Welcome to another issue of ‘first draft pharmacy’ where we discuss and hopefully solve some of your biggest writing issues. Today, we’re going to talk about why your characters might be falling flat.

I’m going to share 5 questions to ask yourself to figure out why and fix the problem. Let’s go! 

When I was working on my first novel, When You Read This, with my agent, she was concerned that the one character, whose name was Smith, was just…not interesting. 

She wasn’t connecting to him and worried readers wouldn’t either. And I got it, because I didn’t really connect with him either. 

He was depressed and kind of passive, a dude who just sort of went to work and did his job and felt sad about his life. I had no idea how to spice him up. 

Until I had an idea, and it worked…I’m going to tell you what it is in a minute. But first I’m going to walk you through my first couple of questions you want to ask. 

Question #1: Are you in their heads enough?

If you’re looking for areas where you can improve your plot, look back at what you’ve got so far and ask: am I in my characters’ heads enough? 

Books are really different from TV and film. 

On a screen, you can’t just get into the head of a character and say what they’re thinking or how they feel about something. You can only show it.

You have to demonstrate the emotional states of characters through the actors facial expressions, words, and actions. 

But in a book, the opposite is true—we can get in their heads and bodies. 

“What on earth is she doing?” Damien thought, his heart racing. His hands felt clammy. He wished he were anywhere else. 

I just made up those few lines, but do you see what I mean? We were totally in Damien’s head and body. That’s what a novel or memoir can do, and what readers expect when they come to it. 

A lot of times, I see new writers fail to realize this. Their first draft reads like a screenplay: all action, and no internal life of characters. 

This works great for TV or film, but not for fiction. 

For example, take a look at Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first Indiana Jones movie. In the opening scene, Harrison Ford, aka Indiana Jones, has to receive an ancient golden artifact from a cave that’s full of booby traps. 

In the movie, we see Indiana narrowly dodging these booby traps, jumping over bottomless pits and sliding under a closing rock door, and running away from a really big boulder rolling after him.

If that scene were in a novel, we’d be hearing Indiana’s thoughts while he’s escaping all of these booby traps—his heart racing, wondering if he’s going to survive, or maybe he’s thinking analytically, focusing logically on what he needs to do to get out alive. 

Either way, in a novel, if we didn’t have these interior moments, it would be hard to experience the novel. 

So how do you do this? How do you figure out what they’re thinking and feeling? 

That brings me to my second question to ask. 

Question #2: How would you feel?

If one of your characters is falling flat, another thing that may be missing is empathy. 

Your own empathy. 

For your characters. 

Maybe you’re at a point in your story where you’re not sure what your character should do next. Imagine yourself in their shoes. What would you do in that scenario?

If your main character is a teen ballerina who breaks her leg and can’t dance anymore, it doesn’t matter that you never took ballet and aren’t a teen…how might you react if something you cared about suddenly became impossible because of an accident?

Would you retreat into yourself? Lash out? Turn to something self-destructive? Lean on others? 

Your characters in fiction aren’t always going to be just like you, of course. 

But asking yourself how you would respond in a given situation can be a helpful jumping off point for cultivating rich internal lives for them.

Which brings me to…

Question #3: Are you playing to the top of your intelligence? 

This next one is a rule I learned from improv: play to the top of your intelligence. 

For those who are unfamiliar, improv is a kind of theatrical performance where the actors improvise the scene they’re performing; basically, they’re making it up as they go along. 

I used to do it in my 20s when I was living in New York, even though I was terrible at it, because it was really fun. 

Even though the improvisors are making everything up, there are actually a lot of techniques and strategies they use to help make scenes grounded and make sense.

And playing to the top of your intelligence is one of them. 

This phrase, playing to the top of your intelligence, means that your characters need to be at least as smart as you are. 

If you step out on stage as a cow, that cow should be as smart as you are. If you step out on stage as a lamppost, that lamppost has the same SAT score as you do. 

Catch my drift? 

The reason is that when you dumb things down, the reader will also feel smarter than your characters. And as soon as we feel smarter than the characters, it’s hard to trust them or want to follow them. 

This doesn’t have to be complicated. Just have your characters do what a person as smart as you would do. 

If someone’s kid is missing, she’s probably not just going to sit around doing nothing. She’s going to hire a PI. Or badger the police. Or put up posters. 

Playing to the top of your intelligence is one way of making sure that your characters come across as more real, because they’re doing what a real person might do, not a caricature.

Question #4: Could you give someone a secret? 

I love this trick. This is what I did for Smith! The character I mentioned at the beginning of this episode. 

I gave him a secret: a gambling addiction. It instantly made him pop off the page. 

Since then, I’ve used this trick when I need to deepen a character, or I’m just personally not relating to a character, and I love sharing it with writers in my program the Book Incubator. 

It’s truly gold. 

Secrets make everything more interesting. Think about the last time you found out a secret about someone. They INSTANTLY became more interesting to you, right? It’s true. We all know it’s true. 

The same is true for fictional characters—when we give them secrets, they not only become more interesting to readers, they become more interesting to us, the writers. 

And that makes them more fun to write, which makes it easier to sit down and get our pages done.

What secret could your character have? Sit down, brainstorm. Pick one that seems to have good energy. 

There’s also an extra benefit to your plot…when a character has information that they don’t want other people to know, it introduces a whole host of other possibilities for your plot.

That person is going to do things they might not normally do to keep that secret. You can play around with who actually already KNOWS the secret, or suspects the secret. 

You can play with how and when the secret gets revealed. When it does, what will other characters do with that new information? How will they respond? 

So many interesting questions arise when you toss a secret in the mix, and it’s an easy and foolproof way to keep your audience engaged.

This is what dramatic irony is—when your audience knows something characters don’t—and your audience will want to see how it’s going to unfold. 

Question #5: Are they too consistent?

A quick story: On August 9, 2010, JetBlue Flight 1052 taxied to a stop on the tarmac at JFK airport in New York. 

As the plane rolled to a stop, Steven Slater, a veteran flight attendant, announced over the plane’s speaker system that he was quitting his job.

He then grabbed two beers, deployed the giant, yellow, inflatable evacuation slide, and slid down it. 

Talk about quitting, with, flare. Mr. Slater became a kind of hero to many disgruntled American workers that day. 

Here’s the thing: writers working on fiction are always trying to make their characters more consistent. They’ll ask me: Is this consistent? How do I make sure this action is consistent with my character?

But humans are not consistent, guys. We do surprising and weird things. We are Steve Slater. Or at least we want to be. 

If you’re feeling like your characters are stuck or your plot isn’t “clicking,” think about the ways in which your characters could do something that would be out of character for them. 

What would straight up surprise you?

For example, a meek museum security guard who always follows the rules decides to steal a painting. Totally out of character, right? But so interesting. 

Ready to write your book?

If you made it this far, I’m guessing that you are writing a book, or want to write a book. If so, I want to talk to you. 

When I’m not writing, my mission in life is to help talented writers write their dream books. I love it. I live for it. 

If you're curious to know more, I have a FREE video walking you through my exact process for writing a book.

You can get it by clicking below and answering two questions to apply to my program, the Book Incubator. You can get the video whether you join or not—no pressure to enroll. 

Just click below to tell me a little bit about you and your book—you can fill out a form online. I’m so excited to hear from you!

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