How To Write A Character Who Could Sink The Titanic

When you write a character, remember that people are a lot like icebergs. 90% of an iceberg is submerged below sea level, which is why they are so good at sinking Titanics. People are much the same. The 10% we can see is their behavior, the words they say and their physical appearance. The other 90% is emotions, thoughts and beliefs.
How does this help you write a character? Firstly, your character is more than just a bunch of dialogue and actions. For every line of dialogue, there are nine lines of stuff going on below sea level that drive that dialogue. If you don’t know what those other nine lines say, you need to take your character out for a drink. Secondly, in real life we only ever get to see the 10%, never the other 90%. “Aha!” you say, “I know my best friend inside out, so I do see all that stuff.” But you only know that stuff because you spend a lot of time in her company, listening to dialogue, observing behavior and sharing experiences, which is exactly what your readers are going to do with your protagonist. So, you shouldn’t need to tell your readers the other 90% – they can figure it out.
Unfortunately, not everyone is Raymond Carver. Sometimes we simply lack the skill to accurately portray emotions through behavior and dialogue. So we use an adverb, we throw in some exposition, we shove a knife in the protagonist’s ribs and force them to spill their guts for the reader. Every time you do that, you drill a hole in your iceberg.
But that isn’t even the worst of it! There’s more than one way to swiss cheese a slab of ice. If you find yourself explaining your character’s actions in any of the following ways, you are not just drilling holes in your iceberg, you’re launching depth charges at it:
“She’s just impulsive… “
“I just wanted to write a story where (something that doesn’t make any sense) happens… “
“I thought it would be cool… “
She might be impulsive, but why? You might want to write a story about a hot guy with chiseled abs who falls for an insipid girl in the latter stages of terminal cancer, but why would he do that? It might be cool if your protagonist climbs out of a pit of death somewhere in the Middle East and is back in America by the next scene, but how is that even possible? If you don’t know, you’ve only written 10% of your story.
To summarize, remember the hidden 90%, keep it hidden unless absolutely necessary and don’t go filling it with wishy-washy exposition. If you stray from the path, the Titanic will plow straight through your iceberg and di Caprio will live happily ever after. And nobody wants that!
Sent to prison by a military court for a crime he didn’t commit, J. Whitman promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the inter-webs. Today, still wanted by the government, he survives as freelance writer, proofreader and editor.