Writing help

Character Development

1) Determine Necessary Roles - There are several specific roles which need to be filled in any story. At the very least you need a protagonist and antagonist. If you haven't already, figure out which of these roles will be essential to telling your story. Make a list of the roles you will need to tell your story.

2) Character Assignments - Now that you know what roles are important, you need to decide who will fill them. Let's say your story is about a village besieged by a dragon which is later slain by the protagonist. Who is this dragon slayer? A willing warrior? An unwilling villager? Is the character male, female, or asexual? Perhaps you decide that your dragon slayer will be a female villager—but who is she? The teen daughter of the village baker? The young wife of the local lord? An orphaned girl who lives with a farmer's family? Make a list of each role and the character who will fulfill it. The list might look something like this: 1) Protagonist - The Dragon Slayer - 17 year old baker's daughter, 2) Antagonist - the dragon - 200 year old purple beast named Meldemauch, 3) The Mentor - the old wizard - 90 year old village wise man.

3) Sample Scenes - Now, go through your plot and pull out three sample scenes. You could choose the inciting incident, the climax, and the ending if you want. Figure out what needs to happen in each of these scenes so that you can imagine them. Write a paragraph or two describing each scene. Sometimes that's enough to start to get an impression of what these characters look like and what their personalities are like.

4) Casting Call - Now that you know the approximate type of person you need for each role, hold a "casting call" to find potential actors that could fill each role. This method is used only to give your brain some raw data to pull together into a unique character in your mind. Choose three to five potential actors for each role. Once you have a few potential actors for each role, look at each one and write down the physical attributes that appeal to you with each one. Narrow the list down to your favorite attributes and use that to write a one paragraph description of the character.

5) Musical Inspiration - It helps a lot to have a musical playlist that you can listen to when your muse needs firing up. Sometimes listening to music can help you envision scenes, and envisioning scenes can help you "see" the characters in your mind's eye, allowing you to flesh their details out in your head. If you have some songs already in mind, go ahead and put them onto your playlist. Otherwise, put your iPod on shuffle, listen to the radio, or go to a site like Sound Cloud or Pandora and listen to music. Just be sure to write down any playlist possibilities so you can buy them or at least bookmark them on YouTube.

6) Fleshing the Characters Out - Last but not least, you'll want to flesh out all the remaining details of each character: their goals, their inner conflicts, their fears, their hopes and dreams, their likes and dislikes, their strengths and weaknesses, and so on.