Developing Characters – Character Grids

Characters are not my inherent thing. I am a plot person. You give me a character facing a choice and I can make a whole plot. But when it comes to subplot and relationships between characters? I need framework and assistance.

In my recent draft for Camp NaNoWriMo, I saw across from a friend and tried to explain to her what I was doing. She kept asking me, “Why?” I had two characters who were facing off against each other and they both, deep down, wanted the same things. “Why are they fighting, then?”

Well, shit. Why were they fighting?

I spent the next hour of writing making a logic framework to describe why my characters would be in conflict with each other.

It looked a little like this (but I filled it with fictitious relationship statuses for your amusement):

Click to see full size.

In this example character grid, the left column is which character is being discussed. This is his or her perspective about the relationship with the person labelled at the top of that column.

Some of the characters thoughts were directly foiling each other, like Leoss versus Innighta. Innighta only likes him for fashion advice and, Leoss, on team with Innighta’s rival, gives her bad fashion advice. Leoss wouldn’t mind getting with Thero but Thero doesn’t pay attention to Leoss because Leoss is, alas, not a chick.

Also revealed? Thero and Innighta, basically married, really don’t like each other nor do they have a very functional relationship. But it is perceived as functional to Hotera, who wants Innighta.

While I greyed out what the characters think of themselves, if it’s important to you to have the inner conflict, it can be included.

So while the above character grid was made up in twenty minutes (and, while having my character’s name names, absolutely does not reflect my actual grid–which is over 1000 words in length and nuances).

I have found that this approach helps me a lot more than four to five page character profiles that start with the mundane things like, “Hair Colour?” and make me feel like I’m wasting time. If I give the character a hair colour, yeah, I’ll make it down, but I won’t write his whole dating profile ahead of time. This grid gives me something quick and functional to work with in order to guide my characters to their inevitable disasters–err, resolutions.

What about you? How do you develop your characters?

Camp NaNoWriMo Update!

I have smashed into my word goal for the month and have no choice but to plough through it.

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40039 / 40000
(100.1%)

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