My Personal Process: Developing Characters

Welcome to the first of the Process Posts! This is a series that will be going live on the 2nd Friday of every month talking about how I personally develop a certain aspect of the writing process. Sometimes, seeing a different perspective on part of the writing process can be helpful in figuring out what method would work best for you, so I wanted to share mine! Of course, this is just my way of doing it, and I’m not claiming it’s the best that it universally works for every project, so feel free to chime in the comments with your own suggestions so we can learn from each other. 🙂

Step 1: Brain Dumping and idea gathering

As far as I can tell, there are two main approaches to character creation – ground up and plot down. Ground Up characters are the sort of OCs that pop into your head with a concept or image or premise, but you have to figure out how to fit them into a story. Plot Down OCs are the sort that arise out of a need for a specific role to be filled in the story, and then you have to create a character out of a few required traits to fit that the bill. This part of the process is where I’m just gathering ideas on how to turn a concept into a person and collecting them in one place. I use a lot of daydreaming, making playlists, finding aesthetics on unsplash and pinterest, reading through prompt blogs and saving everything that catches my attention. This is also the stage when they get a name and the beginnings of a personality.

I don’t know about you, but I hoard ideas like a dragon, haha. When you’ve got several years of pinterest boards and phone notes and screenshots, there’s no lack of potential for plot hooks and backstory. One of my recent favorite methods is going through my “Everything Playlist” (2114 songs and counting lol) and picking out songs that fit their story arc and point of view on the world. For the Ground Up characters, they help brainstorm what sort of character arcs work for them and how they react to certain situations, and can be the start of a backstory for Plot Down OCs. If you want an example of this, I have the playlists for all my Storge characters linked on the WIP page. I’m building playlists for the Laoche characters now, and Weswin has proved amusing because in-story, he’s a wandering bard. Coincidentally, he’s also the one with the longest playlist. 😛

Step 2: Listing!

When I first started writing, a lot of writing advice websites pointed me to character questionnaires. There’s about a million of them but I’ve found that a lot go into a lot of extra detail about what’s in their sock drawer, which isn’t that important to me or the plot. Lists can be a good tool for collecting information about a character, but I find them to be the most useful whenever I’m into the thick of the outlining phase and just need everything in one place. Going through the list allows me to make sure I covered all the important parts of their person, so that way I don’t end up blindsided later with “oh, wait, that backstory I originally wrote down is actually OOC now that I’ve changed the plot.” These are the important things I try to cover!

Character Name: (including nicknames/epithets, if any, and how they got said nickname/epithet)

Category #1: Basics

• Age, Sex, and Gender:
• Race/Ethnicity/culture: Especially if they’re form a specific fantasy race, worldbuilding that culture will be important to the character’s worldview. If I’m writing in our world, this means lots and LOTS of research to avoid tokenism and make sure the cast is really diverse, without just slapping labels on them.
• Appearance/physical details like height, hair/eye color, and general details
• Other important details like scars, birthmarks, mobility/accessibility aids, ect.
• Clothing – style can say a lot about the character’s personality and background, and doing some research/worldbuilding on fashion can help round out the realism of the story.
• Voice and mannerisms: if they have favorite sayings/catchphrases, use slang, or talk like a textbook, the character’s background will affect how they sound in the narrative of the story, so I like to start brainstorming that here, and writing little snippets in their POV.

 Category #2: Relationships

• I know the orphaned hero trope is really popular, and I understand the narrative incentive to just hand wave annoying questions like “why are there no responsible adults to stop the 14 year old from becoming a war criminal and saving the world?” but I’ll be honest, I don’t really get it from a storytelling point of view. Most people have families and a home life that significantly impacts their worldview irl, and so do my characters, so that sort of discussion goes here.
• I discuss (briefly) each member’s personality (if they don’t have their own outline) and relationship to the character. This is also where work out how their friendships developed with other members of the cast. This is a good opportunity to get info down for side characters who might not need a ton of background but do feature in the story in some way.
• I also note how the MC is generally perceived by his/her acquaintances and strangers, and what sort of reputation they have outside of their immedieate social circle.

Category #3: Romance

I’ll be honest, I rarely write romance, but if that’s going to be a major subplot in your story, it’s probably important to develop that here. Important questions to ask might include: Does this character have any past experience with dating that might affect how they approach this relationship? What’s their orientation? Do they want a relationship, and if so, what do they want out of a relationship? Do they flirt, and how do they flirt? What sort of misunderstandings would lead to obstacles in the relationship and how would they work to get past them? If there’s other distracting plot stuff going on (like solving a crime, fighting an evil king, or saving the world from reality unraveling, y’know, typical Tuesday stuff), how would they react to The Feels and balance their time between their romantic interests and their duty?

Category #4: Skills

• General Skills: if they know art, fighting, other languages, ect, anything goes here. explain WHY they know that.
• Smarts: This would be a character’s general approach to solving problems, thinking fast under tough situations, and general background knowledge. I’d also include schooling in there if it’s relevant, but education doesn’t necessarily correlate to intelligence.
• This is also where I touch on their occupation and hobbies. It’s a fun way to round out a character and subvert expectations if they have an interest in something you wouldn’t expect on first notice.

Category #5: Fundamentals – the fun stuff, where I start drawing connections to the plot. At each major decision, I come back to this section and ask myself “what would they decide to do based on the following? Why?”

• General Personality Categorical Stuff: like Introvert or Extrovert, MBTI type, Hogwarts House, Enneagram, Alignment like in DnD, an excuse to makeup fun uquiz questions and figure out their general behavior and voice on a day to day basis.
• Strengths: there are many different types of character strengths and I don’t have the space to summarize them all here, so Here’s an excellent blog article on types of strengths. to give you some ideas! I try to make sure that I include a few for my villains too because they need to be effective in their villainy, and to include a variety of strengths so that the characters can play off of each other’s strong points.
• Weaknesses: These usually reflect what the strengths could be if taken to their extreme, and connect with plot points where the characters fail to reach their goals because of a mistake or choice they make.
• Goals/Dreams/Aspirations: The driving motivation behind their actions in the story
• Beliefs/Affiliations: If they’re part of a religion or have a certain philosophy that plays into how they behave, it goes here.
• Fears/Insecurities/Mental illness: the angsty part of this outline, where the tragic backstories come out
• Role in the Story: Why are they here and what do they contribute to the plot?
• What are they doing after the story ends? If the story has sequel potential, that goes here
• Any formative memories that might be important go here
• What would they die for? How much are they willing to sacrifice? How far are they willing to go with their actions to meet their goals before it’s crossing a moral line for them?
• If I have any motifs for them at this point, they’d also go here.

Step 3: Repeat for each character and Connect the Dots

At this point, my characters have usually changed a lot from the original concept, and now I have to figure out how they change in the story. While I’m developing them, I’m simultaneously working on the outline (which I’ll discuss in next month’s Process Post!) and as I work through the plot in each chapter, I’m also working through the character’s arcs. This is my favorite part of the creative process – when I get to see how the messy, complicated people come together with a messy situation and how they clash and world together and make their way to The End. This is a process borne of a lot of trial and error on my part, and so I hope that by sharing it today, it helps someone too.

If you’d like, take this as an opportunity to ramble in the comments as much as you’d like about your favorite OCs. I’d love to learn more about my reader’s characters, and about the stories they live!

If you feel so generously inclined, you can support my writing by leaving me a tip on my Kofi or donating using the secure box below. Until next time, thanks for reading and happy writing!