While it is fantastic to know the plot of your story, it is more important to know your characters. Your character’s story arc should be one that moves your character from one state to another. Your characters needs to live and breathe on the page. So how do you go about developing characters for your story?
One thing that I do to start off with is to sit down and decide what my characters will be like. I give them a name, age, identity, and a description. I list any quirks that they may have. This is my beginning. If I get stuck, I go back and place my character into different situations so that I know how they will respond. Are they passive and run away at the first sign of danger? Why are they like this? Is it due to some childhood trauma? I flesh out my character (or characters) even more.
If you have a character who is the villain, perhaps you want to go in and do some psychology research. Maybe they are OCD or they are manic depressive. Maybe some event in their past caused them severe stress that triggers them to act in ways that others would not.
Having “what-if” moments and diving into the mind of your character is a great way to move past places where you feel stuck. Remember that Character Motivation is a huge part of the conflict within a story. What do they want and why? What is going to push them forward in this story?
For example, I played around with a storyline of a character who steals a baby. Why would they want to steal a baby? Can they have babies? Are they hiding a pregnancy or nonpregnancy? Would this drive them to murder to keep their secret? Once I decide that the secret is enough to kill for, I then have my character’s motivation for not getting caught.
In the past, I have used very fancy sheets to create my character sheets. Now I just put everything into a Word document where I can place pictures and write out descriptions. Computers do have their advantages over electric typewriters and even word processors. Instead of a folder or a notebook, I now have a computer and a cellphone. Use whatever method you would like to keep track of your characters and story line. Just make sure that it is consistent.
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