One of the things that I have always struggled with when writing about characters is injecting them with life. Giving them those little traits that make them feel alive to the reader. As I have taken to writing in the first person, this typically becomes a problem for the other characters in the story. Since you are inside the "cockpit" of the storyteller, you get their thoughts, emotions, motivations, and charming physical actions.
To help overcome this, I've been spending more time looking at people. Not just watching from a distance to see how they move, but talking to them. What motivates them? What do they think their annoying habits are? What do they think of their friends' annoying habits? What makes them a character? Do they have any peculiar mannerism? I think my fascination with humans and how they choose to interact with one another is fundamentally why I love reality TV.
However, lately, I haven't really needed to watch reality TV to watch people act in inappropriate and unprecedented ways. This new character I find so interesting popped into my life about a year or so ago. In many ways, he reminded me of kids I knew in high school. At the time we met, he had recently turned 18, so in some ways he was still a child when it comes to real life. I suppose what initially interested me in him was his outside appearance didn’t match up with how he acted or reacted to the people around me.
An oversized gold and silver belt buckle was the first thing that caught my eye. The thing had to be the size of a salad plate and made me wonder how he sat down without getting hurt. Blue jeans rough and worked looked painted on his thick muscular legs. His arms rested on his hips, re-directing attention to the larger than life buckle. His t-shirt was something that the dim-witted masses would find witty and likely purchased in the redneck isle of the local Big-mart. His lip bulged as it tried to hide a dip of tobacco far too large for it. The only thing that was missing from the picture was a proper 10-gallon hat. I supposed it was in the mud-covered truck that doubled as his bedroom.
I am from Montana, and sights like him are a dime a dozen. None of what I saw in that initial appearance marked him as anything other than your average cowboy ‘round these parts. But what did mark him as different was the company he chose to keep. If I had run into him at a bar, I wouldn’t have thought anything about this rather unremarkable kid. I was taken aback when I found him in the dressing room surrounded by drag queens in various stages of dress. He was helping one particular queen put herself together. He kept referring to her as “Mama.” Despite his rough and uncouth appearance, he was a perfect gentleman with this queen.
Mama took good care of her boy. And the cowboy youth found his way into many queer events. He was a defender of those who threatened to start a fire with their mere presence. His quiet, measured laughter echoed after any joke the queens told. But for Mama, he saved the belly-busting laughter of genuine amusement.
I tried to keep my distance from him, giving me a chance to watch him in his natural habitat. Something about my own preconceived notions of how a redneck should act around queers drew me in though. I talked with him and fell in love with the stories he would tell. And stories they were; tall stories.
A nineteen-year-old who swore he already served his time over in Kuwait. He sounded just like every other young vet I’d met, which made me forget that he wasn’t old enough to have the experience he was describing. The only thing that was missing was the obvious traits of PTSD that many soldiers have to one degree or another.
When I could get away and clear my head and actually think about what he was saying, I realized that he was full of shit. However, when you were there with him, something about the way he held your eyes in his made you suspend your disbelief. He was like a cobra, using his hood to hypnotize you and distract you from the truth. You didn’t even care that he was feeding you a line of bull, you just wanted to hear him tell it.
The more I interacted with him, the more I realized that
nearly everything (beyond his name) that came out of his mouth was a lie. He
seasoned every lie with just enough reality and truth to make you believe him.
And I realized that the reason people flocked to him was because of the
manufactured charisma that these stories gave him. I hoped that my friends could
see him for what he was, a modern snake oil salesman.
If I hadn’t met him, I probably would have believed him to
be a character in a story. I suppose, in some ways, he is a character in the
story of my life. However, watching him interact with friends and strangers
made me really think about the characters I write for stories or games. Do I
give them enough realism or are they cardboard cut outs that solely exist for
the protagonists to interact with? Should every character have mannerisms and
modes of dress that suggest a certain personality? And how do I give them just
enough to not steal the spotlight?
How do you give characters depth in your stories or games?
Feel free to comment below.
