the craft. character development.

If you’ve read enough books, you’ve met characters you loved, characters you hated and characters you may have been indifferent about. Characters are so important to the stories we tell. Who are the people? How do they interact with one another? What are they trying to achieve? And what stands in their way? This week, I wanted to talk a little about character development.

What I love the most about writing characters is that they become these living, breathing beings in my world. All of a sudden I’m talking back to the page like, “why would you do that?” Or “Girl, that was so dumb.” In my opinion, that’s when I feel like I’ve done my best work.

Everyone will have a different approach on how they develop their characters. I can only share from my personal experience. A little about my writing process. Most often, I start with a plot. There is an idea of something I imagine happening. It’s the answer to the question “What if?” For my debut novel, after listening to an album, it started with the question, “what happens when the playboy finally falls in love?” And I went from there.

I don’t typically know a lot about my characters before I jump into the story. It’s like I get to know them as the story develops. So for me, a lot of my character development happens after I have a rough sketch of the story. Then it’s like, okay, let me go back in and think about what motivates them, what are their weird quirks, how did things that happened in their past affect them?

When I first started querying, I received some really great feedback. An agent who ended up passing on the story told me that she just didn’t know enough about the main character soon enough. She needed to feel strongly about her one way or the other. And she needed to know early what her motive was. For me, it felt like exposing that in those early pages was giving it all away too soon. But the reality is, you don’t have a lot of time to draw a reader in. It’s much like freelance work. The lead needs to be compelling if the reader is going to take that journey with you. In the same way, your characters should immediately make your reader feel something. Good or bad.

An essential part of character writing for me is definitely character profiles. Writer Fajr Muhammad taught a great class on this for PTW. Everyday People: Building Realistic Characters. If you haven’t checked it out on our video content page, run, don’t walk. Profiles are a series of questions that you answer about your character. Here’s the thing, all of it won’t make the book. But when you have all this rich knowledge about your character both on and off the page, it creates depth. What you don’t want is one dimensional characters. They need to feel well-rounded, fully fleshed out for your readers to connect to them in a meaningful way.

I also picked up “Find Your Voice” Angie Thomas’ guided journal for novel writing. She has some great questions to consider surrounding not only your main characters but also your secondary characters. Sometimes we can just use secondary characters as placeholders in a sense, but they should be developed as well. They also assist with those secondary storylines that make your story more dynamic and interesting.

Characters also need an arc. You’ve likely heard this surrounding TV or film but it’s just as much true in a novel. That’s why so many books get optioned for TV and film. Anyway, your main character should change in some way over the course of the story. Who we meet in those first ten pages should encounter things throughout the story that mold, shift, and alter who we end up with in the final ten pages. Sure, they are still the same character, but think about your own life, are you who you were a month ago? A year ago? Two?

Day after day, we’re encountering characters in real life. Our job is to translate what’s in our heads to relatable people on the page. Use it all. Glean what you can from not only your imagination, but also people in your very real life.

I’m a people person. So getting to know characters in a story is like fun for me. Even with my current work in progress. I am learning so much about this new cast of characters. I have profiles but there is also so much discovery happening as I get into the draft.

Writing is hard. But I feel like developing characters is one of the fun parts! Go deep. Fajr had a great example profile that’s up on the page that asked me questions I’d never even thought of for my characters. But it all informs the work!

Writing/Job Opportunities

The Writer’s Colony at Dairy Hollow has multiple fellowships accepting applications.

Buzzfeed Books is always accepting pitches. Roundups, quizzes, TV/Movie + Book Content.

Helpful information to include:

Headline/frame
A solid idea on the format (or link to another post like it)
Beats/books we can expect

Subject example: “BOOKS PITCH: 25 Books My Dog Loved And So Will You”

For book related pitches email buzzfeedpitches@buzzfeed.com. CC: farrah.penn@buzzfeed.com. The payment range is $100-$300 depending on length/format. Take a look at what they’ve published before pitching: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/section/books

The Gallatin School of Individual Studies at NYU is hiring an Assistant Director of Communications.

The Metro Desk of the New York Times is hiring an Assistant Editor.

The University of Notre Dame Press is hiring a Senior Acquisitions Editor.

Bloomberg Industry Group is hiring a Content Editor, Business of Law.

JSTOR Daily is hiring an Associate Editor.

The Guardian is hiring a Subeditor.