co-creator with Eli McIlveen of Alba Salix, Royal Physician and the GM behind The End of Time and Other Bothers. He can be reached via Twitter or email.

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Sean Howard

Sean is a brand marketer, podcaster and co-founder of Fable and Folly. https://fableandfolly.com/