Notes on characterization: consistency

Number of entries received for the 2007 InnermoonLit Award for Best Short-Short Story to date: 85

In a piece of fiction, character inconsistencies make the character less believable and hurt the writer’s credibility. I’m not talking about quirky, unpredictable, stereotype-busting characters (those are good things), I mean unintentional inconsistencies, errors that result from the writer not knowing his character well enough, small things he probably read right over but that stick out to the reader.

For example, you might have your animal rights activist hero come home and casually kick the cat after a hard day of protesting dog fighting…or your poverty-stricken teenagers from the ‘hood might use an expensive sushi restaurant as their favorite hangout spot. Without a lot of explaining, your reader is going to suspect you don’t know much about what it’s like to be an animal rights activist or an underprivileged young person.

Hollywood is especially guilty of this as far as settings go. Have you ever noticed how, in the movies, characters who are supposed to be financially struggling often manage to live in spacious, lovely homes or apartments? Even when the setting is a really expensive real estate market like the West Coast or Manhattan? I guess these directors are more concerned about visual appeal than realism.

I think a lot of times character slip-ups are the result of a writer writing what she doesn’t know. She thinks to herself how interesting it would be to have her main character work as a NASCAR pit crew chief. She herself has never watched a single race and knows nothing about auto mechanics. And that’s fine—it will be a challenge, but with a lot of research, a good writer can pull it off. But even better would be if this writer could seek out someone with a connection to this type of person (a pit crew worker would be fantastic, but even the spouse or cousin or sibling of one would be better than nothing) who could read her draft and point out anything glaringly out of place.

All the little details of your character should add up to form a cohesive picture in the reader’s mind, so be on the lookout for these types of errors when you’re revising, and by all means, get an expert reader if at all possible. You can use an inconsistency to give your character some interesting quirks and dimensionality, but if that’s your intention, you have to draw attention to the inconsistency and explain it.

So if for example you see your no-nonsense, frugal grandmother character throwing on a pair of cashmere socks, you should probably either revise that and make her wear her late husband’s ancient athletic socks with the toes blown out or add a line explaining that granny has a weakness for fancy accessories as her one extravagance. Otherwise it just reads like a mistake.