Read Creating Characters: How to Build Story People for Free Online

tag that says it all, even though more details follow.
    Ross Thomas, in Briarpatch : “Harold Snow smiled back. It was a sheepish smile, patently false, that somehow went with Snow’s long narrow face, which the detective also found to be rather sheep-like, except for those clever coyote eyes.” Snow is tagged neatly with a “sheepish smile, patently false,” and a “long narrow face.” Then, the interpretive detail of “clever coyote eyes” adds dimension to the picture and lets us know that Thomas wants us to feel wariness in regard to the character.
    Character’s speech patterns may also be a matter of some import. Repetitions, for example, may help to identify him: “sir,” “laid back,” “awesome,” “dude.” Same for accents (Southern, Western drawl, Boston Irish, Brooklynese), ad infinitum . And each occupation has its own cant or jargon, as when a policeman refers to an offender as a “perp” (for perpetrator) or an airline pilot speaks of having his “flaps down.”
    Be careful, however, of introducing heavy, phonetically spelled dialect. Both readers and editors hate it. Why? Because it tends to confuse and slow the pace. You’re better off to avoid it.
    A good ear and wide human contacts are the best tools to use to capture speech patterns, perhaps supplemented by such works as the Vance Randolph and George P. Wilson volume, Down in the Holler , Ramon Adams’s Western Words, Eugene Landy’s The Underground Dictionary, or the like. But more of that later in Chapter 13 , “The Things They Say.” And remember always that slang or colloquial terms tend to age rapidly, so any volume on the subject may be out of date virtually before it’s printed.
    The matter of mannerism (rubbing the chin, an eye tic, a frown, or raucous laugh) also needs to be considered. Jane Fonda’s continual business with cigarettes in Agnes of God is a mannerism. So is George Raft’s coin-flipping in old gangster movies. Same for the character who doodles as he talks, or bites his lip, or continually smooths his hair, or sneaks glances into mirrors. A neighbor has a habit of “neatening up” his front room by gathering any loose printed matter into piles. (It drives his wife crazy. Newspaper clippings and the like disappear into those piles, never to be seen again. But it’s a mannerism, like the others.) One and all, they help not only to identify Character, but to make him human.
    Attitude is a matter of behavior patterns—a character’s habitual way of reacting to a particular kind of situation. Mary Poppins’s eternal cheeriness reflects an attitude, and so does Rambo’s macho stance. Racism and sexism are attitudes. Ditto sanctimony or ingrained suspicion or anxiety or discontent. And if it pleases you to develop new and different categories of your own, so much the better. (I’ll discuss this in more detail in Chapter 6 .)
    Closely related to tags is the matter of ability or capacity . . . the potential for Character to do whatever his role in the story calls for. If, for example, the story requires that he deal with a medical emergency, does he have the ability to do so? How about the skill to make a bomb, style a woman’s hair, change a diaper, lay cement blocks, clear a fuel line? Failure to provide Character with the ability to perform as required believably can destroy—or make—a story. Life gives you a host of examples. Look how the initial wimpish image of Bernhard Goetz in the New York subway shooting was changed, for example, when it was revealed that he had had handgun training and in crisis adopted a “combat stance.”
    How to reveal matters of ability? You as a fiction writer must think ahead and plant within your character the capacity to deal with the demands of your story situation. You’ll have to discover the tags or traits that fill the bill. Then, make reference to them later as the story develops.
    Perhaps this is also the place to remind you of the importance of contrast