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Types have their place, particularly where your minor people are concerned.)
    Were we to want to cast Alex “against type,” however, we could make him egotistical, belligerently opinionated, full of erudite quotes, scowling and with head thrust forward as he attempts to force his ideas on everyone within earshot. He’d still come through as scholarly—but a different kind of scholarly.
    Is this enough to characterize Alex for your readers? Mightn’t they appreciate it if you’d sharpen the focus? Perhaps make the picture more graphic?
    Take his work, for example. There are professors and professors. Some are more drawn to campus politics than to teaching. Others like to ride the gravy train, sloughing off paper-grading or anything else that sounds like work on graduate assistants. Stillothers are socializers, or grandstanders, or promoters.
    His preoccupations, the interests that absorb him, also play a role. As a scholar, is his area of scholarship the issue? Is he totally engrossed in the sociopathy of juvenile delinquents? The poetry of Allen Ginsberg? The neurology of earthworms? Internal dissension among Shiite Moslems?
    Or is his scholarship merely a financial facade, while his real focus is on world peace or real estate or travel? Or collecting coins or pornographic photos or Mayan artifacts? Whatever you choose for him will both help to individualize him and influence his behavior in your story.
    His love life is an additional matter to consider. For one thing, does he have one, or is he an asexual loner? Is he a happily married man, or are one-night stands his thing? How about “sequential monogamy”—one woman/wife after another? A fascination with young girls, the Lolita syndrome? Homosexual cruising? Do think about it!
    His attitude towards society itself is another constituent. Is he gregarious, everybody’s friend, a joiner? Do worthwhile causes attract him? Is he active in his community, his professional group, his political group? If not, why not?
    Consider, too, your character’s weaknesses. What flaws do you want to show in the course of your story—and yes, Character does have them; we all do, and you’ll be wise to reveal them, for the “perfect” person tends to disgruntle readers. (My own tendency, incidentally, is to speak of a character as “non-perfect.” For whatever obscure reason, to say that somebody has a weakness puts a judgmental label on that person that bothers me.)
    A good example of such a “non-perfect” person is Murphy Brown (played by Candice Bergen), a character in a TV situation comedy. Murphy is a top TV newsperson—intelligent, efficient, gorgeous to look at. But she’s also a recovering alcoholic, a heavy smoker suffering the agonies of quitting, and so aggressive, opinionated, and jealous of her status that she makes your teeth ache. But because she’s so human, viewers love her.
    Why give a character flaws and weaknesses? Because they constitute tools you can use to help control reader reaction to a character—to make the reader like or dislike her; accept her or reject her. But more of that in Chapter 7 , “The Breath of Life.”
    And so it goes. All these are factors that influence and individualize a character. Some characters, some stories, call for close attention to these factors. In others, the barest minimum will do. You and your audience are the ones who decide.
    Beyond such generalities, there are all sorts of rule-of-thumb devices to help you give dimension to a character. How would her best friend describe her, for example? What would Friend say about her? What would her worst enemy’s reaction be? How would she see and rationalize herself? What do people like or dislike about her? Do they admire her, pity her, fear her? Does she feel superior to others? Inferior? Does she see herself as good-humored, honest, hard-working, clever, kind, short-tempered, timid, aggressive, understanding, stingy, generous, or what?
    Bear in mind, however, that