Three Ways to Make Your Characters Three Dimensional

Once you figure it out, things get real.

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This post is part of Write Brain newsletter where, this week, I take a deeper dive into the idea of developing three-dimensional characters. If you’d like to have that newsletter delivered to your inbox every Wednesday, click here to subscribe for free.

Let’s get into it.

If you’re fiction writer, you’ve probably heard all kinds of advice about creating dynamic, fully-developed characters. The problem, of course, is that it’s easier said than done.

A two-dimensional character is flat. They’re generic, or what my Zoomer would have called ‘basic’ in 2017.

A three-dimensional character has depth. They’re individuals.

Think about the difference between being on a crowded bus full of strangers, as opposed to being in a crowded car filled with your family.

On the bus, everyone blends into one big blob of people. You might notice details about the people nearest to you — but likely, none of them really stand out, because you don’t know anything about them.

In the car, though, it’s different. You know everyone, intimately. Each person is unique in your mind. You know things about them that have nothing to do with the current situation — and that informs whatever is going on.

If there’s an argument on the bus, all you get is what’s right in front of you. One person yelling at another one about getting into their personal space, for instance. And — that’s it, really. You have no idea why the argument is really happening, beyond what you observe in the moment.

If the same argument happens in the car, though, it’s different. Your sister snapping at your brother for getting into her personal space will carry with it all kinds of background information.

You’ll know, for instance, whether the argument is typical or if it indicates that something is off with one or the other of your siblings.

As writers, of course, we want to create three-dimensional characters that readers are drawn to and feel like they know. There are two questions you can ask yourself, constantly, as you write that will help tremendously with the job of breathing life into your characters.

Why?

This is the quintessential writer question. It’s the heart of curiosity and that’s our currency. We get to a story by asking ourselves why, why, why until we find something worth writing.

But what I’m asking you to do here isn’t asking yourself why. I want you to ask it of your character.

• Why did you do this?

• Why do you want this?

• Why do you need this?

• Why are you here?

• Why do you love her?

• Why do you hate him?

• Why are you fighting with this person on the bus?

• Why does it bother you to have a stranger in your personal space?

The Socratic Method involves asking open-ended questions to explore what’s underneath a belief. This is basically what you’re doing here. If your character gets into a fight with a stranger on the bus, instead of the reader being a bystander who sees the fight, but isn’t impacted by it, they’ll understand it on a deeper level.

The process would look like this:

Why are you yelling at that person? Because they’re in my personal space.
Why does that bother you? Because I don’t like people in my personal space.
Why don’t you like people in your personal space? Because it makes me uncomfortable.
Why does it make you uncomfortable? Because when I was a kid, my dad got in my face when he was mad at me.
Why is that effecting you now? Because it scared me.

Ah. Okay. If you know this, then a reaction to someone getting too close becomes part of your character. Maybe the reader gets the dad-scared-me story. Maybe not. What they do get is consistency.

Which means that this scene could either lead to or stem from other scenes that ultimately force the character to face their problems with their father. Even if that’s not the main storyline.

Maybe your story is a romance — nothing at all to do with daddy issues. If your hero can’t stand to have people in their personal space, it might not be a main plot point, but it’s obviously going to affect your story. And deepen it, but making your hero more three-dimensional.

So now, rather than just having your character snap at someone to back off — you know why. And you can build that why into your story through interiority and details.

Remember this, too: unusual details are your friends. Sure, the person on the being snapped at by your hero could be just like their father. But — what if they aren’t?

What if it’s a kid who triggers them? Or an old lady? Or a dog? Or — literally anyone but a man like their father.

How does it make them feel?

Okay, so your hero is in a car filled with their family and their brother and sister get into it with each other. How they react is important, but equally important is how what’s happening makes them feel.

Does the argument piss them off? Make them sad? Maybe it freaks them out. Or gives them some sense of satisfaction.

There is a wide range of human emotions and every single situation can bring up any of them. Just knowing which emotion is brought to the surface for your character adds dimension.

Let’s say a fight between their siblings brings them satisfaction. I’m binge watching House right now and I’ve seen Dr. House have this reaction to two people arguing with each other about ten thousand times in the last couple weeks.

There has to be a reason for the satisfaction. For House, it’s usually that he’s got a kind of lethal combination of boredom and curiosity that causes him to be a major pot stirrer.

Maybe your character has always felt like they’re less-than, compared to their siblings. Seeing them flawed makes them feel better about themselves.

Maybe they’re a sociopath and they are excited by watching them hurt each other. Not very heroic, but it happens.

Maybe they think one of their siblings is getting what’s coming to them.

Maybe — well, you get the idea. There are a thousand maybes. And if you constantly ask yourself how does this make them feel, you’ll deepen your character and make them so much more real to your readers.

These two questions are circular.

‘Why?’ constantly leads back to ‘how does it make them feel?’

In my example above, House provokes fights between other people, so he can see what happens. Is it enough to know that? I don’t think so. You need to ask why.

House provokes fights to see what happens because he’s bored and curious. Why? Because he’s an addict and a misanthrope who doesn’t know how to interact with people in a healthy way. Why? Because he was abused as a child and he’s both maladjusted and smarter than most people.

‘How does it make them feel?’ also leads back to ‘why?’

House feels satisfaction when he successfully causes two other people to fight with each other. And how does that make him feel? Smug. More connected to those people, in a very unhealthy way. Ultimately, lonely.

And, then, of course, the ultimate question. This one is for you, the writer. How will knowing why and how it makes your character feel impact the scene you’re writing?

You can continue to ask these questions until your character is a nice, plumply rounded person full of emotions and experiences and reasons and reactions.

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Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher and an out-of-place Nevadan living in Northwestern PA with her husband, three superstar kids, Art and Louie the dogs, and Ollie Wilbur the cat.

She is the author of Viral Nation, Rebel Nation, The Astonishing Maybe, Center of Gravity and Here I Am.

Check out her bestseller, How to Outline a Book in Three Hours. And join the Slow Writing Movement at the Book-a-Year Project.