Letting the Reader Create the Character

Quote of the Day: "Wait, wait, tell me we're all gonna be okay. Would you be better if they took this city away?" --The Crash Moderns, Where'd All the Scene Girls Go?

I think I've blogged before about how I think that part of creating good characters is leaving room for the reader to develop them in their minds, so that every reader's character is different (this, in my opinion, is why movies made from books never work out as well as the books---the character on screen never exactly matches the character in anyone's head). This goes double for minor characters--the little ones like I talked about on Monday, that don't have huge roles but can nonetheless be very memorable.

Today at work I ran into a manuscript that had really great minor characters. Part of this was that they were just likable. They seemed like nice people and had cool little quirks, a la Monday's post. But another part of what made them so good is that their characterization essentially consisted of some dialogue and the nicknames given to them by the protagonist, who couldn't speak their language and thus didn't know their real names. Aside from that, the reader was left to generate their own character.

It just struck me as a stroke of genius (and I could have squeezed the word "strike" into that sentence I would've had the trifecta! Damn!), because I'd never seen it attempted before, let alone pulled off so well. Oh, and on top of that, the way the nicknames were applied also told volumes about the character doing the nicknaming. Brilliant! I think that's another thing to keep in mind when creating characters. Obviously not everyone can pull this trick in their story itself, or it wouldn't work...but it's worth knowing what your characters nicknames would be, if a sassy time traveler happened to come back and nickname them. It's like distilling a character down into its one-word essence. Wonderful little trick. Some from my novel, for the benefit of those who've read it:

Len- Dreadlilocks
Leramis- Mr. Serious
Dil- Sunshine

etc. etc. etc.

Enjoy!