Knowing and understanding our characters is fundamental in great storytelling.
It’s our job as storytellers to devote our creativity to uncovering the real story behind our characters. Character development runs deeper than creating hair style, body shape, or favorite color. It’s about delving into the guts, the stuff no one talks about, even with their best friends, family, or spouse. By breaking down every aspect of our characters, we strip them down to the point of vulnerability. This allows us to truly see the characters that keep us up at night until their story is told.
The Basics of Character Development:
Make a list. Start by determining the basic characteristics of your character.
- Demographics: Gender, Race, Country of Origin, Religion, Economic Status
- Basic Personality Traits: Using the acronym OCEAN, D.W. Fiske broke down four thousand personality traits and determined that there are five basic ones. They are Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.
- Another option for determining and creating your character’s personality traits is by utilizing Carl Jung’s, 12 Basic Personalities concept.
- Zodiac Signs can help determine personality traits as well. Look at some summaries of both eastern and western astrology to help build a connection between you, your character, and the story you’re writing.
- Family Life: Determine what type of family your character grew up in.
- Parents? Divorced, Lifers, non-traditional
- Upbringing? Think about parenting style. Were the guardians strict, loving, abusive? What kind of friends did they grow up with? Did your character have friends or was their only friend a stray cat?
Creating Backstory:
Once you have a pretty good grasp on your character’s basic upbringing and personality traits, let’s move on to the next step—creating backstory.
Think about your theme and the overall story you want to tell. Consider the internal struggles your main character will deal with throughout the book. Remember, the main character starts out wanting something from the beginning of the story and all her memories, origin story, and experiences, will determine how she’ll move through the story in order to reach that goal.
Let’s say Laura’s ultimate goal is making partner in her law firm. What was her upbringing like that created this goal in life? Based on the information we created from basic characteristics, we’ll say that Laura grew up in a wealthy, traditional family. Both her parents are doctors and they wanted her to follow in their footsteps, but something happened in Laura’s young life that made her want to become a prosecuting attorney. Her backstory would go something like this…
Laura loved playing doctor when she was seven years old. Her mom bought her a stethoscope, lab coat, and her own first-aid kit filled with bandages, cotton balls, and ear cleaners. She spent much of her time throwing her teddy bear in the trash, just so she could dramatically rescue him and take care of his imaginary wounds. One day, Laura’s life was changed; she witnessed a crime.
When Laura, Teddy, and her best friend Fionna were playing outside, they saw an adult push a teenager off his bike. The mean man punched and kicked the kid and rode off with his victim’s bicycle. Laura’s devastation was more than just witnessing a crime, it was the sadness, mixed with rage of the seeing the beaten boy on the ground. His face was bruised from the punch and he held his ribs from the kick from his own stepfather.
Every day, for the rest of the summer, Laura, Teddy, and Fionna saw the teenager walking with a limp or new bruise. She was determined from that day forward that she would put people like the stepdad and anyone like him in jail for the rest of their life.
This is a simple example and needs a lot more information rolled into it, but I think you get the point. Something happened in young Laura’s life that would change her way of thinking forever…or at least until obstacles pop up in the story and she begins seeing why her old ways of thinking may not suit her current, adult life.
Layering backstory and flashbacks in your story:
After you’ve created a few situations that will determine your character’s backstory, you’ll need to layer those experiences into your story.
There’s no best way to layer backstory, but as most publishers and agents will agree, it’s not on page one. By having a complete understanding of who your character is and what they want to accomplish, you’ve in turn, created the character’s temperament, disposition, and overall attitude of life. That means, when the story begins, we don’t need to tell the reader who the character is, but show how they act in a life situation. Let’s go back to Laura’s opening paragraph, not backstory.
It was eight o’clock in the evening before Laura realized her stomach was growling. She had spent the last three months spending long days and nights preparing for the case that would catapult her into partnership. There was only one problem standing in her way, Chadwich Griffin.
In this opening paragraph, there is no backstory of Laura’s recall of the boy on the bike thirty-five years earlier. For the most part, she may not completely recall that memory. She’s in the here and now, moving forward toward her ultimate goal.
Remember that old cliché, “Two steps forward, three steps back”?
The trick to layering backstory and flashbacks into the story is adding those memories when a person disturbs her goal, or when a situation occurs that she begins to reflect on how she’s been moving through life and wonders if she’s been doing it right.
Writing Exercise:
- Focus on who your character is by looking deeper into why they are the way they are and make a list.
- Create at least three similar experiences that made your character who she is—about 300 words—that pertain to why your character moves through life.
- Make an outline of what kind of obstacles are going to stand in your character’s way from getting their ultimate goal.
- Add flashbacks and backstory in those places in your outline in which the character must reflect (because they took a few steps backward) on the difficulties thrown their way.
- Add those memories in the form of dialog or internal narration to show the reader the depth of your character.
Happy Writing!
-RADolence