Author/Instructor Jonathan Blum: Humans are complex. When people just say “oh I'm such
a simple person, I'm really just a simple person,” I don't believe that for a second.
Film Courage: Jonathan are there any specific exercises
or techniques writers can use to bring their characters to life?
Jonathan: There are. In my classes I often assign character related exercises so that students can
begin to understand what it takes to create a fully fledged complex
life-like character on the page I mean one of the first things that I say to students about this
is that you have to remember that with character you're really building from the ground up like you
have to create as if the reader knows absolutely nothing about this character and so it's up to
you to to build the character in such a way that the reader can absorb and ultimately dream the
character that you're describing so one thing to remember is that it takes a lot of time to learn
how to write Fiction it's not I mean you would think oh we all tell stories I'll just sit down
and write a story like anyone should be able to do it and yes anyone can do it but it takes a lot of
time many drafts a lot of patience in order to create characters that have that kind of
effect on a reader one way that I like to talk about character and and building character is
I like to compare characters to a thousand sided object and what I mean by that is if you try to
imagine in your head a thousand-sided object you cannot do it the h an mind cannot pick you
can picture like eight sides maybe ten sides but you cannot picture a thousand sides and yet that
such a thing can exist like there could be a thousand-sided object somewhere in the world
and a thousand sided object is like a character in the sense that the character just like h an
beings has many facets many dimensions and you cannot convey all of them to a reader like that
even if you wrote a novel it would be hard to convey that many characteristics but you
can convey many of them or some of them so if you choose maybe 5 or 10 or 20 or 100 characteristics
that you want to show the reader that will help Define the character then it's almost
as if those other facets that are not directly described like the reader can infer or imagine
what those would be it's like meeting a new person for the first time you you're looking
at the person what are you wearing like how do you talk what language are you using how do you dress
what do you like what is the vibe that I'm getting from you and it's similar with characters you
you introduce them in some way to a reader so that a reader can based on the limited
information that the reader has try to imagine an entire character Flannery O'Connor talks about
character as always involving mystery the mystery of personality and I think that's
exactly right like most of us around us most people around us are Mysteries to us even we
ourselves are Mysteries to ourselves one way to explore that mystery is by doing things like
telling the life story of a character this is something that I have my students do regularly
like if you want to know your character better take 750 words and just describe
the character's life Story from beginning until now and look at what you learn look at what you
discover in that process I also have a list of many many questions that I'll sometimes have
the students ask about their characters what does the character treasure what haunts the character
What secrets does the character keep what does the character want motivation ends up being very
important for creating and exploring character why is the character behaving the way he's behaving
an example it triggered the memory of another video we did where I came up with a a couple
and her name was Skyler and his name was Derek and they meet at a cafe and she's
an attractive younger woman and he's a little bit older he's in I.T and he doesn't have a
relationship but he meets her and falls in love and feels like this is the one and then he finds
out she's actually being used in corporate espionage and it was never a true romantic
calling and she was just trying to get close to him to get into his computer and database
for his job and so I started to think about well we know who Derek is he was the protagonist but
what was Skyler's motive and why would she do that and why would she does she feel any guilt
does she have no was she sociopathic she had no remorse well that's the thing you you've already
given each of those characters maybe three or five four or five characteristics and you've
not given others and so at some point people's motivations become clear if you interrogate them
like so people if they're trying to scam you in some way they're not necessarily going to
say I'm a scammer so you're going to have to figure out exactly like what is motivating
the person and like what how does that make me susceptible to the person I mean we have this
in almost all aspects of our society at this point people who are doing things like that
sorry I didn't I think in another interview you had said something fascinating which is
we as h ans say one thing right we think another and we actually do something else
often that's true and I really I think it's really important when
creating characters to create complexity and contradictoriness contradictions right
away h ans are complex when people just say oh I'm such a simple person I'm really just
a simple person I don't believe that for a second I really I've never met someone who
is like a truly just to live on this Earth and all all of what that throws at you like
so beginning to create complexity involves beginning to have contradictions and unresolved
contradictions so if I'm thinking one thing we do this all the time we're doing it right
now I'm talking to you you're listening to me then you're gonna say something and I'm going
to listen to you but underneath all that in our minds there's other things going on some of it may
be related to the actual conversation we're having and sometimes not like this conversation may lead
in many many different directions depending on how the future goes and depending on what we want so
I don't know I have a in in my Novella last word
from the from very early on in that story you have a character the narrator who is a proud man and on
the one hand he feels very proud of his son his son is intelligent understands lots of things
relating to computers that the narrator does not understand like he's the son has certain things
going for him that make the father proud but for other reasons the father is deeply ashamed of his
son because of things that the boy has done at school and with respect to other kids and and
because he's odd in certain ways he doesn't like sports which the father likes and so once you
start dealing with these kinds of unresolved contradictions that's the this is just h an
the h an psyche h an behavior and we were talking earlier about what makes an opening
interesting and what makes an opening compelling and I think it's putting into motion characters
that in a sense them because you've known people like them but they're also new to
you and because they're new to you you want to discover who they are how does a writer know
that you're creating a character that's going to resonate with readers and audiences I mean
you have one story that's about two different men and a house and one they're both womenizers
and one uses money to seduce the other his looks and and that sounds fascinating I mean we could
we could be angry and think oh I don't want to hear about that but there's part of h an
nature where we're drawn to someone that's like that and we want to know what makes them tick
well characters who behave badly can be good for fiction I mean I think that's pretty established
and we don't always understand why they're acting the way they are they there may be
mysteries of their personality that will will never know but in answer to your question
one thing that you can do is show drafts to other people and that's something that I recommend it's
something that I myself self do I have I'm fortunate to have a n ber of of readers who I
show drafts of my stories to and this if you trust these people they can really give you insights
into your own writing that you couldn't have yourself so if somebody thinks something is funny
or sad or what whatever it is that that they're reacting to if if they can give you some kind of
clear and insightful response to your work that can indicate whether this is going to resonate
with readers in a in a larger way but ultimately you really don't ever know I remember going once
I was invited to a book club that was reading one of my books and the people in the book club had a
conversation about the book while I was listening and it's happened more than once but the the time
that I'm thinking of like I think there are about 12 or 13 people and honestly nine or ten I really
felt like hmm I'm not sure that you read the book that I wrote like I this is I'm like we're not
connecting she she is saying well I think such and such and to me it's not but once you I think
once you put something into the world you're no longer at all in control of how other people
read and interpret it so maybe in that book group there were two or three people who I was like wow
I really feel connected with you I feel like you really got what I was doing in this book but I
don't know anybody who's ever gotten a negative review anywhere knows what it feels like to
have someone have a reaction to your work that you didn't at all plan or intend but there it
is and you have to accept that's that's the work is now in the world and people are going to read
it as they will sure and I think you talked about different filters cultural socio economic growing
up in LA versus Iowa or Pennsylvania wherever and just different we're going to see things
differently could remind us of someone we knew maybe we fell in love with them maybe we hated
them and and it just invokes a reaction but we don't know that or we don't say that right
and instead we just say I don't like that or I loved it it was amazing well I'm thinking of this
because you're talking about transgressiveness and and different people's reaction to it there
there are things that certain readers don't ever want to read about like and you you can't control
that as the writer like I may be interested in portraying X in a work of fiction but a reader
just might not ever like to encounter ax I mean this happens and that is true and I'm not into
certain crime genres but I know some people are incredibly drawn to them some are okay but some I
don't even want to know about and so I think that could make sense but sometimes with just the most
just seemingly innocent quote-unquote character and it invokes such a strong reaction from people
and it can cause problems for the writer yes we know I know Margaret Atwood faced a lot of we're
not talking about Salman Rushdie where people it's there's a religious aspect but just certain
characters how could you even think of something like this and then it because of the world we
live in lots of readers make very outrageous assumptions about whether something is based
on your own experience or if this character is actually you with a different hair color
I've had people at reading say so how old are your kids
well I don't have kids I just wrote I read you a story in which someone has kids.