Who Are You? - Fixing the Disconnection Between You and Your Characters

Imagine you’re in a store, shopping for dinner. You put a can in your basket, knowing you’re friends and family will love the dish you’re preparing for the gathering. A person turns the corner and freezes. A large grin splits their face and they start approaching you. You panic. The glint in the person’s eyes is a knowing one. The person recognizes you but you don’t recognize them. You rack your brain, trying to come up with a name to go with the face, but come up empty-handed as they hug you. 

This person, whoever they are, regales you with stories of your childhood and says something like, “I remember when you were kneehigh to a grasshopper”. The expression makes you want to snort because you were never small enough to come up to a grasshopper’s knee. Do grasshoppers even have knees? 

Whoever they are, they know your family. They start talking about your parents, siblings, grandparents, and cousins. They tell you about relatives you’ve only heard stories of and still, you can’t place a name with their face. Who is this person?

“It was nice talking with you,” they finally say. “Tell your mom and dad I said hi.”

“Sure thing. It was great seeing you again,” you say with a fake smile plastered across your face. 

The person walks away whistling and you wish you’d gotten the courage to ask who they were, but wouldn’t that have been rude?

When you’re writing, sometimes you’ll experience a situation like that with your characters. You crafted them, you named them, and they seem to know everything they need to, but you can’t seem to connect with them, which leads to your writing turning tepid. When this happens it can feel like you’re trying to swim through a lake of peanut butter.

Though our characters come from our imagination, they take on personalities of their own and it can be difficult to write them if you are experiencing a disconnect with them.

For instance, at the time of this writing, I am working on a story titled Extinction on the Prairie. I haven’t been this excited about a story in a long time and I was eager to jump into the project. I thought it’d be smooth sailing. I thought that since it’s going back to my roots - back to when I wrote science fiction - I’d experience nothing but the sheer joy of the genre. Turns out, I’m rusty.

Don’t get me wrong, I adore fantasy, which is why it’s my primary genre. But the ability to use magic to solve my plot holes has made my writing lazy. I didn’t realize this until I sat down and had to put a ton of thought into how to make the plot of EOTP work. To be honest, the hardest part of this story is Brea. 

Brea Franzen is my main character. She’s 15 years old, grew up in Omaha, and was relocated to Brady, Ne when her mom was killed in a fire. Brea is struggling with grief and as hard as I’ve tried I can’t connect with her. She doesn’t want to talk to me. She just sits there, with her hood pulled over her head and her arms wrapped around her knees. She’s grumpy, quiet, and off-putting. I know I should know her, but I can’t make the connection.

So, when this happens, what do you do? For me, I like to approach the character like I would a new coworker. I like to get to know them slowly, through conversation and interactions. Brea doesn’t want to talk. I try and try, and try, but she sits tight-lipped. When she does talk she complains about moving and how Oli (another character) is treating her. 

To break this cycle I’m attempting a different approach. I created a new character, Dakota, and decided to use him to get to know Brea. Since she has a lot of walls, I need him to break them down for me. This isn’t a normal approach for me but I don’t think profiling her will help, so I need to try something new.

Profiling is a great way to get to know your characters. It’s an interview with them where you sit down in your mind and chat. By doing a quick Google search you can find tons of different profile templates to use on your characters. Some are super short and others are over 25 pages. I, myself, find the longer ones to be daunting. I prefer focusing on the basics. Such as the example below; 

Name:

Age:

Ethnicity/Race:

Place of Birth:

Place of Resident:

Any distinguishing features (ie. birthmarks, tattoos, freckles):

Hair Color:

Eye Color:

Important Parts of their Culture (religious beliefs, festivals, and such):

Disposition: 

Siblings:

Parents:

Family Dynamic:

Education:

Overall Goal:

Sub Goal:

Best friends:

Enemies: 

Likes:

Dislikes:

You can expand upon this as needed. When I wrote Web of Lies, I had binders full of profiles. I needed to cover a lot more ground than a basic profile could give me since each character (Especially Xander, who was hundreds of years old) had their own complex cultures and ideations. 

Along with character profiles, you can create a culture profile for any world-building you are doing. I’ve done this for the siren kingdoms in Web of Lies. These profiles are, by design, much longer and contain information on festivals, religions, gods/goddesses, burial rituals, economy, agriculture, livestock, land types… etc. 

Like with characters, you can sometimes experience a disconnect with your worlds and profiling is a great way to help sharpen your view of them. The issue is, when it comes to writing you are not experiencing the world in reality, so you have to actively think about what the environment and outside forces are that are impacting your character, how your character is impacting their environment, and who your character is.

If profiling isn’t your style, try a simple list. Make a list of what you do know about your character to find out what you don’t know. Usually, it’s a personality trait or a missing piece of information that’s causing you to put heads with them.

For example…

What I know of Brea Franzen:

-15yr female

-Recently lost her mother to a fire meant to kill Brea

-Product of a life-saving experiment

-Quiet, shy

-Ran track in Omaha

-Born in Omaha, Ne

-Relocated to Brady, Ne

-Father: James Franzen

-Currently living with grandparents

-Not used to small-town life

-Wishes her former childhood friend didn’t dismiss her existence

-Puberty/early teen vibes

-Likes acoustic music

-Plays guitar

-Doesn’t want to learn to drive. Prefers to walk.

Knowing this, I can now understand why Brea doesn’t want to talk. It’s not just me. She’s going to be like this with every character. She’ll be moody and reserved because she’s going through a lot of changes, blames herself for her mom’s death, and is afraid of losing anyone else. As a woman in her thirties, I have to think back 15 years and ask myself, “If I was Brea, how would I have dealt with these issues?” In truth, the answer is not well. I would have hidden away in my room with a book, so Brea probably hides away in her room with her guitar. 

Another way you can bridge the gap between yourself and your characters is by creating aesthetics. For this, I recommend getting a Canva subscription. Canva is a graphic designing website that allows you to create your games, promotions, covers, and more. If you splurge and spend an extra $15 to get the pro subscription (the basic is free) you have access to thousands of stock folders and extra editing tools. The reason I recommend this sight is because if you just pull images off the web for aesthetics you could end up in legal trouble. Copyright issues are not something you want to face because I guarantee you the owner of whatever photo you took will win if they sue you. So, invest in a good program that gives you rights to the images you use. Be unique. Don’t use the same models you see everyone else using. It gets annoying for your readers. Trust me, there are over 4 books on my Kindle that have the same covers. It drives me nuts. Like, did the creator just keep reselling the cover? Was this a cover template that the authors/designers just slapped a title on and called it good?  Why are they the same people, the same background, and the same type of story? 

I digress. Back to aesthetics. Easestic boards are a good way to get the ‘vibe’ of a character. You can use Pinterest to create a board or you can invest in a program like Canva. I prefer Canva and to avoid copyright issues, the examples I’m providing you with below come from there, with rights belonging to me as the pro subscription owner.

The following are aesthetics I created for EOTP:

Ultimately, aesthetics act like mood boards. They give you a feel of who your characters are and can be used as promotional material.

Another way of exploring your characters is to create mini-profile graphics, which are a combination of an aesthetic and the lists we talked about earlier. An example of these are the pictures below which come from my Tales from Morzania Series.

Whichever way you choose to use, find one that helps you understand your characters better. Because, at the end of the day, if you can’t connect with your characters then you’ll hit an impassable wall. You have to find a way to break through the brick if you want to write your story. If you don’t, you'll be left with a dry work that both your readers and you won’t enjoy.