What is character development?

In writing fiction, character development is the process of building a three-dimensional character with depth, personality and clear motives. Character development can also refer to the changes, actions and experiences a character makes throughout the story. 

Why is character development important?

Characters and plots are inseparable. A person is what happens to them, and a novel consists of a character interacting with events over time. Without a clear sense of who a character is, what they value, what they’re afraid of, the reader will be unable to appreciate the significance of your events, and your story will have no impact. 

It’s essential to your novel that you understand all aspects of your characters so that you understand how they may react under the pressures of events they encounter. Just like real people, fictional characters have hobbies, pets, histories, ruminations, and obsessions, so it’s important you understand your character. 

1. Establish the character’s story goals and motivations 

Your character’s goal is why your story exists and why it’s worth telling. Without a goal, the overall narrative arc will fall totally flat. 

A few character goal examples: 

✪ Harry Potter’s goal was to defeat voldemort. 

✪ Bilbo’s goal is to help the dwarves reclaim the kingdom of Erebor

✪ Hamlet’s goal is to avenge his murdered father

Then here are motivations for your character’s goal, the ‘in order to’ that gives it meaning. What internal and external desires drive their motivation? There can of course be more than one. For example, 

✪ Harry Potter’s goal is to defeat Voldemort... in order to ensure the safety of the wizarding world — and to find closure from the murder of his parents.

✪ Bilbo’s goal is to help the dwarves reclaim the kingdom of Erebor... in order to bring some adventure to his life of creature comforts — and to impart his sense of home and belonging to those without a home.

✪ Hamlet’s goal is to avenge his murdered father... in order to prove he's not imagining the ghost who haunts him — and to demonstrate that he's capable of acting decisively.

When setting the character’s goal, ask yourself, “What would make the character feel happy or satisfied with their life?” This is the motivation. Continue to ask yourself, “What could they do to obtain that happiness?”.

If you’re struggling with your character’s motivations, play a game of “Why”. This will help you create a multilayered chain of motivations. 

If your character’s goal is to connect with their long-lost sibling, their motivation might be because they are an only child who always longed for a brother or sister. Why? Because they felt lonely as a child. Why? Because their parents moved around a lot and they had trouble keeping friends. Why? Because they eventually got tired of getting close to people, only to say goodbye.

By playing this game to its logical conclusion, we’ve learned that the character wants to meet their long-lost sibling (goal) because they feel it will establish a bond stronger than geography (motivation).
 
2. Give the character an external and internal conflict

Your character only becomes interesting when you put a few obstacles between them and their goal. If Frodo walked on up to Mount Doom, dropped the ring in the lava, and made it back in time for the second breakfast, it wouldn’t make for a very compelling story, or a very memorable protagonist. It’s the obstacles — the army of orcs commanded by Sauron and the power the ring has over Frodo, to name a couple — that create conflict and tension in the story. And that’s what makes it worth reading.

You'll notice in the example above that we mention two conflicts. One is Frodo vs. Sauron (character vs. character), and the second is Frodo vs. himself — his struggle to not lose himself to the ring. All characters should undergo an internal conflict that makes them question themselves and mirrors the external conflict they're facing. Even static characters who do not significantly alter over the course of the novel will face an internal conflict — you can find Sherlock vs. self, for example, in his fraught attempts to communicate with people. 

There are six primary types of conflict in fiction. While you are developing your character, you should decide which one(s) will make for the most worthy adversaries. The six types are Character versus… 

Character: For example, Othello vs. Iago.

Society: For example, Winston Smith vs. Big Brother in 1984.

Nature: For example, Robert Neville vs. the virus in I Am Legend.

Technology: Victor Frankenstein vs. Frankenstein’s monster.

Supernatural: Jack Torrance vs. The Overlook in The Shining.

Self: Every compelling protagonist faces some conflict of the self, but a few examples include Jason Bourne vs. his own past, Harry Goldfarb vs. addiction in Requiem for a Dream, and Bridget Jones vs. self-doubt.
 
3. Make sure the character has strengths and flaws

All the intrigue in your story will flow from how your character responds to their external and internal conflicts. In facing these challenges, your character will need both strengths to draw upon and flaws that threaten to drag them down.

The iconic characters we know and love tend to have a mix of positive and negative traits. Harry Potter, for instance, is brave and loyal, but he’s also stubborn and reckless, flaws that have put himself — and his friends — in danger. Frodo, meanwhile, is selfless enough to take on a thankless and dangerous mission. But he’s also highly dependent on the protection of his allies, and very vulnerable to the ring’s seductive pull.

Writing a character with both strengths and flaws will help you maintain the tension in your plotting, but that’s not all it does— it’s also crucial to making your readers feel for the people at the heart of your story.

Your character’s strengths, whether that’s their sparkling wit, their skill at wind magic, or their unwavering moral center, will get readers to root for them and admire them. But don’t forget your character’s flaws: say, their recklessness, their greedy streak, the insecurity that makes them lash out at their more accomplished sibling. These very human weaknesses will make them relatable.

4. Decide whether your character is static or dynamic

There's a myth that characters have to fundamentally change over the course of a story in order to be considered well-written. But the truth is, there are a heap of great characters who emerge from a long internal journey without changing very much at all.

Static characters

Captain America, Captain Nemo, and Sherlock Holmes are a few examples of characters who do not significantly alter over the course of the novel. In the case of Sherlock, it is his unchanging nature that makes him a compelling character. Unlike many of us, he does not feel the need to adapt to his surroundings. For Sherlock, that's both a strength and a flaw: he is always true to himself, but he often fails to learn from his experiences.

Dynamic characters

A dynamic character is altered by the conflict(s) that they face. This might be a subconscious change, such as Jack adapting to the island in Lord of the Flies by becoming as wild, unconstrained, and “savage” as the nature around him. Or the change might be more of a conscious decision, such as Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy overcoming their obstinate pride and prejudice for the sake of love.

Static and Dynamic characters

Writers often rely on complex, fast-paced plots with lots of external conflict in order to compensate for static protagonists. The world around them may try to shift these protagonists from their principles, but they will rebel in order to try and alter their circumstances. This kind of character is both static and dynamic: even though they might not change much themselves, they're the cause of major change. A great example of this kind of protagonist is Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games.

Secondary characters

Often, authors write static secondary characters to act as pillars around which a dynamic character can develop. Think of Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird: he changes little throughout the course of the novel. But it is his steadfast belief in justice that allows Scout to evolve from an innocent child into a girl with a strong sense of right and wrong.

5. Give the character a past

Just as your history has contributed to the person you are today, your character's history has made them into the person we see on the page. You should develop your character’s past as much as possible, but it’s important to create and zero in on memories that inform exactly what we see in the story.

6. Develop a character's physical characteristics

The internal goals and motivations are the "heart" of a character, but that doesn't mean that their external characteristics should just be an afterthought. Sure, the fact that your protagonist has blonde hair may not impact the plot. But it may color how other characters respond to them. And it can only benefit you, as the author, to have a detailed image of them in your mind as you write your story.

This template is one of the many to help you create your character’s physical characteristics, such as posture, speech, the sound of their laugh, tics and also their past. 

Figuring out your character’s external traits doesn’t stop at deciding on an eye color and a voice type. To make your brown-eyed alto stand out from all the other brown-eyed altos in the literary canon, you’ll want to round out that physical profile with some distinctive mannerisms. 

Some character mannerisms will be situationally dependent, coming out only when they’re acting under the compulsion of some strong emotion. Harry Potter, for example, understandably, rubs his forehead when his scar hurts. Similarly, Nynaeve from the Wheel of Time series tends to tug on her braid when she's agitated, and the James Bond villain Le Chiffre, from Casino Royale, puts his finger to his temple when he lies or bluffs.

Other mannerisms, however, are part of a character’s default state — as essential to our view of them as their coloring. Just think of Draco Malfoy’s permanent sneer: it’s as much a part of him as his pale blond hair.

To make your character truly memorable, you’ll want to consider adding both these types of mannerisms to their behavioral repertoire. Anger shouldn’t look the same on everyone: someone might flare up like an inferno, going red in the face, while others turn icily polite, smiling insincerely.

7. Do your research

When it comes to character development, empathy and imagination will take you far. After all, you can’t expect your readers to get into your protagonist’s head if you’re not able to think your way there.

Character research comes into play when you’re writing about an aspect of your character that you don’t know much about off the top of your head. For instance, say you’re writing a British character when you’ve never set foot outside of Florida. You’ll want to do a bit of research when you’re scripting their dialogue.

You absolutely don’t want to pepper your British character’s speech with American regionalisms. But you also don’t want them to sound like the wrong sort of Brit — they shouldn’t talk like a posh Oxonian if he’s supposed to be a working class guy from Croydon. Your character’s dialogue has to fit the background you’ve given them, and that requires some research.

Note that research is especially important if you’re writing a character whose identity or experiences differ substantially from your own — say, someone from a different ethnic background, or someone with a mental illness you’ve only read about.

8. The biggest mistake

By now, you’ll have built up a character from the inside out, moving from the goals and motivations that define their role in the story to the mannerisms that make them stand out from the crowd. 

You’re well on your way to giving your story an unforgettable human element. But your job isn’t over just yet. Now, you have to make sure you aren’t making the biggest character development mistake of all: making your character too perfect.

We talked about giving strength and flaws before, so you might think you’re covered. You might very well be in the clear. But the key now is to make sure that your character’s strengths and flaws are well-balanced. You don’t need to counter every positive characteristic with an equal and opposite weak point. But you do want to make sure your character has some flaws that are just as consequential as their strengths.

Say your protagonist is a gorgeous, violet-eyed sylph with a heart of gold, who fights like Mike Tyson and writes like Mark Twain… but they sing like a squawking parrot and once got a B- in math. Sure, their tone deafness and mathematical ineptitude are technically flaws. But all in all, they’re pretty inconsequential.

If your character has only a couple of minor weaknesses to balance out their tremendous strengths, they’ll still read as unrealistically perfect. Watching them dazzle their way through your story will have your readers rolling their eyes — or even worse, suspecting you wrote them as a wish fulfillment exercise.

So make sure your character has some meatier flaws, the kind of vulnerabilities that will actually play a role in her character arc. Maybe your violet-eyed heroine is brave and strong, but they tends to panic when the stakes are high, making tactical mistakes that can cost her dearly. Maybe they’re so hung up on a prophecy they’re supposed to fulfill that they have trouble thinking for themselves. Maybe because of their tendency to be suspicious of everyone, they have a hard time winning allies.

Once you’ve made sure your character is human as well as heroic, you’re well on your way to nailing character development.

Sources:

https://blog.reedsy.com/character-development/ 

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/writing-tips-for-character-development#why-is-character-development-important