Developing Your Characters

Yes I’m going to try to make excuses for not having updated, so you can just skip down past this if you want.

It has just been a really busy month. It has been insane. March this year has honestly been one of, if not the, busiest months of my life.  I’ve just taken on a ridiculous amount of stuff. Ask Margaret. She thinks I’m crazy.

But I’m also an author. And those two are hardly mutually exclusive.

I know the last post was about characters, specifically How to Make a Non-Cliché Antagonist, but I was working on this recently so I thought I might as well write about it for you guys.

I think we can all recognize the fact that characters are really important to a story. Depending on the story/book itself, they can be more important than others, but since they are what is moving the story forward through the plot and setting, characters are rather important.

There are a lot of different ways that you can develop characters once you have them. We’ve talked before in other posts about picking character traits and balancing good and bad traits and such, but we’ve never really talked about how to develop them.

There are a lot of different ways to do it. Sometimes it depends on the characters themselves. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but Margaret’s characters, as she calls it, are jealous girlfriends. They don’t leave her mind alone. Some are harder to think about, or don't quite capture your mind like that. But she hasn’t had much trouble with one of the methods, which is just constant obsessing.

Constant Obsessing

Now, take my word for it, Margaret's characters as they started are pretty drastically different from where they are now. By a long shot. Unrecognizable. It has also been… goodness it’s been close to four years or something. They were created when we were 12-13ish and now we’re 16-17ish. Crazy.

The point is they’ve had a lot of work done. Constant obsessing. That’s one of the first methods you can use. Just thinking about them nonstop in pretty much everything you do. Whenever you do something, especially if your characters are in the real world, and wonder about how your character would do or if they would do it. Margaret used to ask herself about who would keep their desk more organized of her two main characters or what kind of coffee they would drink. She could probably tell you which finger they use to pick their nose (though the image of either of her main characters picking their nose seems really wrong.)

Character Profiles

Another way you could develop them is filling out profiles for your characters. That’s what I was doing which prompted me to write about this. It forces you to think about things you normally wouldn’t, especially if it has minimum requirements. It’ll force you to think about your characters’ heights and weights if you’ve only ever thought of them as “blond, blue eyed, short”. Good profiles will also force you to think about his/her pros, cons, strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes, goals, worldviews, funfacts ect.

They can be extremely useful. This is probably not a method that you want to use entirely and call your development done, but it’s is something that can be very helpful if you don’t know where to start. You can find no end of them online.

Personality Tests

Personality tests are also a great way to try to develop your characters, especially if you have a few traits picked out you really like that you want to keep, but not a lot more to fill in the blanks. There are a ton of personality tests out there, you can pick any one of them. The first one that comes to mind for me is the Myers-Briggs Personality test, but that’s probably because Margaret practically swears by them. She’ll be writing a post on them one of these days.

If you haven’t picked any traits out, they can still be pretty useful if you want to go searching for personality profiles and picking one for your character. You’ll want to change them up and take a few traits from other personality types because no one really fits perfectly in one category, but you can certainly use them as a help to developing you characters.

Writing About Them

Perhaps this seems obvious, but maybe not. Sometimes simply the best way to develop your character is to write them. It doesn’t have to be in the actual novel that you’re writing though. You can write other stuff with them in it. Perhaps past situations with them, moments that influenced them or changed them into who they are in the books, maybe your characters interacting after the book (unless everyone dies…). Just get used to writing them. It’s amazing the things you come up with and think about while you’re actually sitting down writing them. And writing scenes like that can be a major asset while you’re writing the actual book.

Now, the trick that everyone I know who uses this method has yet to master is... actually working on their novel.

Okay so that’s not fair. Margaret did finish her novel. She’s just rewriting it… and as of now hasn’t rewritten it.

So it’s a tricky one.

Of course these are only four methods. I’m sure there a lot of other ways there are to try to develop you characters. I know I read an article once about making an Excel sheet and a chart listing all the major traits of all the main characters and comparing them to each other to make sure there was a good balance (not a cast full of all stubborn, easily angered people). There’s a ton of other options and methods and tricks you can use.

The most important part is that you actually take the time to develop and flesh your characters out, whatever method you use to do it.

World Building 101

So, Author Forward real quick - I wrote this ages ago and let it waffle because I didn't like how it turned out. However, since I haven't posted anything in forever...I hope it does give you some aid and advice, you guys.

Hello there fellow writers! This is Margaret of the Vinshire Sisters, and I’m sure you’re all asking ‘who?”. Yeah…so, I’m the master (mistress?) of procrastination. If there was an Olympics for it, I’d get a Gold Medal.

Except I’d drag me feet in showing up and miss the medal awarding.

So, incase you hadn’t figured it out yet, you’ll probably be seeing more of Amanda.

Let’s jump right into today’s subject – Basic World Building 101: Why You Need World Building.  World building is something that more and more authors have begun to neglect. Now, before I say anything, no you do not need Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones level of world building…but I kindly point out to take a close look at how popular those books are.

As to how I know what I’m talking about…well, I am a massive fan of world building, for your information. The current story and characters I’m working on have been running around in my head for 4 – possibly 5 – years and I’m still not done with world building. As I’m writing this, I’m working on an extensive family tree that goes back several hundred years and leads up to my main character.

I am also mildly psychotic.

But, we won’t talk about my debatable sanity today.

Now, a recent favorite of authors recently is that they don’t thoroughly explain the what’s or why’s of why something would occur in this world, or they don’t give enough background so something will make sense.

This leaves readers confused and irritated, and in my case, frothing mad.

“But!” You protest “I write fantasy/sci-fi/mad ramblings of an insane mind!”

It doesn’t matter. You still need to make some sort of rhyme or reason or sense. Just squeeing “Science!” or “Magic!” whenever something doesn’t make sense or – even worse – not explaining anything at all and throwing it out there, expecting the readers to accept it, is more likely to make them want to take the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, and promptly beat you into unconsciousness with it.

There’s an awesome quote by that neatly sums it up like this: “The difference Between Fiction and Reality? Fiction needs to make sense.”

This is unfortunately true – sometimes it doesn’t matter if it’s happened in real life, no one’s going to believe it if you put it down in a book.

Now, I will admit that sometimes you can’t explain everything, and that’s alright: all readers, when picking up a book, will have to ‘suspend disbelief’ in order to read it…but if they ‘suspend disbelief’ so much that they can no longer read the book as a story because it’s too dang ridiculous…well, you’ve failed. Sorry. No other way to say it.

I know this seems like it should be pretty obvious guys, and almost all of you are most likely rolling your eyes, but there’s been innumerable times where I stare at a book and go like “…Whaa? Did I miss something?” and flip back several (hundred) pages, trying desperately to find something that didn’t exist in the first place.

So, summary: World Building – DO IT.

How To World Build

World building isn’t actually that complicated. Time consuming to the max? Absolutely. Hard?

No. All it requires is a few simple questions.

The simplest way to world build is to ask questions. Why, What, When, Where, and How are the most basic ones. Know how the government works, know what the culture requires, know when/why people die, know what’s socially inacceptable and acceptable, know the creatures, know the foods, know the jobs, know the history, the legends and myths, know the wars.

To sum it up neatly, know almost everything that’s different in this new world you’re creating. Know it like the back of your hand.

(This is, after all, world BUILDING. You need layers, you need depth, you need a hefty dose of reality to make it believable.)

It’s going to be difficult at first, but the questions will come easier as time goes on. Even now I ask questions about my world.

Something I also recommend though, it is – again – time consuming, is to write a guide book to the World, so you can A. Remember it, and B. See if it makes sense. Think of it like your textbook on Ancient Civilizations. Anything that would be mentioned in a standard textbook about Ancient Greece, you should know about your world.

Amanda is of the opinion that, "History is perhaps one of the best things you can come up with for your world. If you can come up with a history for your world, it will make everything a lot easier to come up with. Partly because almost everything we have in our world related back to history. Our culture, our politics, the types of jobs we do, the things we eat, the way we interact with foreigners... Pretty much everything stems from the past. It doesn't require something extensive, just a basic timeline—the major events. But it can do a lot in the long run."

And that’s pretty much how you world build. As stated before, it’s simple.

It’s also incredibly hard. And Time consuming.

And required, frankly.

So  yes, it’ll take time. Yes, it’ll take work.

But if you’re afraid of that….

Then why are you writing in the first place?

-Margaret V.

P.S. Don’t feel too bad, you guys. Even Amanda is guilty of the “Not Enough World Building” charge.