A sense of drama is not conveyed only through mere action. In many respects, drama is embedded within the nuance and atmosphere of your story and the fabric of your character(s). How do you bring that nuance forward? In crafting our dramatic characters, we as writers, often imagine them in 3D ~ they're alive, corporeal, vibrant, because they live in our heads ~ and we can see everything they do, hear every word they say. We know their ticks and their attitudes, because once created in the mind of the creator, they have breath, they have sound, they have movement...
And they have quirks.
Quirks are a beautiful thing, because they're human, and they are particular, and they allow you to add a layer to your character, which can then lead to expanding them into something more than you had first envisioned, someone deeper.
And when you think about it, we all have quirks. You have quirks, I have quirks ~ some are noticeable and out there, and some can be closely guarded, which may be considered a quirk in itself.
In pondering this subject, I realized that I have
a lot of quirks: some cute, some weird ~ not that I'm gonna tell you what they are!
Nope. Instead, I'm gonna throw somebody else under the bus!
I once knew a woman, on top of the world. She was powerful, influential, from a wealthy family... the world was her oyster. She wanted for nothing. But strangely enough, she had a quirk; a quirk many of us, on the lower rungs, made fun of. She would sit in her glass-walled office, on the phone, completely dead to the world, and pick at her hair. She would pull at strands, inspect them if they were long enough; sometimes, she would drape them under her nose like a mustache and purse her lips, sniffing, as if nobody in the world could see her. When she would emerge from that glass office, she seemed acutely aware of our perception of her, but she ignored it. We likened her to a monkey, at times, but in a weird way, it made her seem less threatening and more like us than not. For all of her money and affluence and hoity-toity upbringing, there was still something inherently human about her. Her quirk made us dislike her less, because it was disarming and weird. Come on! A woman who picks at and sniffs her own hair in unguarded moments, witnessed by all who work with her, can't be all bad, right? She's just a person, a flawed, imperfect human like the rest of us, right?
Relating those types of quirks can be troublesome, because we're not always certain how to create them, or how we should put them into words. We can see the behavior in our heads. These intimate, subtle, and sometimes off-the-radar movements or mannerisms can be what brings your character to life for your reader. What do those things look like to you, to your character? How does your character embody or reflect them? And how do you write it down or type it on a screen? How do you bring your dramatic character to life through their quirks and oddities? Are those quirks and oddities a positive or a negative in how they relate to other characters? Do those oddities and quirks endear them to or expel them from those in their orbit?
In getting this newsletter prepped, I asked our wonderful WDCers how they convey quirks in their writing, and I got some very useful tips!
From
Jeff 
:
For minor characters, I usually try to come up with one defining quirk or detail that I can base a characterization around. I learned this from screenwriting, where a lot of times writers will name nonessential characters things like "Cop #2" or "Co-Worker #3." I've taken to trying to give them a little nuance by naming them things like "Irritable Cop" or "Creepy Co-Worker" so the reader gets a sense that these people have actual personalities rather than a generic, interchangeable identifying number.
For major characters, I try to fully develop a personality. Borrowed from my tabletop RPG days, I'll fill out a character sheet that includes backstory, physical description, opinions and values, habits and mannerisms, etc. Since so much time is spent with major characters, I feel an obligation to flesh them out a little more than just a single defining characteristic.
From
Jim Hall 
:
I read an article about this. The author recommended that even minor characters (for example a waiter in a fancy restaurant) have their own agendas in a scene, even if they have no bearing on the outcome of the scene. The author suggested that the character's quirkiness could be based on that agenda. For example, said waiter may be surly, slow and an ineffectual communicator on a particular night because he has a bad back from a recent injury, and he's just trying to get through the night. The reader doesn't need to know why the waiter is the way he is. All the reader knows is that the waiter gave bad service.
The person writing the scene knows and it can help give your character depth and uniqueness. Speech patterns can be used as well to make the character different from any other waiter, for example.
From
Cinn 
:
I'm a people watcher. So, I base them on the weird little things I see people do... I make up stories about why they're doing the stuff anyway. It's a natural thing that I might as well make good use of.
From
Kitti the Red-Nosed Feline 
:
Quirks are one of the ways that enable a reader (and writer) to distinguish one character from another. Same as with accents and speech patterns.
I've got a story about modern-day vampires in which the father loves the old-fashioned: skulls, bats and dripping candles, and the mother thinks that to be a good housewife she must knit, and bake cakes, and do paint-by-number. The father also has a deep love for terrible boy band music because it helps remind him that everyone's got problems.
Those sort of quirks are fun to write, and pretty easy to implement when seen from a main character's perspective. Especially when you're writing in first person.
From
Steev the Friction Wizurd 
:
Quirks are simpler than you might think. For example, spelling your name oddly is a quirk, so Wytch instead of Witch is a quirk and Steev instead of Steve is a quirk.
Most people are a seething mass of quirks. It's just all the little details that make them individuals. Donald Trump's hair is a quirk. Conan O'Brien's hair is a quirk. A limp is a quirk. A lisp is a quirk. Always saying "sir" and "ma'am" when you talk to people is a quirk. A regional accent is a quirk. A fondness for a particular color of clothing is a quirk.
The opposite of quirks is stereotypes, where individual differences are ground away until you have one smooth character who could be anybody.
And from
Joey's Feeling the season! 
:
Combining quirks is a good thing. A character’s personality evolves as a quirk defined by another quirk creates a more realistic character. For instance, a fellow who feels faint (technically a disease quirk) whenever anyone touches his collection of comic books, is an example of a combination of two quirks with one playing smoothly off of another.
A quirk can be affected by a specific setting as well as by other characters. For example, in The Big Bang Theory, Raj Koothrappali has a curious quirk. He cannot talk to women unless he’s been drinking. That’s another fun combination of vocal and phobia quirks.
I think that looking at the virtues and vices of a character may help one find quirks that are best suited to the character.
I guess we should also take the advice of Steven King and not define quirks for a character that the reader will never see. If your character has a limp but never leaves his bed, who cares?!
Joey's Feeling the season! also pointed out the many ways to bring out a quirk vocally, as well as through phobias, philias, superstitions, habits, hobbies, and even diseases. You can read the entire rundown here:
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So go on ~ get quirky with your characters!
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Drama: March 30, 2016 Issue [#7556]
