Advice on writing characters that feel real (Patreon)

Okay! I'm gonna try and collect my Night Thoughts into something coherent for you guys, because it seemed like most of the feedback I got about writing-related posts went towards writing people that feel real. I'll try and do a series of these so I don't get overwhelmed and ramble too much because I do that.

FIRST! Here is the hierarchy you need to remember:

Characters > Plot > World building

You might disagree with me. I'm gonna say that you're wrong, so don't bother. CHARACTERS ARE MOST IMPORTANT. Your plot and your world should spring FROM the characters and to SERVE the characters. I'll explain in a bit.

A plot is just a series of events. I can listen to a stranger tell me a series of things that have happened to them, even really interesting things, but it's still just a bunch of random events that happened to someone else. Eventually, I'll leave that conversation and probably forget what they told me. I don't know them, and I'm not emotionally invested in them, so stuff that happens to them is just like...a grocery list. That person might be super interesting, but I wouldn't know that just from the plot by itself.

World building...is the stickler isn't it? Because you can talk to some people and they've spent fucking yeeeearrs developing their universe. This is what the plants look like, these are the languages they speak in these different regions, this is how the currency works...No one cares. I'm sorry. You put in a lot of effort, but backwards.

Ultimately, you want to start with characters. Maybe initially, you won't know that much about your characters, so if they're a bit thin early on, that's okay. I wasn't totally sure who Elias was until the end of chapter 2, and Vincent still surprises me sometimes with like...having emotions and shit. But start with a sketch of a person. If it helps, keep someone you know in mind when you write that character, or file the serial numbers off of a couple of your favorite existing characters and combine them a bit to see what cool weirdo you come up with. But start with some basic traits and an idea of who they might be. 

Now, you've got a character. Let's call this character Mark. I'm going to make Mark pretty impulsive and cocky, secretly really insecure (I'm going to talk about insecurity in its own post at some point, remind me), but he's a really capable guy if he puts his mind to it. He's not great at thinking in a straight line, but he comes up with solutions eventually in his own way. He's a little too loud and excitable sometimes, but the people who know him find him charming anyway. 

I just made Mark up in about two minutes, but that's enough to work off of. Now, let's add some plot and some world. We're going to keep both pretty light to begin with. For world, I'm going to go with space. He's on a space ship. I'll worry about the details later.

Plot is more of a quagmire. Plot shouldn't just happen to a character and they're constantly just being pulled along. The character should react to the plot as often as the plot reacts to the character. You want actions and events to have consequences. "Because this happened, this happened, and because that happened, this other thing happened, therefore this happened" etc.

The easiest place to start a plot is what does this character NEED or WANT. Regular people want things, and that's the best way to start making a character who feels like a real person. Mark, who I now realize is loosely based off of Captain Kirk, wants to be a pilot for...whatever I'll call my space military operation. That's what Mark wants, to be a pilot. 

Now, crafting the plot is just a series of changes that add up to Mark becoming a pilot, OR Mark not becoming a pilot, but becoming something more authentic to who Mark actually should be (like a captain maybe?), OR Mark failing completely because you're writing a really depressing story. Your plot throws things in Mark's way (I struggle with this because I want everyone to be happy lol), and Mark finds his way through those struggles. 

Maybe Mark has worked really, really hard to get into flight training school. He's been flying since he was a kid, in airplanes and such, but not to space. But Mark sucks at taking tests, gets suuuper anxious, and completely bombs it. (See how I've added backstory to this character to give weight to plot points? His backstory INFORMS the plot, not just as random details.) Mark is a pretty resourceful guy, though, and he's enthusiastic enough that he doesn't let failing one test screw up his plans. He knows he can do this (no he doesn't, he tells himself on the inside), so he starts researching on the future internet (you can flesh all that out in the world building stage) and comes up with an idea to build his own fucking space ship thank you very much. And because he's a charming guy, he recruits some really smart friends to help him. 

Something something rag tag team of friends something something he fights like the dickens and gets into flight school his own way by learning in a way that's more practical to who he is as a person or whatever. I'm losing steam here because I should go to bed, but you get the idea. We know who Mark is to start with. We want to write a story that deals with space. Well, Mark is the vehicle by which you tell that story, rather than that story being a vehicle to drag Mark around. I want to give a shit about Mark. I want to see Mark at his best and his worst and in between. I want to see Mark eat a bagel in the morning with fucked up bed hair. I want Mark to suck at relationships because he's a nice dude, but focused on his own goals right now. I want Mark to grow as a person and learn more about who he really is and what he's capable of. 

THEN, as you're putting your story together, the world building will naturally follow. What does the audience need to know to make this world feel real? What details can you drop along the way that will inform plot points down the line? 

Like, in HTBAW, I brought up Connie's pregnancy and then had Marisa explain the various combinations and issues that arise during a magic-based pregnancy. I brought up these details because they're significant to explaining stuff in the next chapter. Did I know any of that junk when I started? Dude, I didn't even know Connie would show up in this story when I started writing it. It wasn't til like...end of chapter 2 that I knew half the plot for this story, let alone anything about my antagonist beyond "Aubrey is reporting back to ??someone?? and I will figure that out...soon??" (I don't write...in a very thought out beforehand way.) But by world building along the way, I have a chance to mold the "rules" of this world to help fit my plot and fill in potential issues. (Why is werewolf bureaucracy such a pain in the ass? Because otherwise there's unlimited help anytime they need it, and that doesn't lend itself to much of a plot.) 

Like, by all means, develop the shit out of whatever you're writing. I want to know what makes your space ships fly, I want to know how intergalactic diplomacy works, I want to know all about the complicated multi-planet banking system...AS THAT SHIT IS NEEDED AND RELEVANT. Lord of the Rings always comes to mind when world building comes up...that story would have been great, except I didn't care about maybe half of it, and for all the stuff that Tolkien explained, he didn't explain other things (like Tom Bombadil WTF was that???) and it all just felt...heavy. I'm not saying I needed a whole book up in Frodo's mental business 24/7, but there's a reason I enjoyed the movies but stopped reading the books like...100 pages short of being done with Return of the King. That's how done I was.

Anyway, if any of this made sense in my sleepy haze, what you need to know is that Part 1 of my random writing blog posts is that you have to put your characters at the TOP PRIORITY of your story. They matter most. I guarantee you, I could write a story about Mark doing his laundry in space and it'd be readable. Might not be the most amazing thing ever written, but if Mark is an interesting enough guy, then him doing his laundry would be interesting too. 

Some other topics I'll cover here soon are Dialog, Insecurity (just trust me), aaaand Character Growth, probably. I'll see if I come up with more, but let's start there.