Developing Characters: Foreword

Download: Character Sheet

A story is nothing without memorable characters.  Characters represent us as readers and writers; our values, our desires, our motivations.  Readers get swept up in stories because they come to love or hate the characters.  The only bad character is one nobody cares about.

But it's not easy to write compelling characters, especially if they are vastly different than you.  If they're a minor character whose head we never get inside, that might be fine.   But if you try to write a protagonist that's nothing like you, chances are it's going to wind up sounding a bit forced on the page.  You want to shape major characters so they have backgrounds you can at least empathize with, if not identify with.  The important thing is that you can write the characters believably.

For my part, I employ a writer's version of method acting.  I immerse myself in the characters I create (at least, the handful of important ones), studying their history, psychology, and habits.  The hope is that once I actually start using them in a story, their voice and actions will flow naturally.

This is another area of plotting that generates a lot of notes, and like Setting, I think most of what you put into these notes should never see the light of day.  It's the Pantry Method again; it's better to have have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.

In my Character Sheet template, I've tried to list every facet of a character that might be important in a story, and I've grouped these facets into several broad categories.

First, you need to think about your character purely in terms of Story Mechanics.  What is their function in the story?  What job do you need them to do?  (For info on the available jobs, check out my post on Character Roles)  If you're like me, and believe in the power or archetypes, you might consider picking a seed identity from my Character Archetypes list, and growing your character from there.

Then, if this is a major character, you'll want to assign them some sort of Character Arc.  We'll get into Character Arcs later, but for now just know there are three types: Positive (character changes for the better), Negative (Character changes for the worse), and Flat (Character remains the same, but incites change in the world around them).

Not every character needs an arc, but typically you need at least one for the story to be interesting.  It doesn't necessarily have to belong to the protagonist, but someone, somewhere needs to go through or incite some kind of change, otherwise you don't have a story, you have a series of events.

Choose an arc that's congruent with your intended story argument.  Are you trying to say something good or bad about the world?  Are you trying to say something big, or are you trying to say something relatively small?  Is this story an indictment of society as we know it, or are you just reminding us of something we already know?

Once you've picked your arc, you should answer some of the basic questions about it, but we'll get into that in another post.

The next category is an easy one: Vital Statistics.  Half the choices you make here will be arbitrary, and will never show up in your novel.  Chances are your story doesn't hinge on the fact that your character has brown hair, or is 35 years old.  But occasionally, one of these details will become important.  Sometimes a character can only work if they are a certain age or ethnicity.  Sometimes their appearance or dress is a source of conflict for them.  So this stuff does matter, just not as much as you might think.

One important choice in this area is your character's name.  A lot of the time, a name is an arbitrary choice, provided it fits in with the setting (there probably weren't too many Klatus in 1850's San Francisco, and there probably weren't that many Bobs in ancient Egypt).  Sometimes though, you want to give your character a name that says something about them.  To do this, I highly recommend using a program like Google Translate to find words in other languages that mean whatever it is you want to say about the character.  Sites like Behind the Name can help you find a name that already has meaning and depth.  More often than not, though, I find myself over at Fantasy Name Generators, just picking out whatever sounds cool.

Next, it's time to dive into your character's History.  What is their highest level of education?  What kind of jobs have they held over their life, if any?  What skills do they have or lack?  What is their family like?  Parents, grandparents, siblings?  What are those relationships like?  Are they cordial, close, strained, antagonistic?  Who are your character's friends?  What are those relationships like?

What experiences have shaped this character's outlook on life?  Try to come up with at least one thing from their childhood, one from their adolescence, and one from their adult life (if they are in fact an adult).  Say as much as you can about those experiences and how they affected the character, and consider expanding them into whole scenes if you can.  (More on that below)

Next, consider the character's Lifestyle.  Do they have any strong religious or political beliefs?  How do those influence the way they interact with others?  Does the character have any strong likes or dislikes that affect their behavior?  For example, do they hate a particular kind of music, or gush endlessly about their favorite actress?

What about bad habits?  Any vices like smoking, drinking, gambling, heroin, or prostitutes?  Or any mundane bad habits like nail-chewing, sloppiness, overeating, or laziness?

What is their overall health like?  Do they take care of themselves?  Are they fit, or overweight?  Have they ever been overweight?  Any chronic or past conditions worth mentioning?

Those considerations lead quite naturally into the character's Psychology.  This is the most important area of character development, and it deserves the most attention.

What are the character's best qualities?  Their worst?  Are they honest, or are they a liar?  Are they diligent, or are they a procrastinator?

One great way to bring a character to life is to give them a major quirk of some kind.  This might be an item drawn from a previous category, or it might be something totally random.  One of my stories, Upon the Summit of the City (Available in 3 Futures) came to life when I decided to make the main character a hypnophobe.

What one unusual thing defines your character?  Do they have a massive collection of cat-themed tea saucers?  Do they swim with dolphins in Costa Rica? Be careful not to go overboard with quirks, however.  We already have one Wes Anderson on this planet.  The position has been filled.

Fear is another important area to explore, especially if you're writing any type of speculative fiction.  Does your character have any fears or phobias?  What sends them into fits of panic?

What about overriding goals and motivations in their life?  Is there something they always wanted to be or do?  What is their motivation in general, and in this story particularly?

How about morality and ethics?  What is your character's idea of right and wrong?  Personally, I use Dungeons and Dragons alignments for this.  If you can't reason out your character's alignment on your own, here is a 30-question test that will help you figure it out.  Answer the questions to the best of your ability, skipping anything that doesn't makes sense for your character/setting.  Or ignore my nerdy methods, and just answer this question normally.

If you want to get really advanced, the final piece of psychology to consider is your character's Myers-Briggs type.  But that's the subject of the next post in this series.

Before we move on to that, there's one more thing I like to do when I develop characters.  At the end of the Character Sheet template, I've provided a long list of questions that will help you pin down some deeper facts about your character, and help you figure out what they would do in a variety of situations.

If you're willing to spend the time, one beneficial practice is to write actual scenes starring your character using these questions as writing prompts.  Don't worry, they don't have to be worthy of publication.  You don't have to use them at all.  Heck they don't even have to be actual scenes, they could just be big chunks of narrative summary (check out this article if you're not hip to the difference).  The point is that watching your character react to these prompts might allow them to surprise you.  And if they can surprise you, I'd say they're getting pretty real.

I know this is a lot of work, but you will never be sorry you spent a lot of time developing great characters.  I promise.  The deeper your characters are, the more people will love your story.

Next, we'll have a quick look at Myers-Briggs Typology, and how it affects fictional characters.