When doing a character bio the trickiest thing to do is to create an area of misunderstanding or misguided belief in your protagonist and in your opponents (the characters who obstruct, impede, challenge, love, hate, annoy and generally impact the hero). It means you have to know the difference between what they actually need, and what they believe they need. This barking up the wrong tree is the basis of all desire in your characters, and desire is the motivating energy behind all action.
What does the hero think will happen if he/she doesn’t get what they want?
In books and to a much greater extent in movies, your protagonist needs to want something really badly. They want it more than we do. In our lives we make compromises. We usually follow the path of least resistance because we can’t endure the conflict. We generally want easy lives. In stories, characters want stuff so badly that they actually go about getting it, doing whatever it takes to get it, in ways we probably wouldn’t. If a protagonist doesn’t want something badly enough, he or she won’t do anything about trying to get it, and then there won’t be any story.
A “play” with the words “want” and “need” and “think you need”:
But when your character reaches the climax of the story, will he actually get what he thought he needed? Maybe so. But maybe not. Here’s where the epiphany comes in. It’s the realization that at the final moment the character has been fighting for, working toward, racing forward, jumping over highways and byways to get to…Maybe it was what he wanted, but maybe there’s something that he needed but he didn’t realize that he needed it, but now that he has achieved the end goal, he just may get what he needs, not what he thought he needed!!
So when you are creating your character, he/she must have a history that is not perfect by any means. There are triumphs and there are flaws; highs and lows; good days and bad. You need to describe these in as much detail as you can. Make pages of this information. Where did the hero live? Describe the house/apartment/street. Maybe your character lived in a shelter. Did your character go to school? If not, what did he/she do during childhood? Maybe like Charles Dickens’ Oliver, he stole for a living and lived under the thumb of a ruthless Fagan character. Maybe your character was an orphan. Maybe from a family of ten. Were they religious? Did they go to a house of worship with their family? Was your character rich, poor, or somewhere in-between?
- Describe the neighborhood, town, country where your character grew up.
- Describe physical and emotional characteristics, including age.
** Note: All characters in your story should have a bio. The main character (protagonist/hero) and the opponent and the point of view character will get the widest amount of attention. Round them out and make them as real as possible. Get into their skin!! If they did something that was unusual that was not something you would have done, it is important to go with this. This character is not you. This character has a life of his/her own.
** Come up with some very high and some very low points of each character’s “back story.” Sometimes, people say that “a certain high point” or “low point” defined them for the rest of their life. Whether or not this ends up being true, the character may think or believe this!