Grill Your Characters: 7 Questions to Make Your Plot Sizzle

I love summer! For three or four months out of the year, our family grills and eats outside whenever possible, until cold weather puts an end to it all.

But when it comes to writing fiction, grilling is always in season, and it’s guaranteed to add a depth of flavor to your characters and a sizzle to your plot. Let me explain. You may have heard it’s a good idea to interview your characters before you write your story. I say grill ‘em. Turn up the heat and make them sweat. In addition to getting their basic bio information and physical description down, you’ll want to dig deeper by grilling your main characters with these questions. You may be surprised by the flavorful blends their responses will give you!

1. The question: What do you want more than anything? What’s your goal right now?

The purpose: Her goal will be what she’s striving for throughout the book. This is what you need to place in jeopardy the entire time through a variety of obstacles.

How to use it: It should be clear in the first chapter what the character’s goal is. (Yes, goals can change during the course of the story, too.) When you grill another character and learn what his goal is, you can put these two goals at odds with each other. For example, in my novel Wedded to War, Charlotte Waverly’s goal of being a nurse for the Union army conflicts with Phineas Hastings’ goal to keep her in New York City and marry her. Charlotte is also at odds with her mother Caroline’s goal to keep her safe.

2. The question: What would happen if you didn’t reach the goal?

The purpose: This helps you figure out if her goal is big enough to carry a novel. If it wouldn’t be a big deal  for her goal to be unmet, she needs a bigger goal. The stakes must be high—life or death, even. This could be a literal life or death situation, or a professional, emotional, or spiritual death.

How to use it: You’re going to have to disappoint your characters by blocking their goals at least a few times in the course of the novel. Will she back down or try harder? Will his heart bleed or turn to stone? Watch how Phineas reacts to the obstacle to his goal in this scene:

Phineas should never have let her go. He crumpled Charlotte’s latest letter and jammed it into his pocket, nearly popping the stitches with the force. He should never have let her out of this city, out of his sight. The evening’s chorus of chirping crickets seemed to be laughing at him incessantly. His breath came faster, his legs propelled him farther down Twenty-first Street in a blind fury. He kept his head down so no one would see his eyes under the brim of his black bowler.   He had written to Charlotte begging her to come home now that disaster had befallen so near to her. He had been kind. Romantic, even. At least he had thought so. But firm. And she had written back—but not for days—and said no.   She said no to him.   She had defied him, like his mother had always defied his father. The thought made him sick.

Then we get into what’s really bothering Phineas—the fear that he’ll either lose Charlotte before he can marry her, or end up a hen-pecked cowardly husband like his father had been. How far will Phineas go to keep that from happening?

3. The question: What are you really good at? What do people like about you?

The purpose: Find her strengths. Readers will not find your character like-able unless there are things to like or love about her.

How to use it: Use her strengths to set her up as a sympathetic character. But later in the book, make her fail at the very thing she thought she was really good at. This will bring her to a dark moment, or a crossroads, where she has to decide what to do. A choice that may have previously seemed out of character for her would now be believable.

4. The question: What do you hate about yourself?

The purpose: Learn her flaws. It could be a body part she isn’t satisfied with or a single or habitual sin. A follow-up question would be: What’s your biggest secret?

How to use it: If she hates something about her appearance, it will color how she carries herself, or the clothes she wears. If it’s something deeper, it may cause her shame, guilt, or an inability to form close relationships with others.  Whatever she hates about herself must come out in the open at some point. Then what will happen? When we meet Irish immigrant Ruby O’Flannery, in Wedded to War, we see immediately what she hates about herself: her posture deformed by needlework. Later in the book, she hates something else—her new biggest secret—and this drives the rest of her storyline. Here we see her weighing her options:

Ruby couldn’t sleep.   The same mattress that had once cradled her body in softness now felt like a bed of nails, the sheets like weights pressing the air out of her lungs.   Like a body. Hot and heavy.   Ruby threw off the covers and jumped out of bed, gasping for air. Her racing pulse sounded loudly in her ears as she knelt down on the cool hardwood floor for the seventh night in a row, unshed tears swelling thickly in her throat. Would she ever be able to sleep in a bed again without being haunted by an unforgiving memory?   . . . Now, when each night’s blackness rendered her blind on a bed again, her mind reeled her back to the very moments she wanted most to forget. What had she done to deserve that?   If Matthew found out, he would kill her.   If Mrs. Hatch found out, she would fire her.   If the American Moral Reform Society found out, they would turn their backs on her.   God already knew, and could never forgive her. He had turned His back on her already.   She was on her own now more than ever before.

5. The question: What is the most dramatic event that has happened in your life, and how has it shaped you and your beliefs?

The purpose: First, it gives you more backstory to help you understand her. Second, you’ll get to see if her faith and beliefs are shaken by circumstances, or if trials make her stronger.

How to use it: This will help you understand her motivations as she navigates life throughout the book. If you want her to change how she responds to hardship, you will want to introduce another character or event that will change her mind. The most dramatic event for the Waverly family was the death of Charlotte’s father in a cholera epidemic. The memory of his kindness to the patients in the hospital prompts her to apply to be a nurse. The memory of his death from exposure to disease fuels Caroline’s desire to keep Charlotte away from hospitals. One is motivated by mercy and service, the other by self-preservation.

6. The question: What is your biggest fear?

The purpose: This will tell you how to rock her world.

How to use it: Your characters must face their biggest fears in the book. How far will they go to stay away from what terrifies them? It depends on the intensity of their fear.

7. The question: What is your most treasured possession and why?

The purpose: This will tell you what’s important to her, both materially and nostalgically, since most objects are made more valuable by the memories attached to them.

How to use it: If the object is small enough, use it in a mannerism, or see what happens if this object is lost or stolen. Better yet, what would cause your character to willing part with it? In Wedded to War, Phineas has a gold pocket watch from his father which he holds whenever he feels insecure. Readers can tell he’s feeling threatened when he grips onto his watch.

Obviously, if you’re going to really grill your characters, you’ll need to ask all the pointed follow-up questions you can think of, and then some. But these will certainly get you started. Grill your characters with questions like these and your plot will go from flat and bland to spicy and robust. Conflicted and well-drawn characters make a story sizzle.