The Ideal Character

Who is the Ideal Character?

This is another bit of advice I see floating around for aspiring authors, but I do not think it is often explained well.

Who is the Ideal Character? Well, of course, that depends on the story you are telling! Is the protagonist for Fight Club going to be the same as that for Pride and Prejudice? Of course not! They are fundamentally different stories. The tricky question is, how do we go about deciding whose is the best voice to tell our story?

Everyone has a different writing process, and part of this is very personal. For me, sometimes I have a voice of a character in my head that I know I want to use, but I do not really have the details of who this person is fleshed out. How do we decide the nuances of their personalities? Their habits? Their flaws?

Back to the (Thematic) Future!

I think the most helpful piece to keep in mind if you are stuck here is to stick to the themes of your story. For example, in my current work in progress, the central driving force of the story has to do with familial relationships and the ways in which generational trauma, such as addiction, gets perpetuated down the line. This is, fundamentally, what my story is about. Once I knew what I wanted to write about, I knew I could brainstorm some ideas for the best characters to tell this story.

Protagonist vs. Antagonist

A great deal of writing advice focuses on creating a realistic protagonist, but not much thought is given to the antagonist, let alone the other members of the cast of your story.

I am here to tell you, Writer, that all of these characters are important and require a bit of forethought on your part.

But wait! This does not have to be as daunting a task as you may think. I have a simple and straightforward method to determine the types of characters that are best suited to all the different roles in your story.

Big Picture

I like to think in broad strokes when I am trying to determine the basic elements of the characters in my story. I try to not get bogged down by too many details early on in my prewriting. I find if I go too deep too early on, I have a harder time weeding through what’s valuable and what is unnecessary fluff.