3. Character Design (Writing)

I watched Jen walk down the sidewalk, her face alight with a bright smile. She greeted every passerby with a cheerful "Good morning!" and a wave of her hand. Everyone who saw her couldn't help but be drawn in by her infectious energy and positivity.

I crossed the road and called to her, “Hey, Jen! You forgot your books!” but she skipped and hummed her way around the corner. That was just Jen, happy all the time. What made people like her tick?

Ever raised a brow at a character’s behavior? Ever found their decisions strange or wondered what made them tick? Great characters will always pique your interest, and it is your job as a writer to design a character who grabs the reader’s attention in this way.

The airhead had forgotten some books at school today, and ma’am asked me to take them to her. Apparently, her father hadn’t signed her homework in days. I kept going, hungry but eager to get one of her bright thank yous.

I walked up to her patio and found the front door ajar. I hovered my knuckles over the door but paused as I heard a sob coming from inside. Curious, I craned my neck to see further down the hall into the living room. That was when I got a foul smell.

“Dad, will you please come down now?” Jen’s voice came from the living room.

I couldn’t quite see into the room, but in an ornament reflection, I glimpsed a man’s swaying feet. Suddenly, the smell made sense, and so did her naive optimism.

I was not proud of my reaction, but I turned and ran as fast as I could and threw up in the bushes, no longer hungry.

When it comes to writing characters, it can be easy to get caught up in surface-level traits and quirks. However, in order to create a dynamic and relatable character, it's important to delve deeper and understand what drives their actions and motivations.

One way to do this is by using the 5 Whys method popularized by Toyota in their engineering process. By asking "why" five times, you can get to the root of most problems and find a solution that addresses the true cause, rather than treating the symptoms.

In the same way, the 5 Whys method can be applied to understanding what makes a character tick, why they behave the way they do, or why they make the dumbass decisions they do. By repeatedly asking "why" a character does something, we can gain a deeper understanding of what drives them, or conversely, we can create a foundation that will make our character feel like a real person.

For example, let's say we have a character who is always seeking validation and attention from others. By asking "why" five times, we can discover the root cause of this behavior.

1. Because it makes them feel good.

2. Why does validation and attention from others feel good? -Because it soothes their fear of rejection and abandonment.

3. Why do they fear of rejection and abandonment? -Because they were constantly criticized and rejected by their parents growing up.

4. Why were they constantly criticized and rejected by their parents? -Because their parents had their own unresolved emotional issues and took it out on the character.

5. Why did their parents have unresolved emotional issues? -Because they experienced neglect and abuse in their own childhoods.

6. Why did they experience neglect and abuse in their own childhoods? -Because society was different long ago and there was a lack of support and resources for kids who needed help.

By asking "why" five times, we've gone from a surface-level behavior of seeking validation and attention, to understanding a deep-seated fear of rejection and abandonment rooted in childhood.

We have also worked our way to the theme of our story (or the theme of this character’s story). The role society plays in raising healthy children and hence better parents. If you want your theme to differ, take your deeper whys in a different direction. Why? Because when you dig for whys, you simultaneously zoom out and talk about larger issues of society and the human condition. Themes. So if you want to change your theme, just change your answers to the whys so that you get to the desired theme. This will make more sense once you do the exercises below.

The whys also point directly to the inner conflicts your character will have to face and overcome throughout the story. Gut-punch the attention seeker by making the validation no longer feel good, exposing them to their fear of rejection. Make them face it head-on or burn.

This point in the story, John Truby calls the ‘Self-revelation’. It is when the character accepts their deepest why and grows out of it, or it consumes them entirely (they become a villain or lose the fight)

Now I know you pantzers out there are saying I don’t want to outline the conflicts in my story. Exactly, you don’t. You can write whatever situation or event you want. It just needs to be thematically relevant. Themes are broad, you are still free to write whatever. As long as you’re not interrupting a modern romance novel with random ninja battles, you’ll be fine.

(You tried to make a sentence with the bold text, didn’t you? Gotcha)

Did I just say this is an outline even pantzers can use? Holy hell, I did! Look at that. Groundbreaking. Engineering at its finest! Okay, I’ll stop!

Let’s do some exercises to become masters of this before the ninjas arrive.

1. Let's say we have a character (Jen) who seems to be happy all the time, no matter what.

1. By asking "why" five times, we can discover the root cause of this behavior.

2. What is a possible theme of this story?

3. What is the inner conflict that the character will struggle with?

1. Let's say we have a character who is short-tempered towards teachers and other authority figures.

1. By asking "why" five times, we can discover the root cause of this behavior.

2. What is a possible theme of this story?

3. What is the inner conflict that the character will struggle with?

1. Let's say we have a character who has overly heroic ideals.

1. By asking "why" five times, we can discover the root cause of this behavior.

2. What is a possible theme of this story?

3. What is the inner conflict that the character will struggle with?

I’ll go first. Here’s exercise 1 for Jen’s story:

a)

1. Why is Jen always happy? - She has a tendency to find the positive in any situation.

2. Why is she doing that in a situation like this? - She is in denial.

3. Why is she in denial? - She is still in shock

4. Why is she in shock? - she was taught that if she remained positive and focused on the good in life everything would work out.

5. Why would she think that applies to a suicide? - because her world view had been turned on its head. The man who had taught her to be optimistic had taken his own life.

b)

A possible theme could be that false optimism can help one to cope sometimes, but it’s not a long-term solution to serious issues

Another one could be how our world view shapes our identity

c)

Once her positivity runs out she will have a full blown identity crisis.

She will have to accept her father’s death. This will come with the difficulty of accepting that she didn’t truely know her father. The large portion of her life that he had been was a lie, just him coping. He was not the positive person he pretended to be. Neither is she. Who is she?

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(More: Bonus article on Designing IG Brand Mascots, Original Characters (OCs), and DND Characters that will steal the show!)

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