Character Sketches. Do Them.

[image error]I’m going to go into teacher-mode here and talk for a little bit about character sketches. More importantly, why you should do them and do them now.

There’s lots of wonderful analysis out there about what the most vital part of a novel is: the characters, the plot, or the style. I would add the planning, too, but that’s a post for another day. You can make an argument for any and all of these (and let’s be honest, they’re all vital), but I’m going to stand on my soap box for a moment and yell and scream about characters and how you develop them as a writer.

I’ve made some mistakes as a writer, but I’ve never made the mistake of not having a sketch for each character in all of my books. And by sketch, I don’t mean an actual, hand-drawn sketch or anything like that. I’m a writer, not an artist, you know?

Here’s what I’m talking about:

What does the character look like?

I always start out by ‘casting’ my characters. I definitely spend an obscene amount of time trying to find the perfect picture to match what I see in my head, even if I’m basing a character off a known actor or actress. On that note, I usually do ‘cast’ my characters with a known actor or actress jut because I can see them vividly in my mind without having to work that hard at it. That also makes hearing their voice in my head that much easier, too