Character Development

Mahsuda Snaith has an interesting article dated 14 August 2022 on The Novelry website. She offers three character development exercises to help us develop interesting, believable, complex characters.

Mahsuda Snaith was an Observer New Face of Fiction in 2017. She has published two celebrated novels, The Things We Thought We Knew and How to Find Home, the second of which was a BBC Radio 4 ‘Book at Bedtime’. Mahsuda is especially interested in folklore and fairy tales, and representing voices from all backgrounds. She is a writing coach at The Novelry.

Mahsuda Snaith

Mahsuda says, “Years ago, when I was learning the craft of writing, I would sit in public spaces and people-watch. I needed to create characters who were distinct and different from each other, so I gave myself the task of seeing what was distinct and different about those around me.

I sat on park benches and in town hall squares, watching people walk past then noting down the most interesting details about them. I may have only seen a person for a few seconds, but I could always note down something distinctive – how quickly they were walking, how they dressed, their body language.

A person strolling by in a tailored suit and a briefcase with perfect posture told me something very different about their character than a person in the same tailored suit dashing by with a dozen papers in their hands, head down and shoulders hunched forward as they bumped clumsily into people along the way.

To help you see your characters with the same fresh eyes, as though they’d just walked by, try the following exercise.

Broken Glass

Not only is this a good exercise in understanding your character better but, as a bonus, it’s also a great exercise in ‘show don’t tell’. You’ll end up with great characters and a more engaging writing style!

The Bedroom Exercise

This one is fun, speedy and simple! Just put 10 minutes on a timer and write about the items in your protagonist’s bedroom, particularly focusing on the unusual.

A desk in itself is not particularly telling, but a desk with a broken leg propped up by CDs gives away your character’s interests, personality and, in this case, perhaps even their age. There may be moth holes in the curtains, cat posters on the wall or an immaculate display of dolls kept in their original boxes. And if there’s little to nothing in your character’s room, this can tell us something too. An open suitcase with only a few items, a mattress on the floor with no bed frame, bare walls and windowsills, are all signs of what your character’s life is really like.

So you can see how this character exercise is so powerful: it gives an insight into the intimate life of your protagonist that they wouldn’t necessarily show to the rest of the world.

Once you’ve done this with your protagonist, try it out with other characters. Seeing the differences between the main players’ bedrooms could be incredibly revealing and also highlight the conflicts and dynamics between characters in your novel.

Interview Your Characters

You’ve observed your character from a distance and you’ve snooped in their bedrooms; now it’s time to get up close and personal.

There have been times when I’ve not been able to connect with one character in my story. In those moments, I always find it helpful to ask them questions. Not about their hair colour or what their door number is, but the deep questions you would probably not even ask your closest friends. Questions you would probably not even ask yourself.

Put a timer on for 10 minutes and answer these questions for one of your characters.

The timer is important because I don’t want you to ponder over the answers for too long but to write them intuitively.

You may not think you know your characters very well, but it’s amazing what the subconscious reveals when you have the pressure of a timer.

Got your writing equipment ready? Let’s go.

Who is this? (Keep it brief; name, age or whatever immediately comes to mind.)What do they carry?Where do they go?What are they afraid of?What do they believe?Who has hurt them?What do they hope will happen?What happens?

When you’ve finished answering these questions, let those answers sink in and think about how they might affect your novel. You might have new information about your characters that will shape their motivations and how they behave.

Out of all these questions, what your character fears can be the most revealing.

How does their fear stop them from getting what they want?How can your character overcome their fear?And if they can’t overcome it, how can their fear ruin everything they could possibly want?

There’s often a misconception that you need likeable characters in a novel for your readers to invest in them. I’ve read many novels where the characters, including the main characters, are distinctly unlikeable and – in most cases – this is deliberate.

What is more important than likability is believably. If you create a character that has nuance and layers, who is driven by their fears and obsessions just like real people, then readers will be far more invested in them than if they are picture-perfect cut-outs of what we think a hero looks like.”