Write Great Characters

Dear Writer

If you have been following the series to this point, you will have discovered, in Volume 1, the magic of 10 minutes to kick-start the time management of your creative writing project. In Volume 2, you will have worked through the process of finding your ‘authentic’ writing self to developing your ‘dynamic’ writing self. In many ways, the process of character development is the same. Your characters are not actors on a stage who return to another life when the play is done. This is their life and you, their creator will be marvelling at the twists and turns of their journey and applauding their self-fulfilment or, at least, their self-recognition and growth.

Whether you have an existing idea for your characters, or none, in this volume of the Write This Way series, you’re going to bring them to life.

In the pages that follow, you will learn how to create characters who are vivid and memorable, the type to hook the reader, and they will even surprise you, the writer. Sound crazy? Yes, I agree it does—after all, you are the creator, so how can you be surprised by your own characters?

Hold your scepticism. Let’s take this journey together and, hopefully, along the way, you’ll understand exactly what I mean.

Together, we are going to create characters in any genre who:

Are definable

Are likeable, or deliberately unlikeable

Are believable, or relatable

Are interesting and distinctive

Further characterisation will be explored in Point of View and Dialogue.

Not all characters in your story will have the same depth of characterisation. The inverted pyramid below gives you an idea of this. In general, the protagonist (see Part 1) requires the greatest exploration, followed by the antagonist (see Part 2). Secondary characters will have less, but some might be explored more than others, while minor characters have the least (see Part 3).

Let’s see who’s waiting for you create them. How exciting!

PART ONE

THE PROTAGONIST

You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them a peril, you find out who they really are.

JOSS WHEDON

In Part 1 you will be getting to know your central character, also known as the protagonist (from the Greek ‘the first to suffer’). We’ll begin with the basics—physical appearance, age … through to the more fundamental—beliefs, flaw, paradox and desires.

(Though you might have more than one central character (protagonist) in your story, in the following I’ll be referring to the protagonist in the singular, for ease of communication.)

Before we begin:

Imagine that you’re travelling on a train. You’re bored with your phone (yes, really!) and decide, instead, to just observe the others sharing your carriage. You notice that the most occupied seats are those next to the window and facing the direction of travel—in fact, you were rather miffed when the person who is sitting next to you got to the window seat first. You wonder why these seats are prime real estate and perhaps all sorts of philosophical questions arise about the things we, as human beings, share.

It’s good to ponder the commonalities of human nature; it will be important as we travel together.

Although you acknowledge the similarities between us all, you know that there are a lot of differences too. You notice the middle-aged woman dressed conservatively reading a book on serial murderers. Facing her is a young man whose face has almost disappeared into his hoodie. Despite the earphones his music is still audible, and you can tell that it’s rap. Further on, a father in a business suit is softly reading to his daughter who is nestled into his lap. Each of them is the hero of their own journey, a story you can only speculate about, or not.

We don’t usually think too much about other people on the train, or perhaps anywhere else, unless we become involved with them in some