Designing The Character Engine

How to Create Good Characters That Move

To the average movie-watcher, developing a good character and the changes they undergo seems pretty straightforward, but anyone who has tried to build one from scratch...Well.  You know you have a better chance of making a million dollars in crypto than you do creating a great character, never mind a great story.

Character design is one of the most challenging aspects of writing given the layers of complexity that go into carefully crafting them.  It isn’t just about creating a fake bio of an imaginary person.  There’s an entire mechanical structure behind characters and how they’re unpacked in the story, which requires a lot of meticulous considerations.

I know. It sucks. You got into writing because you love coming up with stories and believe that since you’ve been typing on the computer for most of your life, you think it’ll be easy. Maybe you have some cool ideas, but cool ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s all about the execution. That’s precisely why there are more great ideas out in the world than great stories being filmed and sold.

But don’t worry (or maybe worry a little bit) because I’m gonna teach you step-by-step how to build a strong character that can change or fail to do so in a way that draws meaning out of your story. The odds will still be stacked against you, but you'll stand a better chance if you’re armed with this knowledge. So let’s get into it!  

What is a Character and Why Do We Build Them?

Before getting into the nuts and bolts, let's talk about what a character is and why we build them in our stories. This might seem obvious, but there’s more to it than you think.  

Most people believe that a character is an imaginary person, and if you’re a non-writer, this definition is sufficient. But for writers, it’s important to understand that the imaginary person is just an illusion. At its lowest common denominator, a character is more like an imaginary vehicle that carries some representative aspect of the central message and moral conversation through a plot. Yeah, okay, that’s confusing, so let's unpack this a little.

First, let’s define what we mean by a central message and moral conversation. A central message is an arguable truth that can be expressed allegorically in stories using characters, action, and dialogue. So something like “Ambition is great, but being blind to it will lead one astray”, is a great example of a central message since you can strawman both sides of that argument and have characters debate this question indirectly through the actions and choices they make within the story. 

A moral argument is a deconstruction of the central message so that you end up with a thesis (what your main character believes and embodies), an antithesis (what your antagonist believes and embodies), and a synthesis (the central message or what the main character learns at the end of the story).

So if your central message is, “Ambition is great, but being blind to it will lead one astray.” then your thesis might be, “Ambition leads to greatness”, which is what your main character would believe at the beginning of the story. And this would all be expressed indirectly by what they say and do. The antithesis might be, “Blind ambition leads to ruin.”. This is what your antagonist would embody. From the “fight” between these two characters, the main character either learns or fails to grasp the synthesis between those two competing ideas, which is the central message.

This is a pre-writing exercise that many writers use to define the underlying point of their stories and the choices their characters will make. Those choices should all tie back to the central message and moral conversation. 

So while yes, characters are full of emotion and all the craziness that we carry in our hearts, all of those things are the dressing to the character or “vehicle” that we use to supplant the central message and aspects of the moral conversation into. And I say “vehicle” because you design the characters in a way that gets them to move and take action.  If you craft your ensemble so that their actions and dialogue reflect the central message and moral conversation, then you can utilize them as meaningful “vehicles” to carry your point throughout the story and unpack it.

After all, what else can do that better than a simulated human with real needs and desires?  Imagine watching a movie about an inanimate tree.  Sure, if you stretch your creativity and personify it, you can make it interesting. But most agree that using human-like characters over inanimate tree characters will make your story much easier to turn into something interesting.  With human-like characters, they can make moral choices, which we can use to express the deeper meaning behind our stories.  And by moral choices, I mean choices that are both big and small that your character makes, which can show their outlook on life.

But again, the characters and how they appear to be invented individuals with motives is just an illusion. They’re “vehicles” for carrying the story forward and helping the audience define the meaning behind what they’re watching.

Now, how do you build this “vehicle”?

The Anatomy of A Character

As I said before, there are many different ways to create your characters, so don’t assume that these are rules. But for me, it’s helpful to dig into the dynamic relationship between their:

• Physical weakness

• Moral weakness

• Lie they tell themselves

• Desire 

• Need

You have to figure out the answers to all of these components in a way that allows them to relate to one another. Alright, again, I know. Confusing, but don’t worry. I’m gonna explain each component and how to connect these into a logical matrix that allows your character to take action in a way that expresses your central message while moving the story forward.

Physical and Moral Weakness

When I write a character, I like to give them a weakness, not because it makes them interesting or thrilling, but because it gives me a way to express their moral outlook on life to an audience. Assigning a random weakness or trait that leads them to do interesting or thrilling things won’t cut it, though. You have to pick the right weakness that adds meaningful value to your character and drives the story.

First, always, always, ALWAYS consider your central message when making choices in your writing. That should be in the back of your mind at all times.  Second, consider breaking your weakness into two parts: Physical weaknesses and a moral weakness.

Physical weaknesses are traits that a character possesses, which indirectly express a deeper reason for why they do what they do, and this is always tied back to the central message in some way.  Typically, physical weaknesses harm the main character or others, but they don’t necessarily have to.  They just need to be weaknesses that hold them back from living a better way. 

Perhaps the simplest example of this is a drug addict.  A drug addict’s physical weakness is their addiction to a drug and that, of course, hurts them in many ways from health issues to screwing over loved ones to get their fix. 

But what is the deeper reason behind their drug addiction?  Depression?  Anxiety?  Boredom?  All of these may be adequate answers, but they’re not the right ones for this particular question because if you think about it, all of these reasons are still physical weaknesses.  To gain a deeper understanding of this person’s drug addiction, you have to consider their moral weakness.

Moral weakness is the character’s initial belief or outlook on life at the beginning of the story and it’s this outlook that manifests in the form of physical weaknesses.  So going back to the drug addict, if we wanted to come up with a logical moral weakness for their addiction we could say the character believes that instant gratification is better than actual achievement through hard work. 

That makes sense because certain drugs can provide an instant feeling of accomplishment even though nothing was achieved. So this belief in instant gratification led to drugs, which led to failure. Now you have the beginnings of a moral conversation that can be indirectly woven into a crime drama.

What’s interesting about the moral weakness beyond the fact that it can help you make better sense of your character’s physical weaknesses is that it can also guide you through all of their decisions in the story and how they change or fail to change. This deeper truth about your character can also help you express the point of your story by having them embody that deeper truth, which can be expressed through their physical weaknesses. Then when you create a moral weakness for your antagonist and secondary characters to challenge your main character’s outlook, it becomes possible to have a deep conversation with your audience without actually having one.

The Lie They Tell Themselves:

Now, how do you keep a character in denial of their moral weakness or faulty outlook so that you can control when they change in the story, such as at the end, which, is typically the case?  I mean, let's say our drug addict is hanging out with a friend at the very beginning of the story and they tell him that he’s a mess because he believes in instant gratification and cutting corners to attain success and happiness. Well, that could be a problem if the main character doesn’t have a justification for denying the truth. Without that, it would be too easy for the main character to see the faults in their moral outlook, which could cause them to change before the story takes off.

That’s why you should give your character a true outlook on life that they can deny through some rationale. So let's say the drug addict has a family he started, but lost and now he wants to get them back.  He starts drug dealing to make money, which is spent on his family to show them that he’s becoming more responsible.

The lie that he would tell himself to justify selling drugs would be that he’s doing all of this for his family.  But in reality, he’s doing this because he believes that instant gratification and cutting corners is the best way to become successful.  Otherwise, if it was just about the family, he would have gotten an honest job and worked hard.  But because it’s deeper and more reflective of his moral flaws, they lie to themselves.

The truth is too painful, and revealing it to the main character too early pretty much ends the whole story.  So, it's very important to control all of that with the lie.  That way you can have their friends, “Tell it like it is”, while ensuring that the main character doesn’t change until they’re confronted by something that forces them to see their justification as a lie. 

Desire:

This is by far the easiest component of a character.  Desire or goal, as some might call it, is what your character is after in the story.  And when I say what they’re after, I mean that literally.  Maybe it’s winning the gold medal, getting that job, or finding meaning in a hopeless World.  Whatever the case is, it’s just simply a thing they’re trying to achieve in the story.  And yes, it should most certainly relate to your central message and moral conversation.  That’s a constant in writing.  

Now the real question is, why do we give our characters a desire in the first place?  Well, think about it.  You provide them with a weakness reflecting their flawed moral outlook on life and reveal this through physical weaknesses.  You add in a lie that they tell themselves and express a false belief or an excuse to justify their actions so that they’re hiding from what they truly believe. 

Great.  Now, how do you get them to move and do something?  This is where desire or goal comes into play. You can have your character possess all the components listed above, but if they have nothing to achieve, they’ll just hang out and do nothing.

Even if the goal or desire isn’t explicitly clear like winning a gold medal, it should still be something.  For instance, take the famous hang-out movie, Dazed and Confused.  It seems like a group of kids in the late 70s hanging out on the last day of school.  There doesn’t seem to be a specific goal or desire, but if you examine closely enough there are several goals at different points in the movie that each character pursues.

The main character desires to quit football and walk to his own beat despite the peer pressure.  The freshmen kid’s goal is to fit in with the older crowd.  The nerd who gets picked on wants to stand up for himself and be a man, his guy friend wants to hook up with this freshman, and his redheaded friend wants to hook up with this creepy older guy who still hangs out with the kids.  

All of the main characters had a goal of some sort even if it wasn’t clear in the beginning and it’s these goals that got all of them to do things in the movie.  Now, the reason for multiple goals in Dazed and Confused is that there’s an ensemble of characters to follow, but each has one singular goal. So when you design your goal, don’t give your characters multiple ones.  Sure, you can and should provide them with mini goals, but they should all be in service of that larger mission.

Lastly, giving your character a desire or goal is a good way to guide the plot.  A central message and moral conversation can help you with the tone, character makeup, and all the choices you make, including how you design your plot.  But the plot, itself, is what takes your story from A to B.

So, you define your starting and end points by giving your main character a goal. David Mamet describes the plot as one giant “desire line” because after you establish who your character is, their weakness, setting, setup, and inciting incident, you reveal a goal for them to achieve, which puts them on a desire line or a course that they must journey through to achieve the goal.  

Again, not every story is the same. Often the goal and their journey to achieve it or not isn’t so obvious or clearly defined, which can make their plots ill-defined such as with the movie, American Honey. That was about a bunch of rag-tag drifters traveling across America selling fake magazine subscriptions.  There wasn’t a gold medal or a giant competitor to destroy. 

But within that world, you had a main character who fell for a guy dating the ring leader. In a way, she did have a goal, which was to go out with this guy, but at the same time, she also didn’t have clear and concrete plans on how to go about it, let alone what to do if they were to start dating since it would jeopardize her ability to stay in the tribe.  Yet, the movie was brilliant and entertaining the whole way through.

Need:

The last component that I build for my characters is their need.  Now, this might sound like I’m talking about what they physically need in life, but that’s not what character need means within the context of character development.  A character’s need refers to what a character needs to know so they can understand the error of their initial moral outlook on life at the beginning of the story and thus, change or not change upon discovering that understanding towards the end.  And, it is also the synthesis between the main character’s initial moral outlook on life and the antagonist’s moral outlook throughout the movie.  Yeah, I know.  Confusing again. Don’t worry, this will make sense!

Going back to the drug addict/dealer scenario, we have a guy who believes that instant gratification and cutting corners are the best ways to achieve success, but he denies this belief by claiming that his actions are because he wants to provide a future for his family.  

We have his physical weakness, which is the drug addiction, the moral weakness, which is the belief in instant gratification, and the lie he tells himself, which is that he’s providing for his family.  So, let's say he ends up taking an opportunity that can either make him rich or land him in prison.  The opportunity, whether a big drug deal or a bank heist, is his desire, which sets him on a course or plotline to some kind of end. And throughout this journey, we give him an antagonist who impedes his progress. We give him some wins, and losses, and intensify those losses more and more towards a climax. It’s somewhere around here whether before or at the moment of the climax when our character finally owns up to the lies they’ve been telling themselves.  

In this case, it’s the fact that he was doing it for his family.  This owning up allows him to see his moral weakness and the real reason why he did what he did, which in this case was his belief that instant gratification is the best way to success. Now, suppose you design your antagonistic forces to represent the opposite of what the main character initially believes. In that case, you can set up the story so that, by the end, the character learns that the best way to live is by synthesizing their original beliefs with the challenges posed by these antagonistic forces throughout the story. This synthesis between the main character’s moral weakness and the antagonist’s moral weakness is what our character’s need is.

So if our main character, the drug addict/dealer in the beginning, believes that instant gratification is the best way to live, maybe our antagonist is a play-by-the-rules cop who lives a boring safe life because they believe that prudence and hard, honest work is the best way to live.  You could then show the drug dealer living it up as he makes it big while the honest cop spends his time at the dirty laundromat when he’s off the clock.

But because the dealer is doing highly illegal things, it all catches up to him so that by the end, he winds up in prison. However, the antagonist continues a boring life.  So what the character needs to learn whether he does or doesn’t is that instant gratification and living a safe boring life are not the best ways to live.  Rather the best way to live is to be safe, but also not be afraid to take intelligent risks for a better, more enjoyable life.  That right there is the character’s need.  

And if that is the need, then you could cement this in an epilogue where the main character gets out and decides to write a book about his crazy life where he makes a good chunk of money, a movie deal, and a nice new career being a traveling guest speaker to talk about how it’s not worth cutting corners for instant gratification.  And you can show the cop continuing his boring life where maybe he sees the guy he locked away on a famous talk show.  All of that shows that the best way to live is to play it safe and by the rules but also not be afraid to take those intelligent risks that can move you to a better life.

Conclusion

That’s pretty much it.  Heady stuff, I know, but characters are hard to build and they’re very important to build them in just the right way for your story.  So to make this more understandable, below is a template that I generally like to use when developing my characters.  Feel free to adapt it in any way you like.  Also, I didn’t mention this prior, but I like to add a small bio, just to initially get my head around the character.

It’s not important at all to the story because a character’s life begins at the start and finishes at the end.  Some aspects of a backstory, such as a traumatic event that shaped the character into who they are today can be relevant. But having full-fledged detailed backstories isn’t important.  However, it is a good way to introduce yourself to the character that you plan to build. 

Also, if you notice, I added a section for what they might say.  I like to do this because it helps me establish my baseline tone for how the character sounds and operates in dialogue.  It’s also a good exercise for summing up all of the components of your character into one sentence.

Then for extra measure, I add a final section, which is just a summary description of the character.  All of this is what I call a “Character Engine” because just like an engine, your character is made up of these components described above.  And when combined, it allows them to move and take action.  If the components aren’t designed properly or if you don’t consider all of them, then your character may move poorly or not at all.  And if you have none of these elements...Well, then you just have a car frame.

So check it out below. Hope you got a lot out of this, and as always, best of luck in your creative endeavors!

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Name: Marcus

Bio: Grew up in a bad neighborhood with no opportunities.  Lived with a single mom who did some shady stuff to make ends meet.  He’s been pretty much on his own since he was young.  Tried to do well in school, but he didn’t have the patience to learn.  Marcus got a minimum-wage job as a young man but sold drugs on the side.  He put on a clean front, and although his friends were degenerates always getting high, he only messed around with weed and a little bit of alcohol whenever there was a party or get-together.  Marcus was after a future in a world without one.  Later on, he met a beautiful woman and fell for her hard.  They had a kid and since he needed more money, he started hustling full-time with bigger supplies, which eventually got him busted.  Marcus then spent a few years in prison before finally getting out.  Now he wants to win his family back, but the only way to do so is to show that he’s responsible. 

Weakness:

Physical: Impatient, too smart for his own good, opportunist, overly optimistic, risk-taker.

Moral: Believes that instant gratification and cutting corners are the smart way to become successful.

Lie They Tell Themselves:  He’s doing it for his family

Desire: To pull off this hustle and win favor with the family he lost

Need: To understand that instant gratification for a better life should come from safe, intelligent risks, not ones that will hurt you or the ones you love.

Something They Would Say:  “Those who win?  They’re the biggest risk-takers and they’ll put their whole life on something they believe in just because they can’t possibly live knowing they could have done something for a better future”. 

Summary:

Marcus grew up in a bad neighborhood with no opportunities eventually getting into small-time drug dealing.  He was after a future in a world without one.  He ends up falling in love with a woman and has a kid with her.  He ends up getting deeper into the drug game before going to prison and losing his family.  Now he’s out and wants to win his family back, but the only way to do so is to show that he’s responsible.

Marcus is impatient, too smart for his own good, he’s an opportunist, overly optimistic, and a risk-taker.  This is because deep down he believes that instant gratification and cutting corners are the smart way to become successful.  He hides from this deeper belief by claiming that he’s doing everything for his family.  In the story, he desires to pull off this hustle and win favor with the family that he lost and through this journey, he needs to understand that instant gratification for a better life should come from safe, intelligent risks, not ones that will hurt you or the ones you love.

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Story Prism,

https://www.storyprism.io/