Making characters that stick in your readers’ brains is one of the most fun and satisfying parts of writing fiction. But, y’know, there are a lot of characters out there. Like, a lot a lot.
So how do you make your characters stand out?
A simple and fun way to make characters feel more unusual
You can try this right now!
Pick one of your characters, then pick an animal that shares some traits with them. Now you can describe them as if they were that animal.
Et voila, that’s… kind of it. Sounds almost too simple, but it works.
Now, the important part is that this isn’t supposed to be a simple simile that you trot out whenever you need to fill a descriptive gap. If you’ve decided that Brian Bobbins is like a horse, don’t just say ‘he looked like a horse’.
What you do instead is use horse-related terms, so perhaps Brian doesn’t say things, he whinnies or neighs. Maybe he trots or gallops from one place to another. He might have blinkers on. He’s probably got a long face. Instead of hair, you can talk about his mane.
It doesn’t have to be simplistically horsey vocalubary, either. More tangentially equine things can come in to add some flavour to how you talk about Brian: he might chomp at the bit, fall at hurdles, ride roughshod over things, and so on and so forth.
Or if someone’s a bit bird-like, perhaps you have them flapping around, preening, cooing, or taking shits on landmarks. (Maybe not that last one so much.)
Example
Here are two characters I’ve just made up out of thin air: Phyllis and Norbert. I’ve assigned each of them an animal – I’m not gonna come right out and tell you, but you should be able to work out who’s got what. Hopefully, it gives you something of an image of who these people are – and does so more effectively than blunter or more factual description.
“I’m sick of it,” barked Phyllis. “You never wash up!”
Norbert stared at her with wide eyes. “Now, darling,” he blubbed, “don’t be like that…”
Phyllis shook her head. When she got her teeth into an argument, she didn’t let go. “I need you to do more, Norbert,” she told him.
“I want to,” he said, flopping around in distress.
“I know you do,” she said more gently. If she’d had a tail, it would have started wagging in sympathy. “But I’m not going to fetch everything for you anymore.”
Norbert opened and closed his mouth pathetically, then turned away and drifted off.
That was a very clumsy and hasty example written in five minutes, and in reality you wouldn’t want to overdo it like I have there, but perhaps it gives you some idea of what this technique has to offer!
I can’t remember where I picked this one up, so deepest apologies to whomever came up with it, but I learned this trick a while back and… well, often forget to apply it. In my head, though, characters often have these kinds of associations that make it easier for me to visualise them, hear their voices, and work out how they would react in situations.
Widen the scope: the possibilities are endless
I’ve talked about animals here because that’s the one I remember learning, but of course it doesn’t have to just be animals. You could pick anything, really. If it adds a layer of sensory imagery, or characterisation, or it just feels fun and memorable, any basis for a metaphor will do.
For a book I’ll be able to say more about soon, the antagonist is often described in terms of wine. His clothes, voice, and features are relayed with words like ‘dry’, ‘fruity’, ‘aromatic’, ‘syrupy’ – and it’s often mentioned that his outward appearance is like a perfumed smell masking an underlying rot. So I don’t stick too religiously to using wine-related words, but thinking of him in that way gives me a bit of an angle to play around with, a way of expressing things about him that feels both unusual and internally consistent.
Give it a go!
Try this trick on for size and see what you think. If it doesn’t work for you, no problem, but I found it gave me new and more interesting ways of thinking about how to tell my readers about my characters.
For more tips on creating compelling characters, as well as other topics in writing, check out my tips and resources hub.
Chris Durston 