Ashley's Guide to Character Development
The secret to a good story is the characters that live in it. Sure, the other elements are important—effective setting, logical storyline, no loose ends—but even with all of these, they’re nothing without good characters.
The problem that many writers have is that once they give life to their characters, they have trouble keeping them lively. It’s taken a lot of writing to be able to come up with what I know, but I think that I now have enough to attempt to give advice.
Conception
My personal favorite metaphor for characters is that of a tree. Just like any tree, they come from a tiny seed that is cared for and nurtured until it grows. To be able to grow the trees that will best fit in the landscape of your story, you have to pick and choose the seeds. If you need an orange tree, it’d probably best not to choose apple seeds.
For example, say you need a character to be the villain. You most likely won’t want a character that wishes happiness and peace to everyone. If you do, congratulations, but you’ll have to make it believable (more on that later). The seeds are the basic characteristics that form your character. This would include name, age, sex, and so on, along with initial character traits. Are they optimistic? Loud? Sadistic? These are the things that make up the seed construction. Once you have these characteristics, you’ve got a model to work with. I suggest taking a look at this guide if you haven’t already, just to get you started!
Growth
Note that I said “model.” You’re not done with just this. You’ve got the seeds, but you need to plant them. The way that your little tree will grow is affected by its environment. If you have a seed that’s naive and sweet, it probably shouldn’t stay like that for long if the environment is cruel and corrupted. The key to believable characters is realism. The character has to make sense, and that’s not likely to happen if their attitude completely defies the factors that they’re surrounded by. Even the shy and kind character will learn to be distrustful if they’re placed in a world where everyone is only out for themselves. They may retain some of their kindness, but it should be a bit more reserved. The environmental factors need to affect the character, or it won’t seem right.
Returning to the example of the kind-hearted villain. Perhaps the seeds that you planted specified someone who honestly did wish to help people. In order to turn them into a villain, you have to place them in an environment that will corrupt them and turn their good-will into a twisted desire to have everyone share their particular “good” ideals. They may have originated as someone sweet and kind, but their environment must affect them. Whether this is achieved by letting the character live out a life that will change them, or working backward and unraveling the backstory needed to have brought them to the point they are now, it doesn’t matter. As long as they are realistically connected and affected by the environment, it’s all good.
Dimension
Many writers have trouble with flat characters. The fix is much easier than you may realize. All that’s needed is a bit of motivation. There has to be an answer to the inevitable “why”. If you have a character that loves carousels, you can’t just leave it at that. Imagine the annoying cousin behind you, constantly asking why your character feels a certain way. The only difference is, this time you aren’t allowed to say, “I don’t know.” Why does the character love carousels? You can’t reply that you don’t know, or people will get bored with it. You should never expect the readers to simply accept that something is the way it is just because you said so. There is no “I don’t know” in writing. Perhaps the character loves carousels because they’re connected to a fond childhood memory, perhaps the music and colors lighten their mood. It is your job as the writer to give them motivation for their actions so that the “why” will always have an answer.
Even their background has to have something that makes sense. Yes, your character may have anger issues due to abuse while growing up, but this can’t be just passed off as if it happens to everyone. Why were they abused? Perhaps the parent had a mental issue that led to violent outbursts. Perhaps they were veterans that took refuge in the bottle, which led to more physical expressions of anger. You have to answer all of the whys of the story.
You should also give them at least one fatal flaw or redeeming characteristic. Even the best of characters have weaknesses, even the most hardened criminal has a soft spot. Give them something that won’t make them painfully predictable, whether this is great pride or a fondness for bunnies. Something that’s a bit out of the norm for their usual personality that will make them interesting and unique.
Don’t Micromanage
You can NOT control the development of your character beyond this. Just like a tree, you can’t sit there and guide the way it grows. You can provide other environmental factors to influence it—more sun, more water, a rod to provide balance—but ultimately you can’t tell the tree how to grow. If you attempt to control it, you’ll end up extremely unhappy with the branches that remain stubbornly crooked. If you let it grow on its own, you may be a bit frustrated at first, but you’ll soon learn to love the unique twists and turns of its branches.
So it is with characters. Non-writers seem to believe that the author controls every bit of the story’s course. This is untrue—the author may come up with the idea and a few details, but the story should tell itself. The characters may have the initial characteristics that you planted them with, they may be affected by your environmental details, but the way that they choose to handle these should come on their own. If you attempt to micromanage your characters, they’ll end up doing things that are out of character and confuse the readers.
Avoid the Mary Sue
Ah, the dreaded Mary Sue. From overly perfect and beautiful ladies to the girl that everyone hates for no apparent reason to the self-inserts, there are many forms of Mary Sues.
And all of them are despicable.
Readers do not like the Mary Sue characters. Someone who is so inexplicably wonderful and yet everyone hates them, someone who seems just a bit too much like their creator, they don’t make any sense. At all. And they don’t generally fit too well in the story.
The best way to avoid Mary Sues is to follow the advice outlined above and to avoid self-insertion at any cost.
Self-insertion is exactly that—putting yourself into your story. This is okay for autobiographies, but not much else. Self-inserts generally end up going horribly wrong by becoming less you and more of what you wish to be, making them wonderful with no apparent cause. It’s okay to have a character that has some personality aspects that you share, as long as you don’t have everything in common.
There’s no real general way to avoid this, because it’s different for everyone. For me, I generally use male characters for lead roles because I can feel more casual about adding characteristics that I may share. This isn’t to say that I make a male version of myself, but I feel more comfortable about making them exhibit certain behaviors because I worry less that they’ll turn into self-inserts. You may have a different way of avoiding this, but I have not yet discovered a cure-all for avoiding self-insertion. Sorry :/
Exercises
Try asking questions and having your character answer them. By getting an idea of how the character will respond in certain situations, you will get better characterization and dialogue will flow much more easily. It seems a bit tedious, as it doesn’t really contribute at all to the actual course of the plot, but it’s very helpful as a side exercise.
Emphasize
Don’t hide characteristics that you want to emphasize behind bland wording. If you want to make something stand out, use colorful adjectives that will catch the reader’s attention. Rather than saying “mad,” use words like “quick-tempered,” “easily angered,” or “irritable.” It’s exactly the difference in action between “walking” and “pacing.” Anyone can walk, it’s a fairly universal action. “Pacing” gives the image that the character is agitated and flustered. The action image the reader receives is much different. The more emphatic the adjective, the more the characteristic will stand out, and the more likely the reader is to store it away and remember that it’s a primary trait.
Anyway, I hope that this helped at least a little! I may add more eventually, but this is just what I’ve compiled on character development over time :)