Developing interesting characters is one of the cornerstones of strong writing, and it isn’t always easy! Luckily, using just a few straightforward tips you can enhance your characters and make sure they’ll hold your readers’ attention.
1. Write what you know
This is advice that you hear a lot, and many people disagree with it. I think it can be taken too literally as general writing advice, but it can also come in handy for developing characters. If you think about it, you probably have a huge amount of experience to draw on for character development. Think of the people you know in real life—from family members to casual acquaintances. You can think about people you only know from a distance as well, actors and musicians who you find interesting. And you don’t need to limit yourself to real people either! Draw on compelling characters from fiction when you work on developing your own characters.
Incorporating elements from real people, whether the way they talk, their habits or opinions, makes your characters feel three-dimensional.
2. Internal and external conflict
Conflict is vital for developing characters. Without something to battle against, it’s hard for characters to be particularly interesting to a reader. To work out the kind of conflict you want to apply, consider your character’s motivation—I’ve written about that before! Once you know what drives your character, you can work out what obstacles to put in their way. Those obstacles are something for your character to overcome, usually by learning, growing or changing in some way.
Conflict can be external, in the form of something or someone your character has to face down. That might be an exam they have to pass, an enemy to defeat or a place they have to reach. You can also get internal conflict. This might mean a character’s personal biases or limitations they have to overcome to get what they want. Either can work for developing your character, you just need to decide what makes most sense considering the character’s motivation.
3. Subvert reader expectations
You don’t want to overuse this, but it can be highly effective to consider reader expectations and undercut them. The tricky thing is working out how to do this as part of your character development, rather than purely to surprise people. If your character does something that surprises your reader, it should be because it’s exposing or exploring new depths. Not just for the sake of a ‘gotcha’ moment.
Real people behave in surprising ways all the time. That isn’t because they make choices at random, it’s because people are complicated. They don’t always have complete information to base decisions on and, even when they do, they might have conflicting motivations influencing them one way or another. If you can apply these ideas to your writing, you can develop characters with much greater depth. And even surprise your readers once or twice along the way!
4. Develop characters through interactions
This is the character-development version of ‘show, don’t tell’. Demonstrate your characters’ personalities and priorities through the way they interact with other elements of your story. If your character is selfish, don’t just have someone say so. Show that character behaving in selfish ways. Similarly, if they need to become less selfish over the course of the story, put them in situations that show their evolving perspective. You could have them start to consider the consequences of their behaviours, or feel guilty for choices they made previously.
Find opportunities to showcase your character development, whether through dialogue or action. This will ensure that your character development feels organic, and isn’t forced down readers’ throats.
5. Get to know your characters
It’s worth taking some time to really familiarise yourself with your characters. This helps you to write them more consistently, and get an intuitive sense for how they need to grow and change over the course of a story. There are lots of different techniques you can use to know your characters better as well! I’ve written previously about getting to know your main character through asking and answering questions about them. You can also try journaling from your character’s point of view, or writing about them in situations outside your story to get a more thorough picture of them.
How do you approach developing characters?
These are some of my favourite tips, and the things I think about when I’m writing. Share any top tips of your own in the comments!
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