Increasingly, I practice a lesson taught by the late Avram Davidson. All my characters are at least a bit cracked. Most don’t know it. They think their eccentricities are completely normal.
An example from real life that sticks in my mind: In the last few years of Fritz Leiber’s life, I visited him several times. At the time, he was living with his second wife Margo on the edge of the Tenderloin district in San Francisco, and if he had ever been on a farm or in the woods, it must have been decades ago, and very briefly. Yet in one cupboard, he had wedged a long, sharp axe, covered in dust. Seventy-five years ago or more, his father had told him that a man should always have a sharp axe handy, and he always had. Never mind that he never used it. To me, this little detail helps me see Leiber as a person. If I ever wrote a story with Leiber as a character, I would definitely include it.
Now, an example from fiction: In Roger Zelazny’s “This Immortal” (aka “And Call Me Conrad”), the main character, a former terrorist and currently a major bureaucrat, explains that he is late for an official function because he stopped by a party for the young daughter of a friend. The narrator adds that the excuse is true, but has nothing to do with the story. Zelazny later explained that he threw the detail in just to briefly indicate that the hard, active narrator had a gentler, more thoughtful side.
When I write a character, that’s the sort of detail I like to add.
prenticepieces.com 