Developing characters is one of my favourite parts of writing, but at the same time, it's the bane of my existence. Okay, maybe I won't take it that far, but I will admit that sometimes the thought of developing a character can be very overwhelming. Figuring out where they live? Nah, I'll figure that out later. Appearance? Sure, that's pretty easy, but what about their backstory? Where they were born? Their ethnicity? Their personality quirks that drive their friends crazy (if they even have any friends)? These aspects are all part of character development. When you think about it, characters are very complicated. Characters are one of my main reasons that I write, but it can take months or even years for a character to become fully fleshed out in your head and stand out from the rest of your characters. Development doesn't have to take that long, but that's an issue for another post. For now, I'm going to take you through 5 fun and useful ways to develop characters without losing all your hair! 1. Roleplaying This is my absolute favourite way to develop characters, but I understand that not everyone is able to do this. Basically, find a writer friend who also needs to develop a character. You could also just find a friend who enjoys roleplaying. Then you can create a scene and a scenario, plunk the characters who need development into the scene, and let them interact!
For example:
Person 1: Kira walked down the street, humming to herself.
Person 2: Millie was lost in her thoughts when all of a sudden she slammed into another girl [Kira]. “Oh—I’m sorry—” she stammered.
Person 1: “You’re fine.” Kira brushed herself off.
What I Like About This Method: - Roleplaying is super fun! You get to know the author better, and you also get to meet some of their characters. - When you do this, you actually get to write the character. You get to see how they would be portrayed in your story. - Roleplays are also very flexible. They allow you to flipflop your character's personality around as you try and figure out something that fits, and you can always work with your friend to change a setting if it doesn't fit the outcome you're going for. What I Don't Like About This Method: - If you don't have any roleplaying friends, then it's kinda tricky. However, there are many options online if you just do a Google search! - It can become a major distraction. I'm guilty of this myself. They're super fun, but then that means I get distracted from important things. - It can be tricky to roleplay a character that you have zero information about, which is why I recommend you at least have a /general/ idea of the personality before you start (even if it drastically changes later on).
2. Character Journals People may have differing definitions of this, but here's what I mean when I say character journals: a character journal is where you open up a blank document, type up a question, and then write your character’s answer in 1st person POV. This can be a great way to get to know your character’s voice, especially if you’re going to be writing in their POV in the actual story. As well as this, character journals help you find out your character’s personality, likes, dislikes, or any other question that you wanted to ask them!
For example:
Hey Mara, why are you so stubborn?
Mara’s Answer: The reason that I’m stubborn is [insert long answer and reasoning here]
What I Like About This Method:
- It’s fun to write in a character’s POV and get to feel like you’re in their head. (That’s part of the reason why all of my novels are in 1st person POV.)
- It’s also super flexible because you can do whatever character you want, whatever question you want, or anything!
- Like I mentioned before, my preferred development method is actually writing the characters in some shape or form, and this fits the bill.
What I Don’t Like About This Method:
- I actually haven’t used this method very much, and I’m now questioning why. It’s not like I don’t like it? I’ve just found other methods more interesting.
- It can get really boring to only use this for character development.
- There are so many questions someone could ask! Where do they start? What’s the best option? Character journals can seem a bit overwhelming.
3. Drabbles
If you don’t know what a drabble is, it’s a short story that includes the characters of your novel, but it doesn’t actually end up in the novel itself. These drabbles can align with your novel’s universe, or they can be in an alternate universe. For the purposes of character development, I’m going to focus on backstory drabbles.
If you have an idea for an event in a character’s backstory but you don’t know exactly how it went down, why not write a drabble for it? Prose and good writing don’t really matter in drabbles, which is the beauty of them. You can focus on the event and the characters themselves while not having to agonize over the fact that you wrote “He sighed” eighteen billion times.
What I Like About This Method:
- I love writing drabbles because I can write anything. I can write fluff scenes for my own personal enjoyment. I can write darker backstories for my characters so that I know exactly what happened, but I don’t have to share that with anyone else.
- Drabbles also de-stress me from writing and help me realize that writing is supposed to be fun.
- I also don’t have to finish them! There is no obligation for me whatsoever to write a drabble and finish it!
- There’s so much I can do with drabbles. I have written many alternate universe drabbles (one made me cry for several minutes straight because I killed off one of my favourite characters), as well as just drabbles where I let myself go wild. Hey, it’s still character development if you’re writing the character, right?
What I Don’t Like About This Method:
- Drabbles can take a while to write, especially if you’re like me and you write drabbles that are at least 2k words long. (I wrote a 10k word drabble for Christmas. That was exhausting. But very fun.)
- They’re usually more helpful in later stages of development. It’s hard to just plunk a completely new character in and just write them like they’re fully developed. Although, now that I think about it, you could actually just do that. It’s kinda like a one-person roleplay.
4. Character Sheets
Ah, good ol’ character sheets!
These are pretty simple. You have a blank form with a whole bunch of character attributes you can fill out to help flesh out your character.
As an example, this form from Kindlepreneur is a good one that I’ve found (especially because you can directly edit the PDF!). There are a lot of questions on there and just so much information you could figure out – but it’s important to remember that you do not have to fill out every single bit of the form if you don’t want to! (disclaimer: not sponsored)
What I Like About This Method:
- It’s simple. You can figure things out right away. It’s all right there.
- These sheets are a good guideline for some stuff to think about for your character.
- There are so many different types of character sheets on the Internet, so it’s pretty easy to find one that works for you.
What I Don’t Like About This Method:
- It’s very overwhelming. Often I’m just lazy and ignore all the questions that I can’t answer.
- It’s also hard to decide something for a character when I haven’t written them yet.
- Admittedly, I also find them a bit boring.
5. Writing Their POV
Now, before you object, this is different than drabbles!
What I mean by “writing their POV” is this: Take an already-existing scene from your novel that your character is in, copy-paste it over to a separate document, and write the scene in that character’s POV instead of the POV character! This can still work even if you’re trying to develop your POV character, because then you can see how the POV character appears from an external point of view.
What I Like About This Method:
- It’s cool to see a scene of your story from another person’s eyes. This helps flesh out the story as well as the character.
- The scene is already written, so you don’t have to figure out anything new plot-wise when you switch POVs! You just have to figure out the POV character’s thoughts and reactions.
What I Dislike About This Method:
- It doesn’t always help with figuring out a character’s personality, it’s focused more on getting into their head and seeing their thoughts. Writing in their voice can certainly help with discovering their personality, but it isn’t as helpful as other methods.
- Part of what I like about character development (and also writing in general) is discovering new events and rolling with the chaos my brain gives me (in addition to my outline, of course. I can’t survive without outlines). If I’m rewriting a scene where I know everything that’s happening, it takes out some of the fun for me.
Conclusion
I’m sure that there are many ways of developing characters that I didn’t mention in this blog post. And I know that my preferred method of character development could very well be different than yours! Either way, I hope that these five ways of developing characters (roleplaying, character journals, drabbles, character sheets, and writing their POV) were able to inspire you and aid you in your character development struggles.
Next week we’ll be focusing on the author’s development (you!) and how writing can aid you in your personal growth!
See you next time,
Alyssa
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