How I choose Characters

Before I write the first word, I create characters with names, backgrounds, strengths, weaknesses, relationships. Most of the time this process only involves the

protagonist

Protagonist:

The primary person in the story. The protagonist has a hand in every scene, whether direct or indirect. He is always present. I really dig in and continuously build a vision for the reader that speaks to personality, strengths, weaknesses, ups, downs, attitude, everything. My goal is to make the reader feel as if they know the protagonist personally.

Antagonist:

My antagonist's purpose is to counteract the protagonist. He is part two of the overall story character structure. It doesn’t have to be a good vs evil thing, but more like a serious difference of opinion. For example, my friend Jerome likes the Kansas City Chiefs. I like the Arizona Cardinals. When they play each other, he’s he’s hoping like hell my Cards lose and I’m doing the same for his team. At the end of the game, we go our separate ways and repeat the following weekend. Now put the scenario in a suspense thriller setting and watch Jerome morph into an ax murderer.

Others:

Supporting characters is just as important, but I try to keep it to a minimum, or things can get murky, especially if names get similar. I once wrote in a female character named Sean, and a male character named Shawn. Imagine my surprise that after only a few chapters, I had already screwed up the spelling and totally forgot who was Sean and who was Shawn.

Do characters need to have flaws? In my most humble opinion, yes, they do. Everyone has a skeleton or two lurking. Find it. Exploit it. Leave it for the reader to make their own judgment about it and then move on.

I sometimes create characters with conflicting character traits. For instance, in one of my earlier works, I introduced my protagonist as a hard-hitting, no holds barred, absolute brute of a manger. Everyone who worked for him feared him like the dickens. In actuality, he was the opposite. Away from the office he was a wimpy, wimp fraud, afraid of his own shadow. It was fun wiring him from both angles.

I don’t stress over names. I take into consideration the cultural environment, country of origin, and sex. And that’s about it. I use Scrivener (more on that in another post) for all of my first drafts. It has an excellent name generator built in and I will occasionally use it, but mostly I choose whatever name comes to mind as I’m thinking of the character.

Probably the two most important things I consider when choosing character names are, one, make the name something I can easily type. And two, refrain from falling into the name/gender trap. I know I could easily type a character’s name a hundred times in a book of novel length. It makes no sense to hinder myself from the beginning with a name I struggle to type. It’s also easy to fall into the name/gender trap I described earlier with Shawn, or was it Sean? See what I mean?

Mostly, though, I just have fun with it.