“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people, not characters. A character is a caricature.”
—Ernest Hemingway
We’ve all seen the artists who create caricature pictures of people. They find one specific physical feature about the subject and enhance that feature in the picture. If you happen to have large ears, the artist will draw them even larger. If a woman has a big smile, her caricature will have a smile that occupies most of her face. If a guy has a big cock…well, I’ve never seen one of those, but they probably do exist. Caricatures are fun to see, but they aren’t real because they only show one facet of the subject.
Real people are complex, and that complexity is doubled because we all have at least two personas – the one we show the rest of the world and the one we’re careful to reserve for ourselves and maybe a significant other.
In general, we show the world who we think our culture expects us to be. In European based cultures, for instance, we’re suppose to be trustworthy, obedient, kind, and modest among other things. Men are suppose to be strong and brave. Women are supposed to be caring and nurturing.
The part of our personality we keep to ourselves tends to be the part that enjoys things society would consider either taboo or at least not the social norm. For instance, there are men who like to sew or knit, but they would never tell their friends that. There are women who love fishing, but they talk to most of their female friends about cooking and other “womanly” stuff. To admit they like fishing might make them seem less feminine.
So, what does all this have to do with turning characters into people?
When we become involved with a person in real-life, we want to know as much about that person as we can. Asking the person to tell us everything about their personality would be the equivalent of interviewing them for the job of friend, so most of us don’t learn about them that way. Instead, we garner that knowledge over time by the actions and spoken words of the person and then form an opinion of who they really are.
That’s what a writer should attempt to do – introduce a character and then write the actions and words that will tell the reader who the person really is. It’s only in that way the reader will believe a character would do or say what a writer writes them doing and saying.
It is possible to just describe a character’s appearance and personality with text. Here’s an example.
Judy was a redhead, and she thought she was fat and ugly so she never tried to interest men. Jack was very interested and was always staring at her because he loved her big breasts and wide hips.
That tells the reader some about Judy, and a little about Jack, but each is just a picture, a cardboard cutout shaped like a person.
It’s better to let the character or other characters do the describing, like this.
Judy saw Mary talking to Evelyn and knew they were probably talking about her. She wasn’t surprised. What else could she expect? She understood she wasn’t beautiful. That hurt, but she’d learned to live with it and forget about trying to find a boyfriend. What she couldn’t understand was why Jack seemed to always be looking at her and smiling.
It couldn’t be that he liked her. No, he was probably laughing at her. That didn’t surprise Judy either. Her mother said she had a nice figure and that men would think her red hair was sexy, but Judy only saw breasts that weren’t perky like Mary’s and Evelyn’s, hips that looked fat, and bright red hair that looked like something a cartoon character would have. It did seem odd to Judy that Jack never actually laughed at her. He was always polite and nice.
When Judy is described this way, we learn the same information, but we learn something else about Judy – we learn how she feels about herself, that she doesn’t like either her hair or her body, and that’s she’s a little paranoid. We also learn that she’s accepted her opinion of herself. We can make the inference that Jack does like Judy but that Judy can’t let herself believe that. What we really learn is that Judy is a living, breathing woman with all the insecurities and thoughts we all have. That makes Judy a person instead of a character.
It’s also not a good idea to over-describe. Sometimes it’s just not something most readers would believe. At other times, it takes away the reader’s pleasure of visualizing the person.
I always have to laugh when I read a male character explaining the hot girl he just saw walking down the street has 44DD breasts. How would he know that? Unless he’s Superman with X-ray vision good enough to read the tag on her bra through the rest of her clothing, the best he can do is relate she has huge breasts, or really big breasts, or that it’s a wonder she can sit up by herself.
The same thing happens to me when I read a female character telling me she looked down and watched him push his ten inch cock into her pussy. I can honestly say I’ve ever been with a woman who, in the heat of the moment, whipped out a tape measure and checked me out.
The problem with both of these is first of all, they’re not even plausible, at least as written, but once again, they’re painting a picture of a character and not of a person. I can form the image in my mind, but that’s all it is – a 2-D image with no depth.
I’d much rather have the girl tell me she’s proud of her 44DD breasts and dresses like she does because she secretly loves guys looking at her. At least she’d have a reason to know her size, and I’d learn a little about how she feels about herself. Maybe she’s an exhibitionist. I don’t know that, not yet, but I know she’s definitely not ashamed of her bust and she likes men looking at her. That would give her a reason to strip in front of a hotel window or talk her boyfriend into going to a clothing-optional beach later on in the story.
It would also interest me if the guy used the bathroom in the girl’s apartment, found one of her bras hanging on the shower curtain rod, and confirmed that she was really generously endowed. Telling me how big she was would then be plausible.
I’d rather read the couple was joking around and the girl says she’s going to measure the guy just to see if what he’s been telling her is true. That tells me a lot more than the dimension of his cock. It tells me she’s a little more adventuresome than a lot of other women and that the guy is pretty proud of himself because he let her do that after he’s bragged about it.
If after measuring him, the girl laughs and says, “No problem, Stud. I can take ten inches easy”, I know she’s really adventuresome and confident in herself. If she says, “Wow. Ten inches is a lot bigger than my finger. I don’t think it’s going to fit”, I know she thinks she’s small because she’s done a little fingering down there, and also that she’s a little afraid. If she says, “I’ve had a lot of dicks, but none as big as you are”, well…
A good approach to character development is to show, not tell, to show the feelings of the character as well as their appearance, and not to describe down to the last pubic hair. Good descriptions are like an old-fashioned strip tease. Show a little, then a little more, then let the reader envision the full frontal view while your character ducks behind the curtain after a quick flash of what she has under that G-string. The readers will fill in the rest, and since it’s their vision and not what you told them to see, it’ll mean more to them.