Author Guest Post with Benoit Lanteigne: The Cyborg’s Crusade

How did it come to this? My life used to be so simple. Back then, I hated it; I found it boring. Let me tell you: boring’s good. Boring’s great! I should’ve been thankful…

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Author Guest Post

Creating Deep Characters

How often have you heard this complaint: the characters are two-dimensional, flat, or walking cliché? That’s a major flaw in a story because good characters are an excellent way to get your readers invested since they will relate to them. The thing is, it’s quite easy to give “write good characters” as advice, but it doesn’t offer much in terms of how to achieve this goal. Let’s try to rectify that.

Characters are an imitation of people, so a good place to start is determining what makes people interesting. The answer is nothing! We’re all boring! Nah, just kidding. There are so many things that I can’t pretend to know them all.

I’d argue that in terms of personality, what makes people interesting is that there are layers to us. We’re complex beings filled with emotions, qualities, flaws, and contradictions. Beyond that, people aren’t fixed in time. They change as their lives progress and they accumulate new experiences. I believe this helps make humans interesting because it keeps us on our toes.

The picture is far from complete, but hopefully, it gives us enough material to look into the actual subject. It’s not much of a stretch to assume that what makes a character deep and interesting is the same as a person. From this realization, there are several paths one might take to achieve successful results. Let’s look at the ones I used for The Cyborg’s Crusade. Then you decide if they’re right for you or not.

I begin by determining some simple traits of a character. Qualities and flaws. Flaws are important and easy to overlook, especially in the main character. Ignoring them can lead to the dreaded Gary and Mary Sue. However, based on my experience, people like throwing those accusations around, so we might receive them no matter what. At the same time, someone with only flaws would be unlikable and boring. You need a good balance and the qualities and flaws must play well together.

Here are some examples. A character is confident (quality), but this can lead them to overestimate their competence (flaw). A character is good-natured and generous (quality), but so much so that often they neglect their own needs (flaw). Notice that these flaws and quality are related. This makes them believable. If I did this: A character is good-natured and generous (quality), but this can lead them to overestimate their competence (flaw). This doesn’t quite feel as right, does it? Like, the flaw and the quality might exist in the same person, but they seem unrelated. You should have more than one quality and flaw anyway, but for the sake of argumentation let’s pretend character X only has generousness and overconfidence. I’m not saying it can’t work, but I expect it would be harder to make X feel believable than if the flaws and qualities complemented each other.

Once I have the basic flaws and qualities of a person, I try to visualize their relationship to emotions. Everyone has similar emotions: love, anger, joy, sadness, and so on. But we all react to them differently. Is this character very in touch and open with their emotions? Are they stoic and keep them for themselves? Even in the latter case, do they have specific triggers that make them break this trait? Understanding how your character deals with their emotion will help make them react appropriately to different situations, increasing their believability.

Then, there are experiences. Everyone has a past and so should your character. How old are they? When were they born? Was it a wealthy family? Poor? In between? How was their relationship with their parents? Did they have lots of friends? Were they bullied in school? In short, write a biography of the character. It doesn’t have to be super long, sometimes a paragraph is enough. Other times, it can be a whole page or pages. It depends. Keep going until you feel you know this fake person enough for your purpose. As a bonus, some of that bio can be used as a backstory, though it doesn’t have to be. Even if the backstory is never revealed to the reader, knowing it will allow you to have this character act more believably.

Finally, people change, and so should your characters. Especially the major characters. Most stories have significant events throughout, the kind that leave their mark. At the very least, your main character should come out transformed in some fashion. It doesn’t have to be drastic, though it can be. Whatever changes a character goes through should relate to their original personality and the nature of the events that changed them. Otherwise, it just won’t feel as believable. There is wiggle room here though. Sometimes, multiple outcomes are possible.

For instance, let’s take an egotistical boxer who’s never been defeated. This boxer is arrogant and sees themselves as the best. That’s the character’s original state. Then, they lose a match badly. They are thoroughly humiliated. That can cause a change in them. For instance, it could lead them to learn humility and realize that even though they are good, they aren’t perfect, making them a better person. Meanwhile, some people can double down on their egocentricity and find excuses for why their defeat shouldn’t count. The referee counted too fast. The challenger took steroids. As a result, instead of learning humility, they remain arrogant and now believe they are so good and people are so jealous everyone is trying to sabotage them, making them even more annoying.

About the Books

Day of the Deux Machina
The Cyborg’s Crusade Book One
by Benoit Lanteigne

Published 31 July 2023

Genre: Science Fiction
Page Count: 319
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!

How did it come to this? My life used to be so simple. Back then, I hated it; I found it boring. Let me tell you: boring’s good. Boring’s great! I should’ve been thankful…

It was supposed to be a date like any other for James Hunter, a simple convenience store clerk. Nothing more than watching a movie in the town of Moncton. A place as unknown and unimportant as he considered his own existence to be. And yet, while walking to a cinema, James teleports to another world. There, a hostile crowd surrounds him, including various mutants with strange deformities.

Before he can even gather his wits or make a dash for it, a lone ally presents herself in the form of a winged woman named Rose. An important cultural figure in the country where James appeared, she offers him both protection and a home.

Soon, James learns that this new world is divided by a cold war. On one side is Nirnivia, home to Rose. The other, Ostark, led by a mysterious cyborg. James is unaware that the cyborg has him in his crosshairs, thinking of him as the Deus Ex Machina that will end the war in his favor.

But, the cyborg is far from the only potential threat to James. Soon after his arrival, BRR, a terrorist organisation, kidnaps him.

What would a rogue group out for revenge seeking to turn the cold war hot want with someone like James? Is there anyone also aware of this other world who will try to find him? Or is he on his own? If so, how is he supposed to escape? If that’s even an option…

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Excerpt

The world whirled around James. Soon, all distinct shapes vanished, superseded by a haze of colors. Shades of green, red and blue filled his vision. An agonizing pain flared across his body, and James screamed. His stomach floated up to his throat, while his intestines… he preferred not to think about them. Then, at last, the forms returned, though muddled. The sensation lasted only a few seconds, but it brought James to his knees as he gagged and vomited on the pavement. Once done, he wiped his mouth and coughed. Revolted screams erupted around him.

James almost mumbled an apology for the mess, but then he realized: who was yelling? He and Nadia stood alone and yet… wait, those dark figures surrounding him on the ground… shadows? And over there, feet and legs… where had these people come from?

Perplexed, James tried getting up, but he wobbled and fell. His new position gave him a view of the trees he had scrutinized before the incident, except they had morphed into a yellow brick building. James’s heart raced and his body tensed. Trying to relax, he took a few deep breaths through his nose and scowled. That stench, a mix of decayed food, feces, and puke, permeated the air. Of course, his own actions explained the last odor, but still, Moncton never smelled so bad. No wonder, with all the garbage littering the street. However, the road he’d strolled along had been so clean just moments ago.

As he pondered the change in scenery, James’s vision cleared. He took it as a good sign and attempted to stand up again. Though he swayed, he remained on his feet. Perhaps because of his movement, the confused chatter around him intensified. Bronze-skinned people glanced at each other and recoiled, a few pointing at him. James scanned the crowd in search of Nadia. Unable to locate his lover, he found his attention drawn to a stranger in the distance instead. The man held a leash, but without a dog at the end. A pink glob of goo replaced the expected canine. The horror waved its many tentacles, sometimes caressing passersby. James gasped. Covered in perspiration and shaking, he averted his gaze and spotted a young boy with a miniature leg sticking out of his belly through a hole in his shirt.

About the Author

So, my name is Benoit Lanteigne and I’m a French Canadian (outside of Quebec) who’s trying to write in English. That can be tricky. I’m a computer programmer and I enjoy it. I see many inspiring writers who hate their jobs and hope to quit someday, but that’s not my case. Mostly, I’ve worked on websites and web applications.

Back in school, I enjoyed writing and according to my teachers and classmates; I had a talent for it. Well, not so much for grammar and spelling, but they liked my stories. Once I went to university, I dropped writing as a hobby. There were other things I wanted to focus on, such as my career. Then, in the early 2000s, around 2006 I’d say, I had a flash of inspiration. At first, it was a single character: a winged woman with red hair. I didn’t even know who she was, but the image stuck with me. From there, I began figuring out details about her origins and her world, but I only started writing for real in 2009.

It’s been roughly 10 years now, and it’s not yet finished. That’s in part because I write in my spare time, and in part because the scope of the project is huge. Maybe too much so. Still, I’m getting close to the point where I could release something. The question is what’s next? Self-publishing? Attempt traditional publishing? Nothing? I don’t know the answer yet, I’m trying to figure it out. Frankly, sharing my writing is difficult for me, and whatever I end up doing, as long as I make it available to people I consider the experience a victory no matter what comes out of it.

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