[Tipster] What a Podcast Taught Me about Complex Characters

 I like to think of myself as an original. But, really, I’m a middle-aged female cliché. At least when it comes to the podcasts I tune into. I’m part of the 63% of women who consume true crime podcasts.

Monday: “Crime Junkie.” Tuesday and Wednesday: “Dateline” and maybe “48 Hours.” Thursday: “Cold Case Files.” Throughout the week I spackle in limited-episode podcasts, like “In the Dark” or “The Piketown Massacres” or “The Girl in the Blue Mustang.”

This week, I randomly started listening to “Why Can’t We Talk about Amanda’s Mom?”—an 8-episode investigation into the murder (a gruesome decapitation!) of an Alabama woman, Renée Bergeron. The case went cold for 26 years.

Renée’s murder is a common true crime story arc. Woman turns to prostitution. Woman places herself in harm’s way. Woman is murdered. Woman’s case goes cold because she’s a prostitute. 

The Danger of Flat Characters

Renée is what people in true-crime circles identify as a “less dead.” Because of prevailing social values about her life choices, her death is less—people never viewed her life as much of anything.

The first episode of the podcast, the host, Sara Cailean, complicates the narrative arc, by doing a character study of Renée. Listeners begin to learn the details of her life that make us care about her death.

What the podcast host accomplishes in this episode is what you must do as a storyteller: create complex characters that readers can sympathize with.

Your characters aren’t just villains. And they aren’t just heroes. They straddle categories of good and bad, socially acceptable and unacceptable, beautiful and ugly.

Your story risks becoming a “cold case file” when your characters can’t stretch outside of the good or bad box.

Using a Real Human as an Example of a Complex Character

Here are a few details (some seemingly insignificant) that made Renée less dead—more alive—to me as a listener.

1. She had a colorful butterfly tattoo located between her thumb and her index finger. It wasn’t a skull, gang symbol, or sexually provocative. It was a symbol of freedom and rebirth, applied in a spot that constantly reminded her she was made for more.
2. She was 16 when she got pregnant, and her boyfriend died of a brain aneurism six months after her daughter, Amanda, was born. She was alone, felt trapped, and sent her daughter to live with her parents.
3. While an escort, she enrolled in cosmetology classes. She desired a future different than prostitution. She had plans.
4. She was fastidious with her finances, tracking every dollar that came in. She filed receipts for bills and recorded the money she set aside for her daughter’s Christmas gifts. She was responsible and cared about her daughter.
5. When she visited her daughter, they’d ride bikes, do hair and makeup, and watch movies like Steel Magnolias and Fried Green Tomatoes (chick flicks!) and Unsolved Mysteries (my kind of gal!). She tried being a good mom.
6. She wrote honest, raw letters to her parents, in which she thanked them for taking care of Amanda, expressed her regret for not being able to take care of her, and communicated her desire for her daughter to know her deep and abiding love for her. She owned her mistakes.

Complex Characters are Full of Contradictions

Renée was a woman of contradictions.  She abandoned her child, but wasn’t it an act of love?  

She was stuck in a profession that she knew was dangerous, but she wanted out.

She had an unorthodox job, but she was responsible with money.

She no doubt experienced the dark side of humanity, but she liked rom-coms and true crime.

She wasn’t just a dead prostitute. In fact, if I’m honest, she was a little like me.

I wish her narrative arc had a happy ending.

How to Begin Writing Your Complex Characters

One strategy for writing more complex characters is to make them straddle contradictions.

First, you identify their flaws. When writing your heroes, especially, identify their flaws. What triggers those flaws?  Where did those flaws originate? How do those flaws serve them? How do they ruin them?

Second, try to identify their contradictory beliefs. Do they value motherhood (like Renée) but abandon their child? Do they believe in self-sufficiency but coddle their children? Do they believe in justice but violate the law?

Where do these beliefs arise from—and are they misbeliefs that they must grapple with throughout the entirety of the story?

When you show the reader contradictory beliefs through actions, dialogue and appropriate backstory, you begin to create characters that the reader cares about, like I began to care about Renée.

I would love to hear about how you are creating complex characters through contradictions. Drop me a note. 

And in the meantime,

Buckle up and create complex characters.

Melissa Parks