FUNDAMENTALS OF CHARACTER CREATION: TROUBLES

A still from Souliya Phoumivong’s Flow

When we write a character well we are creating belief in that character. 

(I prefer Tolkien’s creation of belief over Coleridge’s suspension of disbelief for the simple reason that in my book creativity is a positive act of bringing something into the world and not a negation of a negative.) 

Well-written characters possess real-seeming-ness or what the Disney folks call the illusion of life; they are narrative replicants that ignite our sympathies and excite our genius for limbic connection.  They are fakeries that live inside of us with a truth that seems real.

We’ve discussed a number of strategies that will help infuse the illusion of life into your characters; we’ve spoken of the Five Secret Channels and how Wants are a wonderful primary for character creation — same with Silences and the Three-Body Problem.  Characters don’t necessarily need all these qualities to achieve life-like-ness — just enough of them.  Your story will guide you in selecting which ones you will most need, but nevertheless having a solid panoply at your disposal will always help, not only to dress the story at hand but also to improve your character creation skills in general.

You want another surefire way of creating convincing compelling characters?

Give them Troubles. 

By Troubles I don’t mean the resistance that arises from our character’s Wants, and I don’t mean the story-structuring trials that Conflict imposes on your protagonists. 

Troubles, in my homebrew, are a fully lower level of narrative friction, a category of antagonism that can produce smoke but not fire, worthy of an anecdote but not a full story.  They are the lesser conflicts, everyday annoyances, minor inconveniences that bother all our lives and should bother the lives of your protagonists.  The anxious dog, the dodgy knee, the broken glasses, the bureaucratic tangle, the suspicious drycleaner, the bus that the character keeps missing, the bad haircut, the noisy AC next door — everyone has Troubles — unless of course you’re some perfect God-type, and who the fuck wants to read about someone like this? 

Mechanically speaking: Wants shape the character; Conflict shapes the Story and the character’s progress through the Story.  Troubles, on the other hand, add texture to the character and their world but don’t really impact the Story.  Significantly: characters tend not to have the time or the space to respond to their Troubles meaningfully.  Troubles, after all, are Troubles; they are not Conflicts.   

Sometimes a character’s Troubles are on the bigger side: the Dursleys, for example, before they start trying to owl-block Harry Potter.  Sometimes the Troubles are low-key, like Luke Skywalker being forced to clean up droids when all he wants is to go to Toshi Station to pick up power converters, or Sarah Connor from The Terminator who has a crappy job or Katniss with that damn cat she didn’t drown.  

Any of these Troubles, in the hand of another writer, could have easily been the story’s central Conflict, but because Lucas and Rowling and Cameron chose to center other wilder Conflicts, they aren’t. 

All a matter of degree, and what the writer chooses to shape their story with — versus what they use to add low-key reality to their characters. 

A sprained foot that has no real impact on the drama — Trouble.

A sprained foot the day before the big game the character secretly bet on — Conflict.

I love Troubles; they give a writer so much for so little.  Troubles are something all people can relate to — not everyone has siblings or best friends but everyone, and I mean everyone, has Troubles. Troubles are part of the human condition and will make your characters more human-esque as well, more real, more sympathetic.

Any surprise that all the best characters, in literature, on screen, have Troubles?

Best of all each person’s Troubles are as unique as their fingerprints or their family, making them an excellent way to individuate your characters—by the Troubles themselves and how the character chooses to react to them.

Troubles can signal Consequentiality, and if you choose a physical Trouble they can keep the character’s Body in play (always important).  Plus, if the Trouble has been cooking awhile, said Trouble will impart three-dimensionality to a character, will help sell the sense that a character (through their Trouble) was “alive” before the story begins and will “live” on after the story ends. 

Troubles will also help you illuminate your character’s world — in a low-key, almost subliminal way.  Different worlds will naturally have different Troubles. After all, there are some characters who live in worlds where everyone has debt and some characters who lived in worlds where no one has debt. Some characters whose worlds are full of infrastructural wildness and others whose worlds are seamless.

Show me a character’s Troubles (and how they react to them) and I will show you who they are and where they are.

How much Trouble do you need?  Depends on the story and on the character.  Some stories require you to pile on the Troubles.  Other stories only need one annoying bit of shittery to sell the characters and their world.    

Let your own experience and your reading guide you. 

Me, I like to select Troubles that are persistent, that predate and will outlast the story.

I keep Troubles humming through my stories like a heartbeat, like a drum.  I couldn’t tell my stories any other way.