From Jeff Vandermeer’s Wonderbook, some ideas for deepening character.

1. Consistent inconsistency. Real people don’t act rationally all the time. We have contradictions within ourselves, and stress often brings them out. Show this.

2. Action versus thought. You can show the reader the character’s thoughts, but the other characters only see their actions. Set up a gap between the two. (This is the reason we excuse our own actions even when they’re like those of others we condemn: we know the thoughts that led up to doing those things, but we have to guess at other people’s motivations.)

3. Need versus want (this one comes via Tobias Buckell). Characters should want things, but sometimes the things they want are not the things they need. There’s gold in that gap. (Or – my own observation here, from Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon – the thing they want may not be compatible with the thing they must do.) 

4. Transfer of energy. Have you ever come in from a day in which someone annoyed you, and taken it out on your housemates? What if the person who annoyed you was themselves reacting to something elsewhere in their life? 

It can happen across time too, when we react to a person or event not for what that person or event actually is, but for what they remind us of. This is:

5. People as symbols or ideas. To ourselves, we’re people. To other people, we may represent something more, less, or other than ourselves. 

6. The secret life of objects. Objects can be important to us because of what they represent too, and so we may value them beyond their monetary worth. This can transfer energy, it can be a source of interpersonal conflict, or it can be an occasion of threat or loss for a character. (I’m thinking of Jim Butcher’s Changes here. Harry Dresden had a crappy basement apartment filled with worn paperbacks and a beaten-up old car, but they were his, and when he loses them, we feel it.)

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3. 

Interruption: interrupting your tidily paced scenes, cutting off leisurely exploration with an urgent message, having something happen earlier than planned, can improve pacing and tension.

Contamination: letting a subtle significance slowly creep into your scenes from the edges, for the reader to gradually become aware of.

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“Once you have dramatized a particular type of act or action more than once – sometimes as little as two or three times – it begins to give diminished returns to the reader, especially if presented back-to-back…. This repetition may mean that entire scenes become “invisible” to the reader; they no longer stimulate the reader’s interest or excitement.”

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Beats are the back-and-forth, action-and reaction, cause-and-effect elements of fiction. Progressions are beats arranged in a way that flows and creates intensity, revelation, and the sense of rising action. Carry through on the wider consequences of your action to create energy and complexity within and across scenes.

Rule of thumb: you can drop every third beat of a fight scene and it will be quicker, but still make sense.

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From Jeff Vandermeer’s Wonderbook:

A scene dramatizes at least one character in the moment – showing, not telling, or at least conveying to the reader the sense of being shown. The ratio of dialog and actions unfolding in the present to exposition, flashback, description and summary is actually very flexible.

A half scene is a mini scene consisting of a few lines of dialog and description, embedded into summary or a different scene to provide more depth and drama.

Summary or exposition describes action or thought without dramatizing it – tells rather than shows. You can get away with a surprising amount of this if you make it interesting enough.

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