Deep Character Development: Show Don’t Tell

Deep Character Development: Show Don’t Tell

We’ve all heard that little pearl of wisdom, haven’t we? And in theory, we understand that it’s the author’s job to reveal a character’s thoughts and feelings through dialogue and action as opposed to exposition…but rarely do I find a more practical explanation of how to do that. So in the interest of deep character development, I’m going to tell you about my experiences with one character in particular in the hopes that it will shed some light on the tired old “show don’t tell” conversation.

Nikita Baskin

Nikita is a character from my Sons of Rome series, first introduced in White Wolf, and a character of whom I’m immensely proud. He’s the product of years of writing, and six years, specifically, of published writing.

He started, as all my characters do, with a baseline identity that I then added to and built into something three dimensional. To start, I knew that Nikita was three things: Russian, a member of the secret police, and also, secretly, a White (one of those Russians loyal to the deposed and then murdered tsar). These three main identifiers were the foundation of my research; I needed to understand what it meant to be Russian, what it meant to be a Chekist, and what it meant to be a White, and then fuse this information into a character profile. Because he was a White, I knew that he hated his Communist masters, and the government in general. And because it was 1942, and he was gainfully employed as a Chekist, he was going to have to play the long game, and do a lot of things that turned his stomach in order to get by. He was Russian, after all, and a survivor. An ace at playing the long game. When we first meet Nikita, he’s a man living a double life, and struggling beneath the weight of that mantle. He’s someone who feels deeply, and pretends not to, who burdens himself with guilt after guilt after guilt.

Once I know a character, then it’s time to decide how to reveal them piece by piece to the audience so that they can come to know them too. For me, the goal is to be explicit with details, but subtle with the meaning delivered by them. So with Nikita:

·         His failure to eat isn’t forgetfulness. Between anxiety, low blood sugar, and the weight of a guilty conscience, he tends to skip meals intentionally. He beats himself up, figuratively, and one of the ways he does this is to deny himself the things he wants or even needs. (And oh boy is that going to be an ongoing conversation that comes to a head in book four, featuring a certain wolf)

·         His coldness is a way to distance himself from others. He’s lost people, and he hates it, so he resolves not to get emotionally attached…an effort which always fails spectacularly.

·         Being a White isn’t, for him at least, so much a political leaning as it is a way for him to justify the things he’s done. Does he truly support the Romanov family? Yes. But more than that, his secret identity provides an excuse for the terrible things he’s done in the name of the Kremlin. He can justify the evil if he thinks that he’s waiting to make his move and turn the tide. And he can tell himself that when he does make that move, it will be to topple a government that will be made better by a return of a tsar. This is part of the reason it hurts him so badly to meet Alexei and find out he’s kind of…a little shit.

All of these things are revealed through the course of the book, one event, and one revelation at a time. Showing the audience his heart and mind in this way creates a portrait of a man that is more human being than archetype, and that for me is always the ultimate goal.

Deep Character Analysis Contd.: Lit Analysis

Literary Analysis

So there’s this gap. It’s a gap that exists between wanting to do something and actually being able to do it with any kind of authority. It’s a gap that exists at the outset of every artistic/athletic/professional journey, and it’s a gap that we must bridge with a combination of knowledge and experience. I was once a little girl who wrote a terribly-spelled “book” about Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, and a thirty-year-old who just released her twenty-second violent adult novel. In between those very different stages came a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. A lot of hard work, a lot of studying, a lot of failures, and a few quiet victories.

What I’m getting at is this: we all start somewhere. We are all students of the craft in our own ways, and there is no right path. But I do believe that – structured or informal – literary analysis is an important part of becoming a stronger fiction writer.  

I was lucky enough to have the chance to study literature in high school, and in college, but that is by no means a requirement. Because, truth told, I’ve learned more from self-directed study at home than I did in school. Do you have to study literature formally in school? No. Do you have to study in some way? I believe yes. And it’s not as intimidating as it sounds.

If you’ve ever engaged in a conversation about a book you enjoyed, you were performing your own literary analysis. The most important trait of a successful writer is the ability to create an emotional connection between your characters and the readers. Being able to break down and understand the literature that did that for you is an important step in the learning process.

*Fair warning, before we go farther, with the exception of my first books, the Walker Series, I tend to write about characters who would be deemed “problematic” for the morality police of the book world. So the following example is about craft and character, not about morality. Morality has no place in my writing, thank you!*

Let’s take a closer look at an example with my character Mercy (since he’s arguably the most popular of the bunch).

I’ve talked at length in the past about the fact that Mercy was heavily inspired by Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, and is my modern day, outlaw biker take on the Byronic Hero. If you wanted to write a character like Mercy, then my recommendation would be to go read Bronte’s novel, and then, for clarification, check out some literary criticisms of it. Because superficially, those two don’t have much in common. Mercy is, after all, a Cajun biker with a seedy past who likes to hit people with sledgehammers and then goes home to read Tolstoy in bed with his old lady. But, like Heathcliff, Mercy is temperamental, passionate, violent, and deeply, almost childishly vulnerable. He’s obsessive. He loves with a singular focus that would, rightly so, frighten most women. He’s the kind of guy who is, let’s face it, darkly romantic on paper, but rather terrifying in real life.

The reason readers love – or even hate – Mercy is because he’s a complete person, flaws and all, and though simple on the surface, becomes slippery when you try to pin him down in a formal book review. But why? It’s because Mercy is a character designed to draw strong reactions out of readers, and he usually succeeds. Despite initial impressions, readers don’t actually love him because he’s tall and has long dark hair; nor do the haters hate him because he kills with relish. No, Mercy is the kind of character who preys on a reader’s desires and fears without, haha, mercy. Indiscriminately.

Okay, let’s break it down.

When I design a character, I start with the deep questions first. Who is this person at heart? What are they afraid of? What do they want most? What do they lack in their lives? In the early stages, I decide things like family history, shortcomings, religion (even if it’s never touched on in the book), phobias, and guilty pleasures. The answers to those questions, just like when we ask them of real people in our real lives, are rarely simple. Early character design is like a psychological evaluation.

For me, Mercy was always fascinating because of the stark dichotomy within his nature. He’s very mature, and also very immature. He’s incredibly cold, and incredibly tender. These could be traits of any number of fascinating fictional characters. The mature/immature dichotomy shows up often in characters who were forced to grow up too quickly, or without exposure to peers, and so have had an unusual emotional development. You see the cold/tender combination quite often in BDSM fiction, in which the urge to punish is then overwhelmed by the need to comfort.

It's the dichotomy that makes Mercy interesting. The books, the sledgehammer; being sweet to Tango and then torturing Ava’s ex for intel…all of that is window dressing. Those are the symptoms, if you will, that allow us to see deeper into his psyche to unearth the traits that lie at the core of him.

His physical size is a superficial strength – it’s his unfailing loyalty that is a true character strength.

As a writer, it’s your job to know the core of your character, and reveal it slowly through increasingly-in-depth scenes that reveal the superficial first, and then peel back the layers as you go.

As a reader, you have to work backward, starting with what you can see, and then digging deeper and deeper.

So, your homework: pick a favorite fictional character and try to break them down to their base parts. See what you can come up with. It isn’t a tagline or a particular nervous tic that makes them loveable – it’s who he or she is. Learning how to “diagnose” characters, if you will, will be a huge help in creating your own characters.