Being able to write realistic, consistent, multi-dimensional characters is vital to gaining reader interest. Doing so first requires we know a lot about who our characters are—you know, the obvious stuff: positive and negative traits, behavioral habits, desires, goals, and the like. But it’s not always the obvious parts of characterization that create the most intrigue. What about the things your character is hiding?

Everyone hides. We hide the goals we know are wrong for us, opinions that may turn others against us, or feelings and desires that make us feel vulnerable—basically anything with the potential for rejection or shame.

The same should be true for our characters. When characters are cagey out of a need to protect themselves from emotional harm, readers understand that. It makes the characters more authentic and can pique your readers’ interest as they try to figure out the secret or worry over what will happen when it comes to light.

7 Things Your Character Is Hiding

To add this layer of depth to your characters, you first need to know what’s taboo in their minds—not only what they’re hiding, but why. Here are some common things your character may feel compelled to conceal from others.

1. Desires

Desires are an important part of who your characters are. These desires drive their actions and decisions in the story. While these wants are often transparent, there are situations in which the character may not feel comfortable sharing them.

Maybe she’s secretly pining for her sister’s ex, or she longs for a career forbidden by her parents, or she wants to fight her boss’s unethical behavior but is afraid of losing her job.

Forbidden or dangerous desires can add an element of risk, upping the stakes for the character and making things more interesting for readers.

2. Fears

Everyone has fears. Many of those fears are perfectly acceptable, which makes it safe for us to share them. It’s the ones that make us feel weak or lessen us in the eyes of others that we keep in the dark.

Think about really debilitating fears, such as being afraid of a certain people group, physical intimacy, or of leaving one’s house.

Fears like these should always come from somewhere—maybe from a wounding event or negative past influencers. Make sure there’s a good reason for whatever your character is afraid of.

3. Negative Past Events

Speaking of wounding events, we each have defining moments from the past that we’re reluctant to share with others or even acknowledge ourselves.

What’s something that could have happened to your characters that they’ll go to great lengths to keep hidden? What failures or humiliating moments might they alter in their own memories to keep from facing them?

Wounds are formative on many levels, so it’s important to figure out what those are and how they may impact the character.

4. Flaws and Insecurities

Being flawed is part of the human experience. There are things about ourselves we don’t want to examine too closely and which we definitely don’t want others to know about.

For characters, these flaws often manifest as insecurities or negative traits (such as being weak-willed, unintelligent, or vain). Whether these weaknesses are real or only perceived, characters will try to downplay them.

But part of their journey to fulfillment includes facing the truth and acknowledging the part their flaws play in holding them back. To write their complete journeys, your need to know what weaknesses they’re keeping under wraps.

5. Unhealthy Behaviors

Sometimes characters exhibit behaviors or habits they know aren’t good for them. Maybe these behaviors stem from a wounding event or an unhealthy desire. Maybe they really want to change, but they don’t know how.

Whether it’s an unhealthy relationship with food, a gambling addiction, or a compulsion to self-harm, they’ll expend a lot of energy to keep these behaviors hidden.

Revealing these behaviors to readers, while hiding them from other characters, is a great way to remain true to the human experience while also building reader interest.

6. Uncomfortable Emotions

While it’s healthy to embrace and express a range of emotions, characters are not always comfortable with all the feelings. This may occur with emotions that are tied to a negative event from the past. It may be an emotion that makes the character feel vulnerable or is culturally unacceptable.

The character will want to mask any uncomfortable emotions, often disguising them as something else: embarrassment is replaced with self-deprecation, or fear manifests as anger. This duality of emotion is important because it humanizes characters for readers and adds a layer of authenticity that might otherwise be missing.

7. Opinions and Ideas

Everyone wants to be liked. To gain the respect of others, we often go so far as to sacrifice honesty.

If an opinion isn’t popular, your characters may keep it to themselves. If they have good ideas others won’t appreciate, they won’t share them—or they’ll get the ideas out there in a way that allows them to avoid taking ownership.

Peer acceptance is important to everyone; that need, and the secrets that accompany it, are something that every reader will be able to relate to.

By BECCA PUGLISI

Source: writershelpingwriters.net

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By September C. Fawkes

In the writing community, a crisis (also known as a “dilemma”) happens when a character has to choose between two opposing things. And he can’t have both.

Shawn Coyne, author and creator of The Story Grid, breaks crises down into two types:

a. The Best Bad Choice

The character has to choose between two negative options.

Ex. Katniss Everdeen has to either kill Peeta, or risk killing herself.

b. Irreconcilable Goods

The character has to choose between two positive options.

Ex. A protagonist has to choose between the job of her dreams, or the man of her dreams.

While the categories are helpful when teaching and talking about crises, in many stories, the options may not be obviously “good” or “bad.” For example, in The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins gets called on an adventure. He has two options: Refuse and continue to live his predictable life, which invites a sort of personal stagnation, or accept and risk danger and death, which include gaining personal experience and growth. From the audience’s perspective, we may say that going on the adventure is the best, and obvious choice, but that isn’t how it looks to the character. Each option has both negative and positive stakes tied to them: Stay safe and alive, but somewhat stagnant, or risk danger and death, and grow through experience.

While traditionally crises are talked about with pairs of options, it’s technically possible to have more than two things to choose from—the keys are that the choice needs to be difficult, irreconcilable, and hard—if not impossible—to reverse (at least not without significant ramifications). It’s also possible that in some crises, not making a choice is an option, but for that to work, it needs strong stakes.

The crisis is a moment where we lay out current stakes and the directions the story could go, depending on what the character chooses. This reinforces the character’s agency, and what the character selects will reveal a lot about him or her. In fact, a crisis is one of the most effective ways to reveal true character.

When Katniss chooses to risk killing herself over simply killing Peeta, it reveals that, when it gets down to it, she’s more willing to sacrifice herself in an effort to protect the innocent, than others to benefit herself. In contrast, President Snow and the Capitol repeatedly pick the opposite. When a character chooses her dream job over her dream man, it shows she values her career more than her romantic relationships. And when Bilbo accepts Gandalf’s invitation, it reveals he’d ultimately rather risk danger and death to experience adventure.

A crisis helps indicate a character’s true belief system. It’s easy to proclaim we will do something when there are no stakes or competing choices. I might insist repeatedly that I always tell the truth . . . but if telling the truth could get me fired, leaving my family with little to eat, I face a difficult decision. Do I value honesty or food more? To dig a little deeper, we may ask why I value one over the other, or how I came to value one over the other.

Crises can also be very effective in character arcs. If you are writing about a protagonist who changes because of the story, you may use a crisis at the beginning of the story to reveal what the character initially values. For example, I may show our protagonist choosing her work over her boyfriend. At the end, you may choose a similar crisis to show how the character now believes differently. Our protagonist chooses the man of her dreams over the job of her dreams. If you are writing a steadfast (also known as a flat-arc) protagonist, you will show how the protagonist ultimately chooses the same option, despite the added pressure of the climax. Katniss initially chooses to risk sacrificing herself to protect Prim. Regardless of what the Games have tempted her to do, she ultimately makes the same choice to try to protect Peeta.

Because crises emphasize agency, they also put responsibility on the protagonist. When he chooses an option, he’s also choosing its ramifications. If Katniss killed Peeta, she’d have to live with that, but she’d be safe. Because she didn’t, she puts herself, family, and ultimately all of the districts at risk. She now has to deal with the consequences of that.

Crises can be a great way to create internal conflict and also plant seeds of doubt and regret, as the character may be haunted by her choices and the accountability they bring.

Using crises will strengthen any story, particularly by revealing character.

Source: writershelpingwriters.net

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