Imagine that you have your heart set on passing a really difficult exam. Hundreds of students from across the country will write it with you. You begin to prepare for it as early as two years before the scheduled date. It's likely that you will choose to make friends with other students who have the same goal. Your free time is spent preparing for it, discussing it with your friends, or thinking about it. Your parents try to help you out in any way that they can, from giving you multiple cups of coffee to serving as back-up alarm clocks. You will frequent libraries more than coffee shops and your wardrobe is oriented accordingly.
Do you see what's happening here? The pursuit of one goal spills over and makes itself felt in different aspects of your life. It’s the same when you develop a character. A character has one primary motivation that drives her to carry on. This is called the "want" of a character. It is what the character really, truly, desperately wants.
All our favourite literary characters have strong wants. George from George's Marvellous Medicine wanted to cure his grandmother's grumpiness, Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables wanted a home, Matilda from Matilda wanted to read books, learn from them, and become wise, and Katniss from The Hunger Games wanted to survive.
J K Rowling spells out her characters' wants with the introduction of the Mirror of Erised in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone . In the mirror, Harry sees what he so desperately wants: his family. When it's Ron's turn at the mirror, he too sees what he wants the most: fame and glory that will help him step out of his brothers' shadow.
When you work on creating a character for your story, think about what it is that the character deeply wants. It has to be so strong that he must be willing to risk his life for it. What is his primary motivation? How does this influence the character's personality? Does it have a bearing on his interactions with other people? What is his relationship with his parents like? Who are the sort of people he makes friends with?
As you answer these questions, you will arrive at a set of resultant qualities. Build on these answers to understand how your character's tastes and hobbies reflect his personality. Add more details. What does the character sound like? What language does he speak? How long is his hair? Where does he live? Charlie Bucket from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory lives in a tiny house with both his parents and four grandparents. What sort of clothes do you think he wears? What sort of food does he like? Give your readers a picture of your character.
Consider the example of the character of Ashwatthama from The Mahabharatha . He was Dronacharya's son and a gifted warrior but he went down a bitter path. I imagined Ashwatthama to be a moustached man wearing a golden suit of armour and a crown, as he is depicted in the Amar Chitra Katha comics. However, in her book The Wordkeepers , author Jash Sen surprises her readers by picturising Ashwatthama as a gigantic man with lank, grey, shoulder-length hair. He has sores all over his body with a gaping black hole in the centre of his forehead that is filled with pus. He speaks impeccable English in a baritone. His appearance is in keeping with his want. However, if I reveal the latter, I will spoil the story for you. (Do read the book. It’s excellent.)
Another important thing is that a character makes the most impact when a reader is able to sympathise with or relate to the character. Louis Sachar begins the award-winning book Holes with a description of Camp Green Lake.
There is no lake, "the daytime temperature hovers around ninety-five degrees in the shade", and rattlesnakes and scorpions rest under the rocks in the area where the campers are made to 1work. Stanley Yelnats, one of the campers, is sent to dig holes at the camp along with many other boys as punishment for a crime. Stanley is wrongly convicted but he has no way to prove otherwise. He has always had terrible luck. He constantly finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Stanley is described as being overweight and is picked on by his classmates as well as his teachers.
Louis Sachar is able to get the reader to sympathise with Stanley for being sent to live in a harsh place for a seemingly mindless exercise. A reader immediately feels sorry for poor, lumbering Stanley Yelnats.
Create a character using the cues given in this article. Write a detailed character description and send it to us at naresh.blps@gmail.com
