What is Character Development?
The more you care about your character, the more emotion readers will get from your story.
Have you ever heard the term ‘Character-Driven Novel’?
It refers to a novel that all the events and actions are caused and led by the character’s nature and essential self. Writers put much effort to create one character so that characters are more realistic like a human.
I used to think that people love reading a story only because they are interested in the story plot. But, it was not totally right since I learned many people completely fall in love with the characters and the only thing they care about is how that character will change or how he/she overcome and handle the situation. Then, I noticed that every story has some characteristics of the Character-Driven novel.
A character is a tool that the writer can tell his story through that. Thus, we cannot give little attention to the characters when we write a story. We need to create a real human-like character with every feature we have as a human in the story. So they need to be developed as we grow every day in certain ways.
All the process of writing from the beginning to the end that how your character is described and changed is called character development. End of the story, it should be a complete version of humans that readers are even able to imagine as a living person.
How to develop your character?
There are 9 important things you can add to your character.
- Communication style: It is the way your character talks. In what kind of voice? How does it sound? How does he express his emotion through the speech? So imagine that your character is talking, you had better make it distinctive. Add some unique style of communication. Reasons why doing this is to make readers get more intrigued and distinguish your character from the characters in other novels they read.
2. History: What are the things your character got through? How were his childhood and adolescence? What past events shaped who he is now? Think about his family, happy, abusive or neglectful, etc. What influenced him to decide his future career? Generally, it is just everything happened to him and what he experienced until now. You don’t have to write and include everything I mentioned but it is important to know your character’s past life. It will help you to develop your character more since the past is our old self. The old self will be needed to create a future self. So it is better, at least, you know your character well.
3. Appearance: You all know that it is “How does he look like?”. The biggest mistake fellow writer makes is giving too much attention to it. Unfortunately, what experienced writers say is “the appearance might be the least important ingredient to make your character a person to the reader”. Certainly, readers need how your character looks like to draw them in their minds. But writing long and long sentences used many adjectives about his appearance occasionally, especially, in the prologue is the worst idea. Also, remember that “not every character needs to be drop-dead gorgeous because most people aren’t”.
4. Relationships: How is his communication skill? Is he sociable or reclusive, or in the middle of these two? Who are his friends and fiends? What kind of the first impression your character will give others? You don’t have to directly say your character enjoys being in solitude. Through the story, you can define him by his companies, his actions and behavior.
5. Ambition: This concept is a crucial part of the creation of the character and plot of a story. In every story, there is something your character wants to achieve. What does he want to do and accomplish? Select an uneasy task for him to achieve. Show clearly how much he wants to do it, how he fails and throw himself into going down then step on his foot again through the journey to his ambition.
6. Character defect: Humans cannot be perfect; we all have some personality or habit that irritates other people. Does your character some bad habit? Or, Is he trying to be a perfectionist or always overestimating or underestimating himself? Those problems might make story conflict much bigger than it was before. It could also irritate your readers and remind them your character is imperfect like people at the same time. So, it helps you to have a more realistic character and a story that related to the readers.
7. Thoughts: Novel is the only thing allowing us to know people’s inner thoughts. Therefore, we have to use it to our advantage. What are the problems concerning your character? How does he think about it? What is his thought about himself and others? His inner conflict and real self can be conveyed by writing his inner thoughts in the story.
8. Everyman-ness: Unless you are writing a fantasy with the creatures that are different from humans, you have to give life to your character. He has to have a hobby, interests, weaknesses, problems, and stress. Even though your character is a great warrior winning almost every fight he had, and respected by everyone, he should have something that releases him from all of this fame and responsibilities. He has to enjoy his life doing another thing and spend his time for not fighting. Think your character is an ordinary person. Do not give your character excessive duty to do.
9. Restrictions: Everyman has something he cannot do. What is your character’s physical and mental weakness? What are the things that he never can do? Somewhere in the story, you can make him overcome it. It would be interesting. To humanize your character, adding mental weakness is important. What words and what types of people can harm him mentally? Or, some past events, trauma can affect his mind. It would be more sympathetic and relatable for readers.
After all, having a well-developed character will result in readers would feel something not only from what events occur in the story but also from the character. You will give a range of feelings to the readers by your characters.
The secret of why people love in a story might be a good character that fits and impresses them.
Types of Characters You Can Develop
Even if they have different names, all have to be developed by 9 areas I mentioned above. But you have to understand which type of character you’re working on.
Different types of characters:
- Protagonist (Lead role; someone who is central to the story)
- Antagonist (Opponent; someone who is against protagonist)
- Secondary (Less important role than the protagonist)
- Static (Someone who does not change over time; his or her personality does not transform. )
- Foil (It is an important supporting character; it might contrast to another character. )
- Stock (Character is stereotypical, is repeatedly used in particular types of stories. So it is noticed so easily.)
- Dynamic (It is a person who changes over time, usually as a result of central conflict or some events.)
- Round (someone who has a complex personality; his or her action is quite unpredictable.)
Lastly, there are two ways to present your character.
- Direct presentation (or characterization) — The writer or narrator will directly say what he thinks about a character. Therefore, the character will be described and expressed to the readers by the writer. For example, “Her muddy, brown hair fell down her back and her eyes shone with mild curiosity as she floated across the lantern-lit hallway.”
- Indirect presentation — It is just the writer saying what the character says or does. The reader will connect to the characters directly. It is the same as we communicate with people in the real world but we can know what it is in characters inside. For example, “My legs wobbled as I made my way closer to the edge of the cliff. I took in a deep breath of air, hands trembling by my sides as I stepped closer and closer to the end of the cliff. My heart hammered down against my chest when I stared down at the rocky waters below me.”
Nowadays, almost all of the wattpad writers are using indirect characterization because to make closer contact between readers and characters, the indirect character presentation would be better.
Hope it helped with your writing. See you in the next lesson.
