The Fundamentals of Character Development

I am a massive fan of character driven stories; they're my favourite to write as well as my favourite to read. Characters are the beating heart of any story and it bugs me when a character is underdeveloped or the development doesn't make sense. Readers will follow a character they care about anywhere, you can get away with a lot if you have vibrant characters who your readers care about. There are a lot of places to start when it comes to developing characters but I always like to think about both my main plot conceit as well as the world that I am setting the story in. Your main plot conceit and the world will tell you where your character needs to end up and thus, where they need to start - or approximately where they need to start. You need a character who can do x,y,z  so that the story works and makes sense.

Every person in a world is going to perceive their world and react to the world differently depending on a variety of factors; where they've come from, how they were raised, their education level, their class and, you need to consider these things when you're developing your characters. 

I like to think about my character's familial lineage, which basically means I also come up with their parents and also sometimes their grandparents. Regardless of whether those characters appear on the page. Think about yourself; so much of who you are comes down to who your parents were when they had you, their perspective on the world, how they raised you, the values that they instilled. Characters are exactly the same. They don't come out of nowhere unless you have written them as an android which is cool but even androids have creators which introduces all sorts of interesting ideas and conflicts. 

You can go back as far in the character tree as you want, thinking about things like: old family rivalries, immigration, anything that would inform the background of the character. I like to think if a character's parents were permissive or strict, whether they have positive and friendly relationships in that family or they are combative, what were their parents goals both for themselves and what they envisioned for their lives as well as their children. From this you can get some interesting dynamics, for example if you decide that someone's parents had goals for themselves that they didn't achieve and now they're kind of relieving them through their child, that changes the dynamics and personality and conflict of the that play into your characters personality and how they look at the world.

Every character like every person has a goal. Something that they want more than anything. You need to think about that goal and then about what obstacles that you're going to throw in that character's way to create conflict and stakes. Good characters are all about specificity and these things that have been mentioned so far, play into that; where they're from, how they see the world, their goals. Think about your favourite characters in fiction. What makes them specific? Why do you like them? Often, it is the specific details. Whether it is their sense of humour and how they use it in the world, a tick that they have, a weird habit that they adore coffee. Whatever that thing is, it is specificity. Think about their greatest faults as well as their greatest strengths. 

Characters who are only strong, good at anything and only have positive qualities are boring. Everyone has faults. And often, someone's greatest weakness is also and can be their biggest strength. Which can be seen in ourselves. Think about how ambition can turn on it's heels - it can drive someone forward and get them everything that they want but it can also lead to their downfall. Every character trait has a potential turn so think about who you want your character to be and think about their fatal flaw. The things that are going to get in the way of what they want. 

This will also help you develop conflicts with others in the story,

You're never only creating one character, you're creating a whole cast and they all need to interact. If you have a sense of who each of the characters are, what they want, what gets in their way, their strengths, their weaknesses you can create foils. Characters who specifically exist to frustrate or get in the way of other characters - creating conflict. You should think about quirks, hobbies, interests, talents, likes and dislikes. Not all of your characters will have a full complement of these things but your main character and love interest definitely will. You characters who get the most screen time and especially someone who is a POV character, you're going to have to do all this work so you know as much about them as possible. You're developing a biography, a personality of them. Don't go overboard with any of these things though, if someone has too many quirks; they beggar beliefs. If someone has too many hobbies, well they're going to be too busy to do whatever things you need them to do within your plot. If someone has too many talents they verge on being assholes and again they're not dynamic. Someone who is great at a lot of things and not bad at anything is boring.

With likes and dislikes, you're not going to have a list in your story but they are going to come up and they're going to cause conflicts. If your character has very specific likes and dislikes, you can engineer those things coming up into characters and things happening to them and you always wanting to give your characters something to react to. Characters and conflict go hand in hand. And good conflict with meaty steaks drives a good plot. 

Some examples of quirks; a person who insevily taps their foot or they are a nail biter or the smell of eggs makes them feel sick. It can be anything. This isn't necessarily a great quirk, but think about Bella in Twilight where she's constantly biting her lip.That's definitely a quirk and it's memorable. It is a bit easy to derive. 

Hobbies are tough because a lot of hobbies are passive hobbies that aren't actually that interesting in a book such as reading books.In the wrong plot and setting it can be incredibly boring to talk about and adds nothing to the character. For hobbies, you want to think about what your characters do with their time and what that says about the world that they live in. Some of these can be easier to come up with, in some settings like our world, the characters can have the same hobbies as we do.

But, if you set your world in the future, in sci-fi, you have to think about what type of hobbies people have, what's the technology that is available and has that impacted the things that people do in their spare time. 

Historicals, hobbies have changed a lot with the advent of technology and travel, I mean women used to sit around in circles and embroidered and that was considered a hobby - and honestly, I can't imagine how people in say Jane Austen's time sat around and embroidered all of their time. 

Fantasy, there are obviously going to be all sorts of hobbies in the real world that won't exist in the fantasy world that you creta. And there should be hobbies that exist in that world, if it's special enough, if it's fresh enough, that says a lot about how your world works. 

Likes and dislikes are pretty self explanatory, and I find that often they tie into quirks. Especially that egg one that I mentioned, the smell of eggs makes me feel sick so thus I dislike them. Would that be interesting or relevant in a book plot? It depends on your story, but that's just an example of how a dislike ties into a quirk. 

I do want to talk a bit about talents. Talents can really shape a plot, often the character's core talent may be the very thing that drives your story forward. There has to be a reason that this thing that is happening to your character happens to your character and that's usually going to be talents, interests, likes, dislikes or relationships. And, bringing things back to parents you are going to want to think about character relationships to your parents, siblings, friends, love interest. Relationships are so frequently a driver of motivation for a character, you see the trope of the main character having to save their beloved sibling so they venture on a quest; there's the trope of someone losing a beloved parent and that rage drives them into that quest; or, simply romance, having a trope where having a relationship or wanting to have a relationship with someone and my favourite, the trope that will drive forward the plot and conflict of any story with a lot of romance. 

When you're developing characters think of them as a whole cast. When you're developing a cast you should always think about those relationships and how everyone you've created relates to each other. WHat function are they serving, and is it dynamic? Be careful of character soup - this is when you have a way too large of a cast such as George RR Martin territory size casts. Which only some authors and books can get away with but for the most part, if you give your readers too many names and characters to keep track of theyll get bored or nothing will stick. 

So, always look at your characters and think, can I take two or three characters and combine them into one to all perform the same function? You'll often find in revision you'll have to do this. In your first draft you can come up with and make as many characters you need to perform the function you need them to do as your drafting. I do this and create a character just to perform one action, but later when I'm revising I think about how I can combine, condense or cut those characters. If what they're doing doesn't serve the complete story.

I love to think about character names. Names really form a large part of our identity, they're a large part of our ethnic or cultural background, family history if someone is using family names, certain names have certain connotations or meanings and these can impact how others treat you - for better or for worse. So, think about what your character's name is. why their parents might have picked it, what it says about them, how others might treat them because of their name etc. etc. 

Picking a name is easier said than done, and everyone has a different way of doing it. In fact, coming up with names for fantasy is a whole other ball park. It's not easy. But one trick I do have is that I like to pick a culture that I will be drawing from and I will look up names that were popular around the time of when my character would have been born, or in the case of sci-fi, popular names from that culture. Same about the ones that have the right feel and rhythm and fit, what their parents would have named them. And sometimes it's just about something having the right ring on the page or someone having a name that hasn't been used in a million other books. I also do think about love interest names and main character names, and how they fit into each other; do they sound cute together. You can think about all types of things to come up with one. But names can also help spark characters, maybe you start with a name and you build a character around it. What kind of person would have that name? 

Ultimately, I see characters kind of like icebergs. You see this analogy when it comes to writing plots all the time but it can also be used when it comes to writing characters. You should see the tip of the iceberg in the book, the details that make it into the book, and the rest of it, the other 90% should be under the surface. These should be things about the characters that you know and inform the way that you write them but never make it directly onto the page. These things shape how characters feel so vibrant and real to readers. There's a voice and sense of depth. If you as the author feel like your characters are real people and you write them with that vibrancy and depth, your readers are going to pick that up and feel that. 

So that's developing characters and some of the things I do but there is so much to talk about when it comes to talking about characters and more discussions to have. Everyone has a different style and it's up to you to find what brings yours to life.