Adding Depth To A Flat Character
Had I attempted to publish some of my very first stories, I
suspect I’d be getting a whole heck of a lot of negative reviews. Not because the plot wasn’t juicy
enough or the grammar sucked, but because my characters were about as lively as
nuns at a wet t-shirt contest.
I had this fear that if I gave them vices, the reader would
be turned off and quite possibly have me committed. So I wrote these perfect people in perfect lives that
stumble upon a road bump. No real tension or conflict going on
here. Just existing. This wasn’t really writing, not to me
at least, because I was holding back a little bit. Okay, a lot.
The truth was, these characters had a whole hell of a lot going on
inside my head—drug abuse, depression, and language that would make the
Osbournes blush—but I tamped them down and refused to let those pieces be a
part of their personality.
Why? Because I thought my characters
and their exciting adventures would stand on their own and leave the reader
feeling satisfied in spite of their wholesome selves.
Aside from the obvious, one of the bigger reasons why this
was such a monumental writing fail, is the fact that I was lying to myself
while the whole time. These
weren’t the same people chattering inside my head.
When I crack a book open, I’m looking for danger, conflict,
and only resolution at the end of a harrowing journey. I want characters that are so extreme
from what I already know, that they grab me and pull me under, leaving me
breathless while I refuse to come up for air until I KNOW that something is
going to go right for them. In
romance, it’s a given that someone’s going to end up happy in the end, so the
journey in between sure as hell better offer some surprises that make me forget
the forthcoming pink bow, sealed with a kiss.
The more extreme a character, the more thrilling the
conflict, the more satisfying the resolution. So these days when I write, I try not to hold anything back
and let the personality inside my head unfurl into the
story as it was meant to.
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