My Nine Steps to Building a Character

Building Your Character Helps Building Your Story

I have fun bringing great characters to life. Characters tell the story.  Building their personalities become colorful. They interact and respond to other characters and situations. These people change the typed letters from a computer screen or paper to a simple plot and timeline with a living story, from the beginning to the end. My characters are the moving parts that make the story work.

These are steps should help you develop your characters.

1. She needs to stand out.

The first question I ask myself is what purpose will this character serve in the story? Is she the hero, the villain, the sidekick, the love interest or the comic relief?  How will other characters interact with her? What is her name? How will her name help the story? Is her name suitable for her personality? Where does she live? How will she respond to her surroundings? Is this a secondary or main character? And how is she treated by others?

2. Build her personality.

I want to bring color and clarity so the characters’ personality brings depth to my story. Start with the basic statistics; age, height, weight, appearance, religion, eye and hair color? How was she raised (back-story)? Her likes and dislikes will make a good foundation of the personality. Then add skills, hopes and desires to the mix. Don’t forget to add how she visualizes herself and how she visualizes the surrounding characters.  However, do not limit her to the sets of behaviors you have created. Allow her to be open to unexpected personality traits that come out and add spice to the story. This will make her more interesting. Let her have unexpected reactions based on unforeseen events.

3. Make her personality come out.

I like to put characters in a jar and give it a big shake. Characters have conflictions with their emotions and the emotions of others. How will she respond to other characters in these situations? How will other characters respond? She must react in all situations. What are her opinions about events, other people, or obstacles in your story? Be careful about changing the personality of a character during your writing process. Characters change during, and by the end, of the story.  But their basic values and moral beliefs will be consistent.  If you need to change your character drastically, you may have to go back through the entire story and re-write the changes for consistency.

4. Create a past life.

How well do I know my characters? A back story for your character will show motivation to her actions and reactions. What trouble has she been in? Her back story will haunt her and cause her to do the things she does. How this character reacts and responds to situations moves your story along. But she does not need a traumatic past.

5. Define her strengths.

Let’s put your characters back in the jar. This time we’ll add spiders and snakes. Give the jar a good shake and see how they respond. Is she brave? A brave character takes on responsibilities to survive or get ahead. Is she loyal? A loyal character will have no problem making and keeping friends. Does she seek justice? If so, she would do anything in her power to make sure justice will be served. Whatever the strengths are make sure she responds as she should. Define the strengths through actions in different situations. If one of her strengths is to improve, then don’t forget to bring out her flaws and weaknesses in the beginning.

6. Define her weaknesses.

I go deep to look and bring out their flaws. This is not just about physical weakness, but imperfections within your character. Imperfections may cause other characters to react in embarrassment and loathing. Her weakness can include lying, cheating, drinking too much, or breaking the law.  Diving into your character’s past and revealing deep dark secrets could show her weakness. How did she deal with the weakness in her childhood?  How does your character hide the weakness?

7. She must have a goal or goals.

What do they want? The characters need to tell me so I can help. Goals push her to respond. Her personality, emotions, strengths and weaknesses drive the story. Make her pay to achieve her goals. Achieving a goal can lead to a boring story. Have her strive and fail several times and make your readers route for her. Describe the steps she took to reach a goal.

8. Create her based on someone you know.

This is fun for me. Shopping malls and public pools have oceans of characters. Use traits from someone you know or fictional people to build your character. Observe how real people react to situations. Dig deep. If you have someone in mind, take notes. These notes will help you writer her more three-dimensional and more believable. When you create characters by using your own life experiences, you use elements of reality to bring them to life in your writing.

9. Make her real.

You may tend to make characters perfect. Everyone is imperfect. The more perfect the less believable she will be. If you delete all her flaws, she may become less realistic in her interactions with other characters and to the plot. Flaws make characters believable.

Conclusion:

Characters need to have a purpose in your story. They need to have dreams and beliefs that will lead to inner growth. A character must grow and develop through the story process. Experiences and memories affect their thoughts, attitude and actions. Let your character tell the story of how she changed and grew during the time it took from day one to the last page. Characters dictate

More on Character Building in Your Writing

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R. M. Scott Author Site