The Secrets to Creating Memorable Characters

When there are so many character-focused stories being made it can be hard for writers to know how to create characters that stand out and stay in the mind of the reader. The key to this is to start by considering character types that readers will be familiar with and then subvert their expectations. Just by interacting with media and stories readers build up an internal catalogue of character types. This set of character-related ideas, images, and tropes comprise what are called character archetypes, and these can be used in conjunction with setting-based customization and understandable motivations as a starting basis to create memorable characters.

What are Archetypes?

The concept of archetypes was first proposed by psychologist Carl Jung as universal ideas that come from humanity’s collective unconsciousness. Character Archetypes are similar, but instead of coming from the collective unconscious they come from literary canon and widespread media. Readers become familiar with character archetypes via reading and interacting with other stories or even different people in their own lives. Archetypes evoke an image or set of ideas in people. For instance, when someone says that a character is a wizard that might bring to mind the image of an old man with a long white beard, long robes, a large hat, and a magic staff. Of course, that only pertains to a wizard’s appearance, there are also character roles and personality traits that are associated with the archetype. Without any further explanation one might picture a wizard as a mentor figure with a patient and nurturing personality and more wisdom and power than any of his theoretical students might have due to his advanced age.

The previous description could be used to describe Gandalf the Grey, and indeed when the prospect of a wizard was mentioned he might have been one of the first characters to come to mind. This is because he, and Lord of the Rings as a whole, have become so integral to literary canon that many of the characters from the books have become archetypal examples of their character types. Gandalf might have been preceded by the wizard archetype he falls into, but because of his cultural relevance he has superseded characters who would have previously been seen as the archetypal wizards. By creating a character that follows an archetype closely an author can get away with not expanding too much on that character. Readers do not need to know specifically what the wizard’s life was like previously, or exactly what their goal is right away, they understand that he is here as a mentor, and they expect that the wizard will help the protagonist for the good of the world. The author has the choice of playing the character straight, and focusing their energies on elaborating on other, more central, characters or they can go against these expectations and give the reader a surprise.

If one were to create a presumed helpful wizard character and have the protagonist come to them for help it might come as a shock for it to turn out that the wizard is either a big villain or working for one such villain. This kind of twist is also seen in Lord of the Rings. Gandalf has been helping Frodo since the start of his journey so readers would assume that other wizards would be as helpful and committed to stopping Sauron as Gandalf is. This is proved wrong when Gandalf goes to ask Saruman the White for help and Saruman reveals he is already working for Sauron. That is not to say that this kind of trick will always work to deceive readers without any ground work, there needs to be some kind of reason for the protagonist to trust the wizard. If the wizard mentors the character for half the story and then makes that turn, that might be more surprising than having it be someone the character has never met for instance. This idea of setting up the reader’s expectations by introducing a character with a clear archetype and then subverting them can be used to create character-based twists but it can also be used to create characters that stand out from the start.

Creating Characters that Stand Out

Sometimes readers can be attracted to a story partially just because the main character, or one of the main characters is emblematic of a common character archetype but with large differences that are fresh in the current literary canon. When Spiderman was created in 1962 the most popular superheroes of the time were Superman and Batman, adult men who had little issue keeping their secret identities secret and who’s main source of conflict was more based in their crime fighting activities. At the time there were no popular heroes like Spiderman, who started out as a teenager struggling to keep his secret identity secret and who had plenty of storylines centered around conflict in his personal life. Spiderman did not become popular solely because of these differences but they did play a part in originally attracting attention to the character. It is because of things like this that new character archetypes are eventually created. Spiderman became so popular that other people started to write stories centering around teenage superheroes with personal issues and people became familiar with this kind of character, making it its own archetype.

While there are plenty of characters that can be primarily be written around a single archetype, like Gandalf, that does not mean that memorable characters can only be constructed around a single archetype. Spiderman may be a teenage superhero, but as Peter Parker he also fills the role of nerd. Nonetheless, characters can fit two archetypes like this, but they also do not need to be half-and-half of those archetypes. They also do not need to completely embody both archetypes either. While archetypes have to do with larger character concepts character archetypes also tend to have character tropes associated with them. A great way to create a character that does not feel like they are just a copy of their archetype is to take advantage of this, to consider what tropes are usually associated with those archetypes and to purposefully subvert those. Readers are also going to be familiar with those tropes so they will also be interested to see what these subversions might mean for the character.

Of course, besides the initial character archetype the tropes associated with a character are often secondary. One might start the creation of a character by thinking something like, “I want my protagonist to be a genius detective,” and then perhaps, “It would be nice for my detective protagonist to have someone to bounce off of, maybe a street thug would be fun?” In this example, the characters are set up as a detective duo, and immediately the shadow of that archetypal duo, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, rears its head. This is where the characters start to diverge, instead of making the protagonist’s sidekick a doctor, they are instead a street thug, for now only similar to Watson in the fact that they also do not have the same mystery solving skills that their respective detectives have. Despite the afore mentioned detective and street thug being set up as a classic detective duo however, that is not the only character duo they are set up for. They also fit the brains and brawn duo or maybe even a book smart vs street smart duo in a way that Sherlock and Watson do not. This sets these two up to have more of an equal role in solving cases than Sherlock and Watson have. These ideas all come inherently with the idea for their archetypes.

Fitting Characters Into their Setting and Story

From here one might consider the setting or storyline these two characters will fit into if these did not precede the character concepts. These too have a great chance differentiate the detective and the street thug from their progenitors, after all Sherlock and Watson are very heavily tied to their English Victorian setting. These characters might be different enough to be interesting to place in the same or a similar setting as a fun contrast, but the author also has the option to go with a completely different setting to set them further apart. No matter where the setting is one still has to consider how the characters relate to it. The detective is always going to be a detective, but one needs to consider things like: are they well known in their community? How do they relate to their family? As well as things specific to the setting. If the detective was in a modern day setting one would have to ask if they have a driver's license or a phone. The answers to those questions say something about the characters personally. If the detective does not have a driver's license it might mean that they are irresponsible, that they live in a walkable city, or that they have people to drive them around.

However, in more unfamiliar settings one also has to answer how the unusual aspects of the world affect the characters. If the detective and the street thug are in a world with magic one has to consider if one of them, both of them, or neither of them can use magic. If the detective can use magic but the street thug cannot then that implies that magic is usually possessed by intelligent people. If the street thug can use magic but the detective cannot then that implies that who can use magic is random. If they can both use magic, then that implies that magic can be learned and depending on how difficult it is it might also imply that the street thug is smarter than they seem. If neither character has the ability to use magic it would imply that being able to use magic is fairly rare. Of course, facts about the main characters will not be the only way to get information like this across.

Whatever the reader learns about those characters will be cross referenced with information from the narration or other characters. While having only the detective know magic without explanation might make readers think that magic here is reserved for intelligent people, the narration might inform the reader that is not the case. Alternatively, the author could let the reader put this information together by learning more information about other characters. If a sociable well-traveled side character later states that they have never met anyone who could use magic before then the reader realizes that people who use magic are rarer than they initially thought. In turn information about the characters will also be tied to the storyline.

If one of the main characters is a detective then most likely the story will be or involve some kind of mystery and if the other main character is a street thug, then the big question there is, who do they work for? There are other types of stories where the identity of the street thugs' employer prior to beginning of the story might not matter but in a mystery story hidden information like this might be an important reveal later on. The type of story being written around them re-contextualizes facts about the characters to be more or less important than how the characters or readers might see it. Usually, street thugs are unimportant villains who come into the story not for themselves but for their employers but making one into a main character tells readers that this character will not be a two-dimensional enforcer or antagonist. Still, these things are only the groundwork to making memorable characters. Readers might become interested in a story because they see that the characters are twisting familiar tropes and archetypes, but if those characters do not do anything interesting in the story readers might not remember them. When it comes to character memorability readers usually remember either characters’ strong personalities, their bonds to other characters, or strong actions they took.

Creating Memorable Characters through Motivation

Characters need to have strong motivations that push them to take action. However, these motivations cannot just be pushing them towards resolving the main plot. While it is important to write characters with a motivation to advance the plot, it is more realistic for characters to have more than one motivation. Humans often have several desires at any given time, and these can even go against each other and make things more difficult for them. The previously mentioned genius detective might want to solve a case very badly, but what if he is a people pleaser to his core? If he has difficulty doing things that might offend people, it might make finding clues more difficult for him. This idea also has the benefit differentiating the detective from a lot of other detective characters, they are usually bold and unafraid of offending or making people uncomfortable in their investigations. This both sets the character apart and gives the writer fertile ground to create memorable scenes.

A writer might create memorable scenes out of how far the detective might go to keep from displeasing people he is investigating. For instance, if his suspect is about to catch his street thug partner searching their closet he might go so far as to fall out of window in the room to distract them. That scene might become more memorable if the fall is high enough to injure him. One could have the detective be injured for the rest of the story and even result in some kind of consequence like his leg being broken and because he could not run on it he was not able to save a victim's life. This has the benefit of making the scene memorable to the reader and also to make it clear to them that the detective's overly people pleasing nature is holding him back. This all becomes much more memorable if it becomes the start of the detective's character arc as well, then the scene where the detective falls out of the window could even be foiled by a scene where he has the choice to do something similar but decides to tell his suspect the truth instead. This is interesting, but authors can also create memorable moments by tricking readers into thinking that they know a character's motivation only to reveal that was not the case and have the character do something completely unexpected because of this.

Here the previously unknown boss of the street thug comes into play. Perhaps in this story the street thug started working with the detective in the first place because one of his friends died and it was involved in the case the detective was solving. The street thug says he is helping the detective because he wants justice for his friend readers have no reason to doubt this, but then the culprit turns out to be the street thug's boss, or someone acting on their orders. It could be that the identity of the street thug's boss was never established, and he does not say that the culprit is his boss when their identity is revealed, or it could be that the street thug says that the culprit is his boss but that he cares more about getting justice for his friend. In either scenario, his shooting the detective because it turns out that he cares more about his boss than getting justice would still be surprising and memorable. It would be all the more memorable if the thug does not change his mind and help the detective in the end, because that is the usual way that betrayals like this resolve. If the street thug becomes a consistent antagonist after this, readers might be interested to see how his relationship with the detective will change and why exactly he cared more about protecting his boss than he did about getting justice for his friend. Readers become familiar with characters as their stories go on and expect that they know what drives them, but there are always ways to use those expectations against them.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, characters are built from so many different aspects that it can be hard to completely summarize them in one sentence. One might start with an Archetype and an idea of how the character fits into the story or setting but that is only the very start. Making a character is like building a house. Foundation first in the form of an archetype and then the internal structure and decoration on top. Readers can see the shape of the house from the outset and might have a guess to what is hiding inside, but when they come in and start exploring a writer will always have the chance to surprise and leave them thinking about it for years to come.