Add a Little Character
By DreamForge Editor Scot Noel
Help with Character Descriptions
Who are these people?
Each year we read a thousand or more manuscripts from our hopeful contributors. Few of them deliver memorable characters, and in many of them bodiless voices engage in dialog where we cannot distinguish one speaker from the next.
Then, occasionally, an author gives us something to hold on to, something we’ll remember long after publication. Here’s an example from the short story “Specular Boy,” by Hal Y Zhang in Issue 3 of DreamForge Magazine, “Tales of Kindred Souls.”
“… Eduardo and Fernando walked across the kitchen as perfect mirror images, one pair of hands and feet joined at the axis of symmetry down the center linoleum tile. I felt a lightning bolt wind down my spine. It was as if someone had taken a pair of scissors to the folded fabric of spacetime, cut out one boy, then unfolded to make two.
"Hi," they said in unison, swinging their legs shyly. Eduardo waved with his right hand and Fernando with his left. Their other hands remained pressed palm-to-palm midway between them, like the paper chain dolls popular in elementary school. They looked exactly identical, mirrored from every strand of hair to the mole near Eduardo's left and Fernando's right eye down to the faded patches on their jeans.”
What happens here that makes this character description memorable? 
The physical description of Eduardo and Fernando has been combined with action. The narrative is not providing a static rundown of their features. They are walking across the kitchen, looking together like “like the paper chain dolls popular in elementary school.”
Nor is the account merely for the sake of description. It reveals key elements critical to experiencing the emotion and meaning of the story.
We even have a sense of the twins’ personality, delivered in the fact that they are “swinging their legs shyly.”
The description isn’t weighted unnecessarily with too many adjectives, but instead delivers a few specifics to heighten the reality of the twins – “from…the mole near Eduardo's left and Fernando's right eye down to the faded patches on their jeans.”
Three Takeaways for Describing Your Characters
• When possible, work your physical description into a piece of action that moves the story forward.
• Avoid generalizations and go for the specific. Instead of “she smelled wonderful,” try “hers was the scent of cinnamon and rosewater.”
• Look for physical traits that help you reveal internal struggles: “trembling hands,” “solemn eyes,” or having a “sneer that never left those thin lips.”
There are many aspects to making your characters live in the reader’s imagination. One place to start is by giving us just enough description to see them as human beings instead of bodiless voices. 
Avoid the Invulnerable Character
Yes, James Bond is sophisticated, sexy, capable, and intelligent, at home with the social elite and able to brawl with the best of the bad guys, but this character is the exception that proves the rule. Even Superman has his kryptonite.
Characters able to walk through any challenge with ease may prove a fine release for your wish fulfillment fantasies, but they can make for dull reading, especially in the hands of beginners.
The whole purpose of your story should be to make your character sweat it out.
The stakes need to be high, but they don’t have to involve the fate of the world. In Issue 2 of DreamForge Magazine, “Tales of Indomitable Spirits,”we published a delightful future utopia story by Marie Vibbert, in which the protagonist faces an identity crisis.  
In “Loitering with Mathematical Intent,” our main character is a member of a supportive techno-utopia. Nevertheless, they have failed to achieve their chosen vocation as a mathematician.
When confronted for loitering in a cemetery by a rather harmless police bot whose most authoritarian statement is that “I’m concerned you are unhappy,” the protagonist breaks down into a personal crisis.
I threw my purse at the bot. “I need a theorem!” I shouted. My sandwich fell off my plate and onto the grass. I picked up the plate and threw that at the bot, too. It flipped uselessly through the air and failed to hit. “I produced nothing for two years and I could have stayed on if I could have proposed a project and I couldn’t even do that!” I tore grass to throw at him. “So now I’m nobody. Happy?” My fingers were wet with soil and crushed plant life. Another handful of grass tumbled down the bot’s face.
The bot was still.
I’d had every opportunity. I kept failing to produce even a plan to produce something. I had no substance behind my dresses and my decorations. I fell, disconsolate on the grass. The bot waited until I felt foolish and stood, gathering my things.
If I could have just come up with a title for my work!”
A protagonist in peril need not be being chased by the mob or threatened by alien overlords. A crisis of confidence will do. If it’s realistically portrayed and we’ve been given a chance to care for the character, then their struggle to avoid pain and reach happiness will engage our imaginations.
Reveal a Critical Weakness
Make your viewpoint character admirable and likeable, but don’t forget to give them one glaring weakness which makes them vulnerable, open to defeat by someone or some thing. Then aim the main challenge of the story at that weakness. Hit them where they can least endure the pain and must face the greatest challenge in overcoming the dilemma you’ve placed before them.
In the right story, even having a curse removed can become a crisis to avoid. You can see that in these following few excepts from “DreamForger,” a story by Donald S. Crankshaw in Issue 4 of DreamForge Magazine, “The Magic & Risk of Hope.”
“Life would be easier without the curse dragging me into these messes, but it was part of who I was now. Removing it would be like tearing out a piece of my soul.”
“You should have fled once you realized this was a trap. But that curse of yours makes you soft.”
“If I removed the curse, I would change, and I didn’t particularly like who I was before: a mercenary who would willingly sell a dreamwork to my dearest friend’s worst enemy, not even questioning how it might be used.”
In other words, don’t just hit your protagonist at your weakest point, hit them where they can’t help but gain insight into their truest selves.
Of course, in any short story, you only have so much real estate, and you’re going to have to balance elements like character, conflict, plot, and world-building. You may rarely have the luxury of bringing your characters forth in the subtle fullness of their years, but you can always take the time to give them the spark of life.
And in so doing, add a little character to your tales.