How I create (hopefully) memorable characters

A few weeks ago, I stumbled onto a discussion about how to create great characters. (I don't remember where I saw this discussion, but I assume it was on Threads because Threads constantly throws posts at me that are, like, "I can't wait for the world to meet my character, a 75-year-old granny who's also a highly trained assassin. She's allergic to peanuts and has a husband who's 30 years younger than her." But I digress.) In reading the discussion, I realized I go about this extremely differently from anyone in the discussion and most people I know. And once I had that realization, I also broke through a block on a project I'm struggling with a bit. This is not to say my method is somehow preferable to anybody else's, or even that it's at all unique. Surely other people handle this exactly as I do! I just think my method is different, and you might be curious to hear more about it.

So here's how I go about "creating characters," using my novel Woodworking (in stores in 2025!!!!) as an example. (I am aware you cannot read this book, so maybe this will be a bad explanation. Or maybe not! Maybe you'll be, like, "Damn, I gotta read that book.")

When I create characters, I don't start with an individual. I start with a relationship. The germ of this was an old blog post by Ken Levine that argued the sitcoms we remember best are all built around a relationship that is recognizable but also unique. His example was The Office, which is built around a boss-employee relationship where the boss is a needy sponge who wants others to tell him how great he is. Even those of us with good bosses recognize the inherent power imbalance in that relationship, and many of us can recognize the ways in which David Brent or Michael Scott were bad bosses from our own lives. What's more, you don't need to have a boss who's a love sponge to have someone in your life who fits a lot of those categories.

Levine's point was that, yes, the singular character of the boss in each series is a major factor in how the series is constructed, but even in their earliest going, both shows are careful to set up subtly different relationships for all of the supporting characters that all fall under the umbrella of "boss-employee." Whether Gareth/Dwight is sucking up to David/Michael or Tim/Jim is simply enduring the guy, you start to learn more about all of these characters through their relationships to each other.

Anyway, I internalized this blog post so much that I guess I now start from what I think is an interesting relationship, then work backward from there. For instance, I first had the inklings of what would become Woodworking after seeing the movie Booksmart. I liked the film well enough, but I also found myself annoyed how many raunchy teen comedies presuppose a kind of bland upper-middle-class existence. What does a teen comedy look like if it's about a place like where I grew up, where people party in the middle of cow pastures?

The core of every raunchy teen comedy is some combination of best friends who are obsessed with either popularity or sex (probably both), so as I brainstormed about this idea – which at that time was a movie – with my wife/writing partner, Libby, we tried to come up with interesting best friend combos. Naturally, I suggested one of them be trans because I was in the thick of my "EVERYTHING MUST HAVE TRANS CHARACTERS IN IT INTENTIONALLY!" era. (I still like putting trans characters in things, but I feel less capital letters about it now.) Libby and I took a few flailing stabs at a story about a trans girl in South Dakota, trying to come out to her high school bros on the night of both the wildest party of the year and a freak April blizzard. It never really went anywhere, and we moved on to other things.

Except "teen sex comedy where one character is trans and trying to come out" lodged in my brain and started twisting itself around. This sort of somersaulting is something I have always done intuitively, which drives people I work with nuts sometimes. But as a novelist, I didn't have to worry about anybody else when writing the first draft. "Well," my brain said, "what if both friends were trans women and one was a teenager who'd been out for a while and the other was her teacher, who just came out to herself? What does that friendship look like?"

From that, Woodworking was born. If you read the book now, you'll be deeply confused that it was birthed out of seeing a sex comedy starring Beanie Feldstein, as the book's genre has drifted toward something more tragicomic (though I think it's still funny!). But the core nugget – teacher and student friendship where they're both trans – has always been there.

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I didn't have real notions of what either the teacher or the student was like when I came up with that relationship. Yet the relationship itself suggested certain possibilities for who each might be. From there, I started thinking about what other characters might populate their world, once again starting from the relationships outward. What if the teacher had an ex-wife who suddenly reentered her life? What if the student was sleeping with a guy who was ashamed to be seen with her?

The core idea of all of these relationships is an inherent tension. That tension doesn't need to lead to conflict all the time, but it should be able to escalate into conflict if need be. For instance, the student realizing she's being treated poorly by the guy she's sleeping with immediately creates conflict, but if she's not realizing that, the reader probably is, which creates tension.

The more I thought about this weird tendency of mine – one I only partially understood all along – the more I realized that all of the most successful fiction or screenplays I've been involved in started from a core relationship and worked outward. What's more, that core relationship needn't always remain at the story's center! Thorns, the script that has opened door for Libby and me in TV writing, started its life as "a youngest sister keeps trying to get her older sister's boyfriend to fall in love with her," and eventually morphed into some other story entirely. That original element is still present, but you would likely never guess the script started with that relationship.

Obviously, whatever method works for you works for you. Sometimes, you have to start from premise and work backward from that. Very occasionally, working backward from theme can work. And if you're someone who comes up with a strong, singular character and fills in the world around them, that seems to be the way most folks do this sort of thing. Go with God!

I believe, however, that people are defined less by anything intrinsic to themselves and more by how they interact with the world and especially other people. Maybe you're writing a thing with only one character in it. That's great! But they'll still have relationships with something, be it an animal, a ghost, or a volleyball they've painted a face on. What was the relationship that marked them most in the past? How does that factor into their present situation?

My method will not solve every problem if you try using it. You still have to figure out who people are. But if you work backward from a relationship, you always, always have that bedrock to return to. You might not know everything about a character, but you know this one, very important thing.

This week's reading music: "No California" by Ilsey

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