Creating Real Characters through Dialogue, Mannerisms, and Actions

One of the difficulties in writing fiction is how to individualize your characters to make them real. This can be achieved through dialogue or specific character tics or mannerisms. Doing this in a series is more difficult because you have to keep the characters consistent in book after book.

One of my favorite series—and I qualify this because I’m not a big series reader—is Michael Robotham’s Joe O’Loughlin series. Joe is a clinical psychologist with Parkinson’s Disease.

Robotham doesn’t hit the reader over the head with the disintegrating effects of the illness on Joe’s body. Instead, throughout the series, the symptoms become more subtly noticeable: a disobedient leg that freezes in mid-gait or a hand tremor, but never does he make the character about the disease or the disease about the character. To coin one of my least favorite phrases, it is what it is. Joe goes about his business solving crimes without ever becoming a victim.

I can think of two series where the characters never change. That’s fine for those readers who aren’t bothered by that, but I am. One is the time period never changes, so neither does the character. The other is the stupidity factor, where the character keeps making the same mistakes over and over. I stopped reading both series when I realized neither character would grow.

I’ve published three books in the Diana Racine Psychic Suspense series with another on the way.

Diana has been a famous psychic since she was six years old. She’s now an adult and a psychic performer who’s played Vegas and other venues around the world, so she’s had her share of hecklers and skeptics. She’s also learned how to respond with a quick wit and sharp tongue. I can’t forget that, or I lose my character.

So how do I keep her honest? In Mind Games, book one, she meets Ernie Lucier, the New Orleans police lieutenant who’s one of the skeptics. There’s no surprise that they’ll become a couple, but on one of their first “dates,” he takes her for hot wings, promising they’ll be the hottest wings she’s ever eaten or will eat. He's clearly testing her, and Diana knows it. She bites into the wing, and though it’s fire hot, she picks the bone clean and takes another one while he looks on in disbelief. She doesn’t get through the burning sensation of the second wing, but it’s indicative of her personality to try to beat someone at his own game. In book four, a work in progress, she does it again. Spicy hot cucumber sandwiches that the host prepares and watches as she eats not only one but two. This time, she carries off the deception without choking. Diana is a smart aleck whenever the opportunity arises, but caution―too much of a good thing wears thin and becomes tiresome. Lke Joe O’Loughlin, a little goes a long way.

Diana’s father is good old country boy with the dialect to prove it. He drops the g in ing words and uses double negatives. “I don’t remember nothin’ ’bout no animal.” I have to be consistent, or the dialect doesn’t work, but again, it's important not to overdo the slang.

One author I like a lot writes a series about two partner detectives that alternate books and sometimes share a story. One character is a constant wiseacre. I skip his books because the sass is excessive. The other character is dark and enigmatic. The mystery of him keeps me reading his stories, because I want to know more about him.

In Murder Déjà Vu, my male character, a quiet man who spent fifteen years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, rubs the back of his neck when he’s unsure of what to say. He does it enough for the reader to know it’s a tell, much like the tell of a card player, but not so often that it’s annoying. I hope.

Elmore Leonard, whose books I adore, is a master of dialogue.

I wrote a Blood Red Pencil post in November of 2104, but here are a few of his ten rules of writing.

• Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won’t be able to stop.

• Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
…Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. … I’ll bet you don’t skip dialogue.

My most important rule, says Leonard, is one that sums up the 10. If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Polly Iyer is the author of eight novels: standalones Hooked, InSight, Murder Déjà Vu, and Indiscretion, and three books in the Diana Racine Psychic Suspense series, Mind Games, Goddess of the Moon, and Backlash. A Massachusetts native, she makes her home in the beautiful Piedmont region of South Carolina. You can visit her website for more on Polly and connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.