Character Development: a novice's view
Character development has always been weird to me. I have always felt that there is a sweet spot. If you overdevelop your character, then the reader cannot insert any of themselves into the story while if you underdevelop them then they have nothing to relate to. It’s a delicate matter.
I have encountered this issue as I dive deeper into my fiction writing. I used to write with overly descriptive details about the character and I thought this was great. Until I thought about who was going to relate to this candidate. Would it be the masses? Or only those that look like them? At that point, I shifted to less specific, like the exact eye or hair colors, and focused more on personality and descriptive details that could pertain to many types of people.
Here is how I develop my characters now.
1. Write out your character with as much detail as possible. Physical and personality. Their likes and dislikes too.
2. Edit it. Remove any detail that is not important to the progression of the story. Is the fact that the main character is blonde, really matter?
3. Finally, build on the personality traits, their quirks, and any physical identifiers that pertain especially to the story or the overall person that is your character.
The most important factor to think about when building a character is:
1. Your story, does it make sense?
2. Your target audience. If it’s a young adult book, your main character should not be in her 60s.
Also remember that your character can change, like we do. They could start with long luscious curls and end up with straight short hair, if that is relevant to your story. The same goes for personality traits. It may be the mean girl becoming nice or something smaller like their favorite food changing.
Every small detail needs to be planned and only added if necessary.
Check out our character development worksheet here.
