When
you’re writing original fiction, or at least original characters for fan
fiction, one of the first things you are going to have to decide, is what they
look like. This is not as easy as “tall,
dark and handsome” or “She had more curves than Sandy Koufax and eyes you could
see your grandchildren in”. Think of the
role each character is going to play in your story. If you were casting the story as a movie, who
would you get to play your character?
Adriana Lima is hot, but you wouldn’t get her to play the soccer mom of
the three adorable tykes that Vin Diesel must protect from Terrorist. Joe Pesci
is funny, but he’s not getting offered any roles as the Marine Captain storming
the beaches of Iwo Jima. Why? Because appearances have implications. Your audience will assume things about your
characters based on their appearances whether you intended them to or not.
Appearance
will always be linked to back story, because either your history shaped your appearance,
or your appearance shaped your history. Sometimes it’s a bit of both. Someone
with good genetics for an athletic build, clear skin, and a great smile, is
going to exit high school on a different trajectory than a kid with a glandular
condition that tends towards obesity and acne. His looks made him popular, his
popularity made him confident and successful, and his confidence and success
gave him charisma. He’s looking at better jobs, faster promotions and more
attractive girlfriends than his classmate.
If you see a guy like this walking down the street, in an expensive
suit, you are going to subconsciously make a lot of assumptions about him based
on your own life experiences, and you probably won’t be too far off. Cliché’s
are cliché’s for a reason.
From
the other direction, if you grew up in a Kentucky coal mining town, where your
father and grandfather and older brother worked the mine until it collapsed and
the company closed it, your hands are rough, your clothes are practical and
durable and cheap because you know how hard your parents had to work to pay for
them. You’ve never had a Justin Bieber haircut in your life. Even when you
leave to find work in the city, who you were shapes who you are. People will look at you, and though they won’t
know everything about you a lot of your past will be implied by how you look.
I say
all that to get to this. There is a subtle but very important difference
between being attractive and being appealing. Paris Hilton is attractive, but
how much time would you really want to spend hanging out with her? Once you get
past the looks, she’s not very appealing. You want your readers to want to hang
out with your characters, and this is done by making us feel connected. Most of
your readers are not supermodels. Even the ones, who are lucky enough to be
good looking, are aware that they aren’t perfect, so when you describe your
character as a flawless Adonis, we don’t feel like he represents us at all. He
represents the star quarterback who sat at the cool kids table in the cafeteria
and dated the head cheerleader that you had the worst crush on who signed your
yearbook, “Have a great summer Kenny XOXO” , but your name wasn’t Kenny, and
she should know that, you’ve only had like 8 classes together. Making your character perfect eliminates a
lot of your opportunities as a writer. How do you make your character grow if
he’s already where he should want to be? How do you write a convincing love
triangle if no woman in her right mind would choose the other guy?What do you get for the man that has everything?
The
trick is to make the character attractive enough to be appealing, but with an
imperfection or two that humanizes them.
To this end, I like a girl with a bit of a nose.
A girl with a nose has an interesting face, a face with
character. One that warrants a second look and on that second look, you decide
it’s not really a flaw. It’s something about her that you could see yourself
being kind of fond of in a girl you were dating. The nose implies back story. For a guy this is a girl that might have dated
you in high school. She wasn’t that cheerleader who only dated
quarterbacks. Maybe she skateboarded to school;
maybe she was in the theater club or on the soccer team. She was cute, but not so gorgeous that you
made a fool out of yourself when you talked to her. For a girl she’s the friend you grew up with
who didn't graduate middle school, get her braces out, and stop talking to
you when the cool kids decided she was one of them. She’s probably still your friend even though
she went to a different college out of state. So a nose that may be a shade too long, maybe a jaw that's more strong than petite. Something to humanize them.
The
point is people write fan fiction because the characters feel like old friends
and we’re not ready to let go. The more your characters feel like people that
we know, people that we would want to spend time with, and are unwilling to let go of, the
more appealing they will be, even if they aren’t traditionally beautiful. The things they say and do will be the larger
part of who they are, but it all begins
with appearances.
