Develop Your Characters
Stories are about characters. Who they are, what they did, and why they did it drives your story forward and keeps your readers hooked until the end. Even if you’re writing plot-driven tales, your readers should care about, or at least relate to, your characters.
Last week, we discussed how to develop your idea into a novel-length story. This week, let’s focus on your characters; the “Who” of your story. Our goal: create vivid, relatable characters.
Basic Attributes for Your Characters
The easiest place to start is by choosing ages and names for your characters. Their genders, or gender expressions, may or may not be important to your story at this stage.
I love using names that mean something. When naming primary characters, I use baby naming websites to find names that speak to me. To reduce reader confusion, make sure your names aren’t too similar and don’t all start with the same letter (e.g. a scene with Carmine, Colin, Candy, and Carla).
Next, consider what your characters look like. This might include height and weight, as well as their hair and eye color. But don’t stop there! For example, how do they speak or present themselves?
Also consider things like:
- Body Type
- Posture
- Hygiene
- Default energy level
- Mannerisms
- Professions
- Clothing
Personality
Your characters’ personalities will arise from many factors. Moreover, if you’re writing character-driven stories, the decisions they make are based on their wants, desires, aspirations, and dreams. The combination of these is what moves your story forward.
Decide (or discover) what their strengths and flaws are. For example, if they have emotional wounds at the start of your story, will those wounds affect their decision making?
Other aspects of personality include:
- Sense of humor
- Spirituality
- Bravery
- Social and/or economic position
- Hobbies
- Values
- Sexuality
- Education
- Honesty and/or integrity
- Fears
Because our goal is to craft complex characters with depth, don’t think you have to do this on your own. Explore writing resources for character development questionnaires or quizzes. A quick web search will also yield writing exercises to help you develop your characters.
Deepen Your Characters
Once you have a good sense of who you’re writing about, enrich your characters by considering things like:
- Family dynamics
- Backstory and life altering moments
- Secrets
- Physical and Mental Health*
- Ethnicity, culture, and language
- Personal philosophy
- Habits and Ticks
*While representation matters, if you choose to incorporate physical disabilities or mental health into your characters, please don’t use these as a plot device or to define them. Perpetuating stereotypes is not what we’re about here.
Character Arcs
Last, if your story is character driven, you’ll want to give your characters an arc. At its simplest, a character arc is how your character is changed by the story’s events and the decisions they make.
Also, an arc can be positive or negative!
No Single Right Way
My character development process is still evolving. Some characters arrive as living, breathing beings. Others I’ve constructed based on what I think the story needs. I’ve tried out character worksheets, interviews, and even taken personality tests as my character.
Through trial and error, I’ve found there are two pieces of information foundational for me. I need to know my character’s name. And because I visualize the scenes I write, it helps me to know what they look like. To do this, I like to find an image to use as a starting point.
As I write, I learn about my character by watching how they handle obstacles, treat others, and by the decisions they make. Through their actions, I get a sense of who they are. Later, I dig deeper into their personality and backstory during the revision process.
However you go about developing them, your characters will be the heart of your stories, so take the time to figure out what works for you.
How do you create, discover, or develop your characters?