Ask the Authors: Character Development

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Let’s talk about developing characters. What makes them tick? What motivates them? Are they based on real people or achetypes or created from the gray matter in the writer’s head? What are they afraid of? And how do we as authors know these things? And how do we give our characters depth? Readers need to walk away from the story feeling as if the characters are whole, complex human beings, complete with personality and history. Let’s Ask the Authors about their methods for creating character, and feel free to share what works for you in the comments if you’re so inclined.

There are many methods we can use to create rich, in-depth characters, with backgrounds and histories, and belief systems ingrained from childhood. Some authors people watch and build from their observations. Others use the Proust Questionaire or similar tools to develop charaters and give them depth. A popular practice these days for bloggers to promote new releases is to interview the protagonist of the book instead of the author. I’ve never employed this practice here on Writing to be Read, but I have entertained the idea thinking it might be fun. 

What methods do you use to develop your characters?

DeAnna Knippling: I copy real people, or amalgamate real people, into a single character.  I’m trying to strip them down to one identifying “verb.”  My favorite example of a character who’s been simplified into delightfulness is Ash Williams from the Evil Dead franchise…his “verb” is “DO THE WORST POSSIBLE THING, BABY.”  Another good one is Heath Ledger’s Joker, whose “verb” might be something like, “do the thing that makes the situation not funny anymore.”  Like I said, still working on that.

Jordan Elizabeth: I’m not sure how to answer this one.  I write the first draft as the characters guide me.  Usually advanced character development happens in the editing phase.

Chris DiBella: I try to make my good guys likeable and I try to make my bad guys complete jerks. All my books have the same cast of main characters (good guys), so I want the reader to enjoy them enough to want to keep coming back for the next thirty novels I put out. I try to make them bad-asses, but also believable with how I project their characters. I also try to inject a lot of humor in my dialogue so that they appear like normal everyday folks. On the flip side, I want people to hate my antagonist so much that they actually scream out in cheer when Mercer kills them. I even get excited when I think about how I want to write their demise. It’s all just a fun part of the process.

Chris Barili: I start with a basic character triangle. What the character wants, what she needs, and her fears/faults. For shorter works, that’s all I do. For novellas or novels I’ll do a biography sheet on each major character.  That bio is four pages long when blank, and can be as long as 15 filled out. It has everything from their looks (which I often fashion after famous people) to their inner workings.

Tim Baker: My one and only method of character development is the story itself. At the beginning of the story each character (with the exception of recurring characters like Ike and Brewski) are strangers to me. I might know their basic personality but I learn about them as I write because I use their interactions with other characters, as well as their role in the story to bring out their individual personalities.

Cynthia Vespia: No matter the genre I build my characters with realistic qualities so they are more relatable to the readers.

Art Rosch: If a writer is not a psychologist (I mean one who studies human nature and matters of heart and mind, not a certified this-or-that) I’m likely to put down the book or story by said writer.  Psychology is fundamental to writing.  Where to start?  With yourself, of course.  You, in your mind/body system, are a living laboratory of human nature.  Extend your field of observation to your family, your friends, and then keep going.  We are more the same than we are different.  I’ve been helped immensely by reading psychology books.  I’m a Jungian and a great fan of James Hillman.  Jung gives us the archetypes.  We write in archetypes and flesh out our characters with individual quirks and traits.

It’s not only the protagonists that needs to be developed into a deep, rich character, but also our supporting characters. Like real people, experiences affect how the character relates to the world around them and to the other characters in the story. Characters have to have relationships and the backgrounds and histories of the minor characters plays into how these relationships function within the story. The nature of a relationship may also affect the protagonist’s actions and it need to be clear to readers why this releationship has such an effect.

Although characters with minor roles my not need to be developed as deeply as your main players, and their roles may be so minute that there’s not room to share their background with readers, we as the authors should at least have a vague idea of where each character is coming from. Backgrounds should be more detailed for the more major characters, with more of where they each are coming from being exposed to viewers.

Different methods of doing this may be dependent on the point of view(s) with which the author choses to tell the story. A Point of View (POV) offers the reader a window into a story which allows them to see a certain angle or perspective. When using a single POV, one of the drawbacks is that it is limiting, in that the reader will only know what the protagonist knows or experiences, and nothing more, which can make it difficult if you need to let readers know what the antagonist is up to. Multiple POVs, on the other hand, remedy that particular problem, but you risk getting the reader confused if you don’t make it clear who’s head we are in at all times. Let’s see if one is more popular than the other among our author panel members.

Do you prefer single or multiple POVs?

DeAnna Knippling: Depends on the story.  I do both.


Jordan Elizabeth: I love multiple POVs.  I get excited being able to explore different minds.


Carol Riggs: I much prefer single points of view. Limited ones, where the reader is locked into one character’s head throughout the novel, and no info is gained except from what that character learns. I love this setup because it’s exactly like our experiences in life—we only know our POV. It adds to a sense of mystery, with that not-knowing. I’ve thought about writing a multiple POV novel a couple of times, but I’ve actually never written one!

Chris Barili: Depends what I’m writing. Short stories are always single POV. Well, almost. I did sell one framed short story that had two POVs, and wrote another like that. Longer works, it depends. The stories in the Hell’s Butcher Series are one POV, either Frank’s for the larger books or someone else’s for t he shorter works. Smothered, my PNR novel (as B.T. Clearwater) has three points of view, one of which is a ghost. And the fantasy novel I sent to an editor this weekend has four POVs. It’s whatever works to advance the plot and make the story complete.

Tim Baker: I prefer multiple POVs. In my books I tend to write different parts of the story from the POV of one character or another. When I do – the reader only knows what that character knows. To me it’s more entertaining to learn the story at the same time the characters learn it.

Cynthia Vespia: As I’m developing a few new series I have found that multiple POV is alot more fun to write in, and it helps create a fuller world.


I think that, as our creations, our writings are a part of us. After all, everything we write has a little bit of ourselves in it. Whether we base your characters on real life people that we know, or invent them in our minds from the depths of our imaginations, they are bound to have traits in common with their creator. Let’s see what our author panel thinks.


Have you created any of your characters based on people who you know in real life?


DeAnna Knippling: All the time