Young Writers Society

I have a bit of a dilemma.

Currently, I'm writing a book where there are two main characters--a twin sister and a twin brother. See, while the book is supposed to be centered around poor Cyril, I've come to the conclusion from reading the last few chapters I've written that Cecilia is much richer personality wise compared to her brother. "So why not switch main characters?" You might ask. Well, frankly, it's because a) she's dead and most of her appearances in the story are flashbacks, and b) I'm planning something much bigger later on that'll need her to stay out of the spotlight.

I've attempted many things, including trying to have him bond with several other characters to indicate some idiosyncracies, but no matter what I throw at him he remains stubbornly generic and lifeless (especially when he's standing next to literally all the other characters involved). I have lost all hope. I turn to the lords and ladies of the internet forums for guidance, as all other resources have been shamelessly exhausted.

Greetings.

"You don't make a character. A character is found."

And plus, this brother might be confused by you. I couldn't think this as a problem. Try to be more blunt. DEAD IS DEAD. ALIVE IS ALIVE. You can see the differences between them.

I think you are confused. Relax.
(I know it because I'm confused too by you.)

I don't help much. However, talk to characters in your mind. You will enjoy it.

I know it gibberish, but please, relax.

~Memo

I shall try, sir. But it proves a disheartening effort!

What does he want? Why does he want it? What will he do to get it?

As you might be able to tell, my personal go-to for making a dull character interesting is made up of a few parts. Something I do is add a definite goal and give them something about their personality that's a little bit more extreme than other things—something, like many traits, that actively influences the decisions they make as a result of the goal or conflict.

On goals: To quote Kurt Vonnegut, "Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water." If your character is the main character of a story, torn by the plot, he should probably want more than just one thing, considering he's living the conflict.

The choices he makes should be changed from "normal" in some way by what he wants. Let's take a character who wants a glass of water. He's a YMCA-dodgeball champion, let's say, not a hulking wall of muscle, but a good athlete. He just got out of a casual soccer game with a few friends, and he hasn't had anything to drink for a couple of hours. His friends want to go again, but he wants water—so what does he do as a result? He refuses their game, or asks them to wait until he's had water, when he might normally jump right back in.

It seems really minor, but it's a mirror of serious results that can come from characters' goals. What does your character want, and how does that influence the world around him?

On the personality: Let me explain, in some terms of my own. I had a dull first-person protagonist for one novel. She was a poet who was trying to cross a desert (to get to the other side ), and I felt nothing for her story—I didn't care about her or her conflict at all.

So I decided to change her around a bit when adding more conflict. I asked myself, "What would she do to reach her goal?" and made the answer "Absolutely anything." Thus, she became one of the most selfish people I've written—she uses as many people as she can to attain her goal of becoming "perfect", and if she can't use them, she effectively shuts them out of her life. (And no, it's not treated as a good thing by people around her.)

When adding attributes, though, you don't need to go that extreme—you can just add an aspect or two of his personality that would develop that way naturally through whatever he's been through in his life. (With the character I explained with, she developed like that as the result of growing up in a household that played serious favorites, so she had to hoard everything she wanted to keep for herself from a young age.) Different people develop differently, related to their goals, motivations, and core personality, so you can get a number of different outcomes from the same scenario if you tweak his goals or motivations.

When writing and reading, I've started losing interest in my characters who don't have goals specifically—"fighting for some vague reason!" types. The traits are a natural outcome of a major goal crossed with upbringing and core personality, so I'd focus on trying to pin his big goals down first.

Tl;dr: Add a goal. Make that goal change his decisions. That's how you make a human being.

Thank you for the suggestion. That was actually quite helpful.