All the Tools You Need for Building Excellent Characters

Developing characters for a novel can be a lot of fun but also overwhelming. The following guide is meant to help you to develop a strategic plan to organize your characters and make them interesting enough for your readers to want to know them.

Preplanning Your Novel

I’ve decided I’m going to write a novel this year. I’m really excited about this venture. I’m going to use Fridays for creative writing, and I’m going to write about my progress plus my tips and tricks here on Medium. I want to share my writing experience with others, and I’m open to hearing about your strategies.

Before you start writing a novel, I recommend creating a guidebook for yourself. Some might call it a Bible (that’s what it’s called in teleplay writing). Your guidebook should include a list of your characters, their traits, and other important information. Your guidebook should also include important locations, major moments in the plot, and any themes you want to convey.

Consider your guidebook like what Sparknotes would create for you if you became a literary star and high school students started studying your books.

I think it’s really important to know the details of your story before you try to manifest them on paper. Try to think of scenes that would happen in your characters’ lives. Play out scenes of dialogue in your head. When your story lives in your head before you start actually writing, you can test drive it. Once you start writing, things get a little more serious. If you don’t have a good handle on your story, it’s easy to get lost in the weeds.

Excellent organization will help you to write your novel with authority. You want to be fluent on your story, not unsure and indecisive. Also, a guidebook is something you can lean on throughout your writing process. It’s convenient when you have notes you can refer to. It’s nice when you have a roadmap of where you’re headed.

I encourage you to play with ideas and concepts in your head. I honestly believe a great novel first lives inside your mind. I spent six months or so before writing my guidebook. It’s the author’s choice on how long they want to think about an idea before putting it down on paper. For some people, they can just sit at a typewriter and find their way to the finish line without any preplanning. Some people like to figure things out along the way rather than depend on notes.

I’m here to help you with preplanning because I think it’ll help you to write your novel with ease and help you avoid writer’s block.

Build Your Protagonist First

For me, the best way to write a novel is to first think about my characters. It’s important to develop them in a way that makes them seem real, or at least plausible.

I recommend creating a list of your characters on a word document or on a spreadsheet. Not every character you create in your plans is going to make it to the final product. You might end up combining characters who are too similar or serve an identical purpose.

You first need to pick a protagonist. This is someone who you will want to write about and follow for hundreds of pages. I’d pick someone you find likable to make things easier for yourself. There are definitely times when authors write intentionally about irritating protagonists that they don’t really like. I think you’ll have more fun if you like the protagonist, and you’ll be more dedicated to writing your piece if you enjoy your protagonist.

You need someone who is a commanding force one way or another. This person needs to be compelling enough that your reader won’t get bored of them.

A really amazing character doesn’t have to be an incredibly interesting person. If we look at the TV show What We Do in the Shadows, one of the more original and fresh characters is intentionally bland, beige, and boring. This character is an energy vampire who is supposed to make the other characters feel drained. Colin Robinson is one of the more compelling characters I’ve seen on television in a while. He defies a lot of the rules, and because of that, I find him fascinating and hilarious. The character makes fun of a lot of the hellish trends of the corporate world, and I enjoy that.

It’s okay to borrow from other mediums outside of novels for your writing. Storytelling is still storytelling whether it’s conveyed through video games, movies, TV shows, operas, comics, art, etc.

Your protagonist is going to be the key to your story. You’re writing this story around this person or a small group of people. For first-timer novelists, I recommend focusing on one protagonist. Consider it this way: the more protagonists you have, the longer your book is going to be. If you have five protagonists that you want to follow then you essentially have a saga on your hands.

For your first novel, you want to keep things toned down and contained. The general rule of thumb for a first novel is to write it in about 80,000 to 100,000 words. (Essentially, about 32–40 short stories.)

You’re going to build your other characters around your protagonist. You need to create a cast of unique people who all offer something different to the foray.

If you want to build a novel with one character, that’s perfectly fine. All the weight will be on that character, but this can work really well. You’re going to depend a lot more on description than dialogue. There are some pros and cons to this. Sometimes writers put too many characters into their writing, and it becomes challenging to keep up with all the characters. Some characters will seem unnecessary if there are too many.

When there is one character, things are focalized. Your reader is directly going on a ride with this person. This character’s journey has to be compelling to demand all of the attention.

Your protagonist will need to be matched with a conflict. You’re not just writing about a baker because you want to see them make cakes. Conflict is the heart of good writing. There is always some kind of dilemma that’s prompting the story. Avoiding conflict will make your writing seem purposeless. Your conflict doesn’t have to be tragic and profound, something worth a Peabody Award or Nobel Peace Prize. Comedy deals with lighthearted conflicts. Tragedy deals with grim situations.

Know Who Are the Core People Around Your Protagonist

When it comes to characters, you want to consider who is in your protagonist’s core. Who is in their immediate family? Who is someone they see every day? Is there a person that’s driving the conflict of the story?

The people who are in your protagonist’s core will more than likely make up your list of major characters. You’ll need to put more intention into developing your major characters than your minor characters, who act more as outliers. Your minor characters are transient. They appear for a short time in the protagonist’s life. These could be strangers you run into at coffee shops, a psychic who gives your protagonist a leg-up on the things to come, or a celebrity cameo.

Organize Characters on a Spreadsheet

I like to work with a spreadsheet when I build characters. I want to see all the names up front, that way I can tell if I have too many similar-sounding names. There is nothing worse than having four characters with the same name. Why would you need four different Pauls? You also don’t want the names to be off by a letter or two, like Megan and Morgan. Help your reader out by putting in some variety.

Have characters with standard, plain names and unique off-the-wall names. Look through baby name websites, Shakespeare character lists, and even take a walk through a cemetery to hunt for names.

The names of your characters do matter. I encourage you to think outside of the box. If you have John Smith, Peggy Sue, and Jose Gonzalez, there better be a reason as to why you’re going with the most straightedge names possible. On the other hand, if you have really absurd names like Strelitz-7, Kygohia, and Pryft, there should be some sort of reasoning for this as well.

Pick a different first letter from the alphabet for each character. You could play with a letter generator or number generator (1–26) to pick the first letter of a name. Then look at a list of names under that letter.

It’s not just the names that need to be different, you need to build different personalities. You need people who are funny, wildcards, smart, average, sexual, celibate, creative, introverted, plain, and supernatural. Too much of the same thing is never good.

Here is my off-the-wall advice: think of your novel like your gut. There is something called the 30 a Week Plan where you try to eat 30 different plants in a week. You’re trying to create diversity in your diet for optimum gut health. There are more than 100,000 trillion microorganisms in your gut. What you eat has a direct impact on the way your gut feels, so eating a variety of plants helps you build the best culture. For a novel, all your characters should have their own unique signature. Variety will stabilize your story.

Building Your Character Spreadsheet

Categories I like to put on my character spreadsheet include: birthdays, astrological signs, interests, dislikes, marital status, jobs, and education. I also like to put what generation people are from whether they’re Baby Boomers, Generation Z, or Generation Alpha.

If you play the game Sims, you could design what you want your characters to look like. You could even give them a house and see how they interact with others. Sims also helps you define personalities and life goals. This is a handy way to work on character design. People want different things and are motivated by different things, don’t forget that.

You should write down character descriptions in your guidebook as well. The following are a good list of things to keep in mind:

• Hair color and style. Are they bald? Do they have long locks that they love? Do they change their hair color frequently? Do they wear a wig or toupee?
• Facial hair. Do they have a beard that perfectly fits their jawline? Do they have a barely noticeable mustache?
• Any special piercings and tattoos. Tattoos are great because you can play with symbolism. Tattoos can also help mark time.
• Engagement rings say a lot about people. This is a piece of jewelry that people wear daily. Is their ring big, unnoticeable, wooden, or does it have a compelling metal design?
• Eye color. Brown, green, blue, gray, and hazel. You could also go a different route with red, orange, pink, silver, gold, yellow, and purple.
• Nose shape. Is their nose delicate and small? Is it rounded or does it have a sharp angle to it?
• Skin condition: wrinkles, freckles, moles, dry skin, greasy skin, peeling skin, severe sunburn prone skin, excessively hairy, excessively sweaty, etc.
• Weight and height. What is your character's body shape? Be careful when describing bodies that you don’t sound mean or creepy.
• Clothes they would typically wear. Is your character someone who will always be found in a baseball cap and a leather jacket or in a sundress and heels? Does your character require they have designer clothes? Or does your character dress like a vampire?
• Do they wear glasses? What kind of glasses?
• Objects that are almost always with them: cell phones, purses, wallets, books, teddy bears, a quiver and arrows.
• Teeth: braces, straight teeth, gaps in teeth, gold teeth, missing teeth, etc.
• Special scars or birthmarks. Scars are like tattoos, they can tell your reader something bigger.
• Cheek or jaw structure. Is their face round or oval?
• Are they muscular or a couch potato? What is their daily routine?
• Any special garb, like wearing a cross necklace or a hajib.
• Also, you need to know if your character has any special skills, hobbies, or education. What has your character done in the past? They’ve had to use their time in some way to build themselves up, even if that’s just being a professional sloth.

Skills include:

• Knowing how to play a musical instrument
• Knowing more than one language
• Knowing their way around a kitchen
• A green thumb
• Has a tool for everything, and knows how to fix just about anything
• Natural athlete
• Natural artist
• Keen fashion eye
• Knows their way around a sewing machine
• Can drive any vehicle
• Animal whisperer
• Natural caregiver
• Wizard at coding
• Hobbies include:
• Collecting stamps
• Pro at puzzles
• Reading books only about horses
• Going antiquing
• Touring vineyards
• Listening extensively to a particular genre of music
• Riding motorcycles
• Collecting seashells
• Build Family Trees

You might uncover truths about your protagonist as you build a family tree. You’ll have to ask yourself questions about what were their parents like or their grandparents. Who were their ancestors and why did they move?

You need to know who are your protagonist’s relatives and who are their favorites. Your protagonist shouldn’t get along with everybody. There is no such thing as a character that’s a universal solvent. There might be someone your protagonist loves to the moon and back, but they have a personality that clashes with their own. This could be their child.

Building a family tree helps you figure out more about your characters’ identities. Does your protagonist have a particular ancestral home?

Remember: just because you have something in your notes, doesn’t mean it will make it into your actual book. Your guidebook is your reference guide. It helps you keep track of details.

Build Timelines for Characters

You need to know the history behind your characters, and where they are going. For your major characters, I would write down specific milestones and when they happened. For your protagonist, you want to know as much as possible. You’re going to be spending a lot of time with your protagonist, so you want to have them mapped out to where it’s really easy for you to jump in their head and know what decisions they’ll make.

Think about what happened to your character before the novel started and what will happen after the novel ends. You’re only going to cover a certain segment of time in their life. This segment should be related to a particular conflict or crisis. If you want to continue their life and explore other dynamics, consider that material for a prequel or sequel.

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Originally published: https://hubpages.com/literature/All-the-Tools-You-Need-for-Building-Excellent-Characters