by Elton Gahr

Created on: May 27, 2009

There are four basic parts of fiction, character, conflict, history and plot. Of those four the one that connects the reader most closely to the story are your characters. But often these characters are simple devices and though this may work for a time creating characters that are multidimensional is the only way that they will carry a reader through the story. This means that while character is separate from those other three aspects on the list the character itself must have the other three basic parts of fiction in his character.

Everyone who has ever lived has had inner conflict. We have desires that are mutually exclusive. We have hopes that we do not believe we can achieve and fears that stop us from trying. We can feel love for more than one person at a time, or love and hate for the same person often at the same time. Creating a character who embodies conflict is creating a character that is real.

A character who steps out of the ether into your story with no past is one that is going to quickly become uninteresting and unbelievable. Even a character with amnesia has a past and often that past is the center of the story. For real people ever moment of their lives is to some extent effected by all the moments that came before. If you want stories that have the foundation of history then you must have characters with history.

At first it may seem that plot is the most disconnected of these elements from the character. The plot is what happens to the character but in fact the plot of a story is more often than not defined by the character. The plot is the goal of the character, and characters without goals often lead to stories with little or no plot. You can throw things at your character for a while, but eventually if he doesn't make the decision to act on his own the story will grow stale. A good character has to find solutions on his own, he has to grow and change and he has to become the plot.

The occasional minor character that turns out to be a one-dimensional plot device can be acceptable. Far more often it is useful to create every character as someone with their own internal conflict, their own history and goals and desires of their own. Without that your story will eventually lose that connection with the reader and you will find yourself struggling to push the story forward despite those characters when they should be the ones helping you to move the story forward. So create characters that are multidimensional, it's not as difficult as it might seem and the effort you put in now will save you far more in the middle of your story.

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