Essence Of Character – Seven Steps To Creating
Characters That Write Themselves
Author: Corey Blake

Creating characters that are believable takes time and
discipline. Creating dynamically real individuals and not
imposing your own thoughts and impressions upon them is not
easy to do, and is often the difference between a novel or
screenplay that sits in a closet and one that finds its way
around town and into the hands of audiences. Spending your time
building your characters before they enter the world of your
story makes the process of writing an easier and more enjoyable
ride, and creates a finished product that agents, publishers,
producers and readers can truly be excited by.

You must first agree to operate from the understanding that the
three-dimensionality of your characters is not created
magically. Talent equals discipline multiplied by time and you
must practice (daily) the art of developing your characters. As
a development executive with LA Film Lab Entertainment (a
literary development and production company), I have developed
a framework to assist you in creating rich and complex
characters. The complexity that you desire comes through 1)
labeling their desire essences, 2) labeling their fear
essences, 3) getting specific about their past, 4) labeling
their behavior, 5) raising their stakes, 6) not meddling in
their lives, and 7) letting them play. Asking provoking
questions in line with these steps, answering them thoroughly,
and then repeating the process, provides constant individual
growth in your characters that mirrors life.  Now let's take
each step in turn:

1. Label the Desire Essences of each of your main characters:
The first key to deepening your work is finding the major
motivators in the lives of your characters that drive their
actions. We all have deep aspirations that drive our choices,
our thoughts, our actions and reactions. These needs are what
differentiate us from one another and we will refer to them as
"Desire Essences." Some examples of DESIRE ESSENCES are: the
desire to be intellectually brilliant; the desire to be
socially famous; the desire to hide from the world; the desire
to belong to a group; the desire to be loved; the desire to
party; the desire to die.

2. Label the Fear Essences of each of your main characters:
What is at the root of each of your characters' darker sides?
For every desire they have they should also exhibit the
antithetical fear of failing at that desire. These fears will
battle their aspirations for control over their behavior.
Labeling and understanding the darker sides of your characters
is imperative to creating the dimensional and imperfect
characters you are after. Some examples of FEAR ESSENCES are:
the fear of being stupid; the fear of being ordinary; the fear
of being socially exposed; the fear of being rejected by a
group; the fear of being loathed; the fear of being boring; the
fear of having to face life.

3. Get specific with your Backstory: Human behavior is made up
of a string of moments and reactions to those moments. A
character's current behavior is a battle between fear and
desire and their immediate choices are made based on very
specific (yet unconscious) experiences from their past –
experiences that leave imprints much like DNA. Though your
characters should be unconscious of these past experiences that
are influencing them, you the writer must create these in your
preparation of their backstory be fully aware of them. Here is
an example of what won't benefit you vs. what will when getting
specific with backstory:

Bad example of getting specific: Rachel is a pretty girl who
thinks she is unattractive. She prefers to live in her books as
opposed to being with friends or family. Her father has abused
her sexually throughout her youth. She hates attention.

Better example of getting specific: On her graduation day, at a
party her Mother is throwing for her, Rachel's sexually abusive
father shows up drunk and congratulates her, hugging her too
closely, grabbing her rear end with both hands, and calling her
pretty in front of a room full of her friends and family. She
runs away humiliated and hides in her room, escaping into one
of her fantasy books. That night she moves out to stay with a
friend and doesn't tell her friends where she is going. Two
weeks later she finds out through another friend that her
father died in a car accident. He had been drunk.

In the better example of getting specific, the reader can have
a visceral reaction to the words. This is caused by the detail.
The generality of the bad reaction is logical, but lifeless. In
the better example it is easy to determine what the essences of
our leading lady might be: desire to hide, maybe even desire to
die, desire to live in her books, desire to be valued for her
intellect instead of her body, fear of loneliness, fear of her
appearance, fear of the opposite sex, fear of losing a loved
one, fear of being abandoned.

4. Describe their Current Behavior: Take the essences and the
specific examples you have now created and determine what kind
of behavior your characters might exhibit as a result. Don't
limit yourself with these, but rather excite yourself with the
possibilities.

Simple examples from our leading lady - a woman who: hides her
body; avoids friends from her past; mistrusts anyone who
comments favorably on her appearance; desires to control her
education and her intellect; avoids alcohol.

5. Raise the stakes: Emotions are extreme. Play in the realm of
this extreme when dealing with the fears and ambitions of your
characters. These essences are all encompassing; meaning that
we spend our lifetimes with them. Don't cheat your characters
by being afraid to raise the stakes as high as you can. Needing
to find a precious stone to sell to an art dealer by midnight to
raise the financing to save your character's mother's house
before the bank takes it away from her tomorrow is exciting!
Look back at your own life and think of how seriously you take
your essences – when your essences are threatened will you
fight to extremes to defend them, just as when they are
fulfilled, do you enjoy some of your greatest moments in life?
Play in the realm of the extreme. Raise the stakes. Your
essences are life and death to you – let them be that way to
your characters.

6. Don't meddle: Of course you might be saying to yourself,
"How do I not meddle – I'm the writer!" But a truthful story is
going to grow from your willingness to let your characters make
their own decisions based on how you have defined them (which
after these exercises will be in great depth). As their parent,
you have to let your children go; this is the point at which
your story truly begins. DO NOT MEDDLE IN THEIR LIVES.
Continually remind yourself – it's not about you. You just
serve the story. Let your characters make their own decisions.
If you ever find yourself not knowing what decision they might
make – question your homework and rework their essences,
behaviors and stakes until their choice becomes obvious.

7. Let your characters play: Once you have developed several
characters by labeling their essences, getting specific,
defining their behavior, and raising the stakes, you are ready
to begin to let them interact. It's like the first day at a new
school; ripe with possibility. When properly developed, there is
no way to predict how your characters will behave in any given
situation, but they are so full of life and their own agendas
that they are ready to interact with other characters who have
been developed to the same level. If you have done the work to
get to this place – this is where your characters will begin to
write themselves.

Follow these steps to create the richer characters you want to
be writing.

Find the Essences:

To find the essences of your characters, you have to look to
their history and their genetics. Just like real people, your
characters' current behavior is defined by their DNA combined
with experiences you create in their past. We all have the
basic fears and ambitions of survival, shelter, and food, so
when working on these essences focus on the ones that really
drive each character. Consider ethnicity, religious beliefs,
and major life events. Address sex, drugs, music, parents,
siblings, education, appearance and intelligence for sure.

Start by writing out twenty DESIRE ESSENCES that feel right for
each main character. Then determine one polar opposite of each
DESIRE to create your twenty FEAR ESSENCES. Go back and toss
the ones that you now feel less attached to. Repeat and refine
the process until you have at least ten of each for each
character that really excite you.

Get specific about Backstory:

Get specific about how your character's essences have come to
be. Create definitive moments in your characters' lives that
detail when these fears and desires were initiated. Come up
with five supporting examples of moments in their lives when
each of these essences was tested and eventually vindicated in
the name of the fear or in the name of the desire. Failure
vindicates the fear and success vindicates the desire. Write at
least one half page of text supporting each -Yes that will give
you a total of twenty-five pages of essence work. Do the work.

10 Essences (a desire and a fear for each) x 5 samples for each
= 50 descriptions (each a half page)

Label the Current Behavior:

Using their essences and their specific past, come up with ten
sample behaviors for each character. Simple example: a
character who has a desire to hide and a fear of being publicly
humiliated, has a specific past incident of continually having
their pants pulled down in public by a sibling.  The current
behavior - they might always wear a belt, or might always look
behind themselves in a very specific attempt to never be
humiliated again.

Raise the stakes:

After looking over your newly created examples, it should be
easy to determine some issues that might be going on in their
lives that would increase or decrease their stress. A decrease
in stress generally excites people to take greater chances,
while an increase in stress tends to shorten people's fuses.

List five possible increases or decreases in your characters
stress level.

Don't meddle and let them play:

Now put two of your fully developed characters into the same
room. Implement two or three increases in stress to one
character and two or three decreases in stress to the other
character and let them bounce off of one another. Go into this
exercise with no preconceived notions of what might happen. If
you have done your homework, they should affect one another.*

*If you need a jumpstart – add an element that one needs from
the other and give the other a strong reason for not wanting to
provide what that character needs. Could be tangible or
emotional.


About The Author: Corey Blake is President of Writers of the
Round Table Inc. (http://www.writersoftheroundtable.com ) a
literary development and author management company. Corey
consults and contributes writing to best-selling authors,
leadership coaches and business executives. This article first
appeared in Writer Mag.