Writing Advice

Character Development

Submitted by: @fangirlxxships
"Is there any way you could do a chapter in your writing advice book on how to develop a character really well?"

1. Make your character life like from the beginning to the end. Interesting characters are never fully explained within a just a few lines of dialogue, or sentences. Keep their development ongoing.

2. Internal conflict. Establish something they need to overcome like a bad relationship to harnessing their powers if you're into fantasy. There can't be development if there's nothing to develop.

3. Include the way they look, talk, and act to maintain a credible character. Pretend this person is your best friend, you should know everything about them even if you aren't disclosing all the details you made up within your writing.

4. If you're writing about a character you enjoy, cherry pick traits from people around you that you appreciate. If you're writing about a character that you hate, give them traits you don't like in people personally. It makes everything more intimate.

5. Make sure the events that happen in your story tie back to this character somehow to crest a connection because nobody lives in a vacuum.

6. Give them reasonable flaws. Everyone has them and if your readers can connect to a character then it makes it even better.

7. As your character is getting more mature, make note of that to the readers, be clear and even put yourself in that person's shoes if you have to. Human emotion is a process and if you can't be empathetic to someone else, be sympathetic toward yourself.

8. Create interesting relationships with the people around this character to develop a strong sense of independence. Nothing is worse than reading about someone who seems controlled by the writer to the point where readers take notice. Make this character jump off the page. Create a whole new human being that people can imagine as real.

9. When you're developing a character, take notice of characters that people like right now in popular books. What's the appeal? Why do fans treat them as if they're alive?

10. At the start, do not rely on a detailed summary to introduce this character. Provide the details throughout to develop.

11. Writing is like puppetry and you are the puppeteer. Or even better, your characters are like voodoo dolls, you can put the pins where ever you want, but make sure what happens to the victim makes sense. If you're "sticking the pin" into his/her head, give them brain damage, or if your character loses a loved one, make sure their life changes in a way that is realistic to the situation.

12. Back away from cliches. If your character is happy, sad, or angry, be sure to note that not everyone will react the same way in those states of emotion and someone who is happy before there journey may act differently than at the end of their journey. Like in Harry Potter, Harry is happy to have friends and go to school in the beginning of the series, but at the end, he's simply happy to have his loved ones be alive because of how dark everything has gotten. That's development.

A/N: I will make a part two if this isn't enough information. My goal this year is to get this book to 20k reads, let's see if we can get it there. :)