From Reader to Writer: The Art of Creating Characters

One of the things that fascinated me most in my school literature classes was discovering the layers of intention behind the stories. In a book, nothing seemed to happen by chance. With every comma or choice of word, the writer seemed to leave a trail, as if inviting the reader to uncover a hidden mystery.

Even if characters were based on stereotypes, they still carried a certain level of complexity and nuance, reflecting the world created within the work and the author's message. This was the case with writers like Machado de Assis, Aluísio Azevedo, José de Alencar, and many others.

When I started studying to transition from reader to writer, I realized that writing is much less philosophical and far more rule-bound than being a reader!

One aspect that bothered me was the way characters were constructed. Making them intense, entirely good or totally bad, pushing them to the most dramatic of circumstances, all so the reader would easily connect with them.

In books where I see this approach, the result is characters without depth and easily forgettable who, when placed in such extreme situations, deliver nothing but a predictable performance of affectation and triviality. In the end, they merely serve to entertain the reader until the next book comes along.

The books that have captivated me the most in life are the ones that allow me to reflect on the motivations of the characters—their whys. These books stayed with me, quietly teaching me lessons as I pondered their meanings.

There are also those books in which, needing to fully understand the character's actions at first, I subconsciously file them away in a box that time makes me forget. Then, much later, during some life moment, the story resurfaces, and with a sudden realization, I think, "Wait, now I get it!"

Of course, quality and intensity don't exclude each other. Let's consider the classics and myths used in character construction. They have the merit of being intense without being shallow precisely because they attempt to understand human nature—rational yet flawed.

I strive for this balance between fictional intensity and human ambiguity when creating my own story.