18 Days of Writing and Publishing Tips – Day 11 Character Development or Average characters shouldn’t be totally average

You can find lots of character development works online. Here’s a simple one of mine. Basically a character development sheet is something to fill out to build a character that seems like a real person, with likes, dislikes, hopes, fears and a background that adds something to the story.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, some of the aspects of your character’s personality will play into the plot, especially things the character fears or struggles with. The fun thing about building a character is the possibilities are endless, so don’t limit yourself to average even when you are writing an ordinary character.

For example, think carefully about your character’s hobbies and interests. Hobbies and interests are a good way to develop an immediate hook or quirk that a reader will remember.

I’ve found that means I pick something slightly unusual. For example, I would not pick running, going to the gym, or practicing an ordinary sport as the character’s main hobby. I know if I was reading a book with those things listed, it wouldn’t help me build much of a picture of the person. Now if they liked archery, or karate, that’s a little more unusual, and I’d remember that. And if they spent their time skateboarding, and also trying to teach their cat to skateboard, I’d definitely remember that.

Let’s say you have a character who likes to read. That’s fine, but make it more distinct. Maybe they also collect every printing they can find of THE HOBBIT, or maybe they have stacked all the books in their room to build a little book fort. Those sorts of things really add to the basic hobby and again, help the reader see the character.

A long time ago when I was a ghost writer for a man writing his autobiography, he talked about his parents but I had a hard time pulling something from him that would make his mother distinctive until finally one day he just happened to mention that she was very short and wore high heels all the time, even when she was cleaning. That stuck in my head and I used it in the book.

For some more examples, in WILDFIRE RUN, Luke, the main character, is very active and has done African drumming in school, so he drums on everything, tables, walls, etc., when he is nervous. Stephan, in WOLF STORM, is very good at imitations, especially actors from old movies. Mina from ALL IS FAIR, writes silly plays for her and her schoolmates to perform. Quinn, from my Torch World sci fi series, wants to study explore new places to discover new species, so he’s always drawing pictures of specimens he finds as practice and he also builds contraptions to catch them. These are all ordinary people, but their hobbies may make you remember them more than a character doing something more mundane.

As with fears, the hobbies or interests you pick should help the main character out in some of the difficult situations they will face. That’s why outlining to decide upon the major difficulties is good to do before you make a final decision on all aspects of the character. Not everything will be used, but if something helps them out, it will make sense to the reader and make the plot more believable.