The way to do this is to begin by looking at what film people call a ‘pitch’, or short punchy paragraphs used to sell the idea for films. Pitches are good to examine for the purposes of writing because they employ as few words as possible to sum up the conflicts hindering a character, and also hinting at that character’s journey.
Usually in a pitch the description of the character is no more than two words, the first being an adjective relating to personality, a vital physical characteristic or general outlook, the second a noun drawn from a verb (that is, a word describing the person’s job, main activity or chief interest).
Thus we could have a woebeggone archaeologist, an embittered principal, a jaded writer, a talking pumpkin… whatever.
Of course there’s a major art to getting the character to mesh in somehow (or clash with?) the theme. But that’s another story. Right now I’m just talking about coming up with ‘tags’ you can use to begin to flesh out your characters from scratch. After all, sometimes all we have to start with are words.
What I propose you do is make two separate lists along the lines above, then pick a word from each to be your character summary. The first list will be adjectives that have some relation to mood, personality or an important (which is to say, thematically connected) physical attribute; the second list will be all ‘doing’ words, or rather ‘doer’ words.
However as we’ll see later, not all personality traits or professions or pursuits promise much conflict to come. Still, here are some lists off the top of my head:
| nerdy | archaeologist |
| witty | high jumper |
| boastful | clown |
| hopeful | obstetrician |
| pretentious | stockbroker |
| logical | princess |
| empathic | ex-soldier |
| homely | translator |
| successful | pig farmer |
| brilliant | deserter |
| deceitful | politician |
| damaged | demon (why not?) |
| romantic | card sharper |
| disabled | lion tamer |
| clownish | tax official |
| uptight | husband |
| washed out | medium |
| abandoned | gold digger |
| driven | dog trainer |
| snappish | tightrope walker |
| sensitive | chess player |
| credulous | accountant |
| obedient | romance writer |
| sex-starved | sculptor |
| hygienic | madam |
| churlish | pastrycook |
| deluded | warden |
Huh, I just realised ‘deceitful’ is next to ‘politician’. That was entirely happenstance, believe it or not!
The next step is to pair one of these ‘doer’ terms with a word from the list of personal traits. Unfortunately some just don’t work, do they?
‘Romantic romance writer’, for instance, is not particularly going to jump off the page. There’s no core conflict; no sense of a mismatch or lack. Another ridiculous example would be ‘clownish clown’. But what about ‘churlish romance writer’? Or ‘washed-out demon’?
Of course this exercise is more of a start-up one than a true character creation tool. And it must be underscored that the success of it depends in large part on finding new and unusual combinations of character traits. Genre and theme will almost certainly dictate the character’s social role, chief interest, corporeal state or profession.