The Three Dimensions: Making fictional characters real.

What does it mean for a character to be three-dimensional? Those words are tossed around a fair bit when you aim to make a character as real and believable and relatable as possible.

And while our fictional pawns may not quite achieve the level of lifetime complexity as a real human who’s lived and breathed a life of “character development”, we can certainly come as close as we can to it.

But how?

These are (in my humble opinion) the so-called “three dimensions” that make up how to write the best characters in whatever story you are weaving.

How

We all behave very differently from one another and react to the world in various ways. Our disposition to social interaction, our responses to trauma, and how we process problems are all fundamental pillars that support a personality.

Is a character introverted or extroverted? Do they think out loud and in cohesive sentences in their head or are their thoughts abstract and without label?

Are they agreeable in discussions and arguments or do they stand their ground?

There is more to a person’s personality than a hobby they enjoy or some scar on their face or some catchphrase.

Which is why I recommend looking into the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or MBTI, a popular personality indicator/test that categorizes people into psychological groups depending on how they perceive the world and how they interact with it.

Evidently, I have found this test to be extremely useful when creating or expanding upon fictional characters.

The official MBTI website (16 Personalities) puts forth the most efficient and comprehensive test to narrow down your exact personality type using four categories. I won’t into too much depth on this but I highly encourage you check it out yourself. If you follow the test as truthfully and accurately as possible, you may surprise yourself at how accurate it will be.,

Then after testing it on yourself, why not try it on your characters? Try it as if you are interviewing them in a café or by a fire with cups of tea, or in some other secluded space.

Understanding your characters through the lens of their personality type may help you further understand them on a deeper level and thus, write them more accurately, naturally, and most importantly, more consistently.

Take a gander at who belongs to what personality type as a frame of reference, you might be more similar to most fictional characters than you think.

For example, I am INFJ, the Advocate, and supposedly the rarest personality type of all. I share it with Aragorn, Galadriel, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Aramis (one of the Three Musketeers) and Atticus Finch.

Why

While the MBTI may gauge how a person may behave in a certain way, it can’t explain the nature of why some people are the way they are, the reason for their behaviour.

That is where the Enneagram comes in.

An Enneagram is another psychology tool you should look into to level up your characters to the next dimension. A character may behave a certain way to feel safe and secure in their lives, or perhaps they want control or stability, or even to promote or hold back change.

The Enneagram is good at focusing on internal conflict in a person as opposed to external conflict, tapping into the deep psychological roots for human behaviour.

This one is quite the rabbit hole, so I’ll leave you to do the digging.

What

Third and final dimension you ought to delve into is the backstory of your character.

This may not sound like much, but the advantage is that you can be flexible with this one. You can make a character’s backstory as short or as extensive as you like.

This will mostly be for your own benefit, for you can have a large backstory for a character and only reveal significantly less for the sake of the story. But the more of a character’s past you know, the more you may be able to understand their decisions, beliefs, and the origins of the previous two points.

It’s similar to worldbuilding, in that you can work on it as much as you please, but only present what is or may be relevant to the story.

We don’t need to talk about a character’s love for chess as a child if it has nothing to do with what’s happening to them now.

In conclusion.

It’s never easy to make a character that readers/viewers can cheer for and relate to on the greatest level, but as I’ve said before; If your audience doesn’t care about your characters, they won’t care about the adventures they go on.

People, humans, and characters are the backbone of storytelling. The more effort you put into them, the more they’ll put out for your story.

Thank you for reading and have a beautiful day!

• Daniel