In novel and novella length stories, the author has time to develop a character and their background over many pages and chapters. In a short story, this process is strapped to a rocket engine. Because of this, many new writers may be tempted to create cookie cutter characters. Before you fall into this trap, take a moment and consider another media—the episodic television show. To be specific, consider the shows that you do not like or those that failed because the characters seemed paper thin. These are the shows where the characters were nothing more than their role, and in this is their path to destruction as a character.

Regardless if the media is a short story or a longer work, the reader wants a character that they can believe in and relate to. To give the reader what they are looking for, character must be four dimensional. The author needs to step past the elements that might make the character three dimensional—someone who looks like a person that could be passed on the street and identified in a picture—and take it to the dimension of time.

Consider again for a moment that you are walking on a busy sidewalk. You stop and see someone who is distinctive passes by. You may never see them again, but they left an impression in your mind for about five minutes. That is your three dimensional character in a story. He or she may leave a short term impression in your reader until they pick up another story. Isn’t that good enough? No. Very important questions have been left unanswered by the author and thus the character is short lived in the readers’ memory.

The questions that are missed all orbit the fourth dimension--the concept of time. How to resolve this as an author is to ask yourself:
1. Who was this character before they came to the story? Give them a background. This background may only be hinted at in your actual story, but its existence acts like a shadow to the character giving it depth.
2. Why is the character here? Why do they exist instead of an alternative? Why were they placed where they were when the story started? Where is the character going if they did not have the events in the story interfere in their life? There is a reason for everything—understand the reason for the events leading up to the beginning so that it can be spliced into the opening of the story and the reader will want to know this character and what has happened to knock them off their “normally scheduled life.” To show that the story was not somehow destiny—at least perceived by the character as such—show that there was an alternative destination.
3. What does the character want and did that change during the story? Even the least ambitious of people have a goal—even if that goal is for their routine not to change so they can sleep the day away. The desire to achieve the goal drives them in the story. When the goal changes to something more significant the author is able to show the character transformed for the better or the worse—and the story has depth.

The difference is in the delivery of the answers. Step back a moment to the busy sidewalk mentioned above. The view of the distinctive person is a metaphor for a character in a short story. You will only see him for a brief moment before he disappears into the city’s crowd. Stop and ask yourself the questions above and try to answer them before the character disappears. If you are able to imagine responses and present them believably to yourself before the person disappears—you are obtaining the ability to do so on paper. This quick paced question and answer is the kernel of defining a character in a short story and will make your characters live past the sip of coffee a reader might take before going on to the next story.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for information on the articles, blogs, poems and stories that I write.