When it comes to telling stories, most of the books you’ll end up reading are very heavily character-driven. What this means is that you need to focus on properly developing your characters in order to make your story more memorable. That’s why creating memorable characters is a key point in the story-writing process. So, for today’s post, I’ll be teaching you how to develop characters your readers will absolutely love and won’t forget about!
Role and Archetype
Understand the Role
Before we really get into the nitty-gritty details of a character, think about what sort of role this character will be playing in your story. When developing a character, think about if they are the protagonist or the antagonist or some sort of side-character.
The protagonist is the main character and the antagonist is the character opposing the main character. The protagonist can be the hero or the villain. It depends on the perspective that you are writing this story from.
Define the Archetype
Finding an archetype for your character allows for you to come up with a brief explanation of how that character is going to be in your story. Archetypes include things like the everyman, the hero, the sadistic villain, etc…
I’ve talked about villain archetypes before, which you should definitely check out. For the most part, archetypes are a great way to define the core of the character, but you definitely don’t need to stick by this character type to the tee if you want to spin it in your own way.
Character Backstories
Giving a character a well-developed and engaging backstory is an important piece of developing a character, and part of that is by working on the personal history of that particular character. What was their upbringing like? What sort of family did they have? Did they go to school/are in school? These sorts of things help to contextualize your character in the story.
You should think about how the character’s backstory influences their present behavior and how it will influence their future behavior.
Create Detailed Character Profiles
I’ve talked about character profiles on my blog before, and you can go and check that post out as well to create them. However, I’ll give some brief explanations on what makes up a character profile.
Basically, when you work on a character profile, you are thinking about them in the now. What does this character look like physically? What are their hobbies and interests? What do they do for a living? What is their personality like? Do they have any current relationships? What is something that defines them as a person?
For example, I’ve made a very brief character profile below about Blide Stevens from Malware, book 1 of my series, The Fallen Age Saga.
As you can see, these are the things that define Blide at the very beginning of the story and helps to put him into perspective. I could also add the physical description, which would be something like this: Blue eyes, short brown hair, tan/white skin, well-built and muscular, no visible scars or tattoos.
For the most part, a character profile helps to define the character to you, and thus makes creating your memorable characters a much easier process.
Develop Relationships
Family and Friends
Family and friends are a basic relationship that most people have, but your character may/may not have these sorts of relationships. Maybe your character has a very bad relationship with their family. For example, Blide from Malware doesn’t speak to his family in any capacity at all–they think he’s dead, actually. He hates his family and finds them a waste of time to deal with. He also doesn’t really have many friends nor does he care to have any.
Romantic Interests
Romantic interests can add another dimension to your story and make it a bit interesting to see how the character interacts with this sort of relationship. Blide has a girlfriend but he doesn’t really care that much about her. He doesn’t act rude, but if she vanished from his life, he wouldn’t really care. It’s part of his character, as he is a psychopath and lacks the ability to create human connection.
Antagonistic Relationships
The antagonist of the story is the thing that opposes the main character/protagonist. The relationship the protagonist has with the antagonist can be interesting to see developing in the story. Maybe the two knew each other before they became enemies, or maybe the two begin to fall in love in a sort of enemies-to-lovers dynamic.
Set the Character’s Goals and Motivations
Goals
When you’re working on creating your character, you want to think about the character’s goals, both short and long-term goals alike. You want to think about what the character is striving to immediately achieve and wants to achieve in the future and how willing they are to meet these goals.
Motivations
The motivations of the character is a very important thing to define as well. You need to think about what defines the character and why they care about the main conflict. What is their motivation to undergo a perilous journey? What is the reason why they care so much about certain things? The motivations coupled with the goals makes for a well-rounded character that feels life-like.
Strengths, Weaknesses
Strengths and weaknesses are a very important aspect of the character building process. Every person on Earth has strengths and weaknesses, whatever they may be. That’s why you need to go into this with your actual characters. Strengths and weaknesses provide a deeper glimpse into your character and helps to give readers a sense of humanity in the person you’re writing about.
Conflict (Internal and External)
Internal and external conflict are ways to enhance your characters’ story even more. Characters will face challenges that stem from within and challenges that come from external sources. Internal challenges can be struggling against oneself, while external challenges can be struggling against someone or something else. However, having great conflicts can create very memorable characters.
If you want to learn more about the different literary conflicts in stories, check out this post.
Character Arcs
There are different types of character arcs, but a character arc is basically a journey that a character takes from a personality standpoint. The character changes throughout the story in some type of way. There are positive and negative and flat character arcs.
A positive arc would be something where the character grows and evolves as a person, overcoming challenges that they face. A negative arc would be a character failing to achieve something, or falling into moral corruption. The flat arc would be something more for a side character that doesn’t really change but may serve as a plot device for the main character to encounter.
Personality and Unique Traits
As regular people do, characters should have different personality traits, as well as unique traits and mannerisms that help them stand out. Maybe the character is bubbly and extroverted and likes to laugh a lot. Maybe your character is a disturbed individual that prefers to speak using the blade rather than the tongue.
In addition to this, a character should have some sort of moral compass. Where do they draw the line in their actions? For instance, Blide Stevens from Malware doesn’t really have a moral compass at all. He’s more than willing to push others in the line of fire, so long as he accomplishes his goals and achieves what he wants. Meanwhile, Joel from Soldat has a lot of connection to his squadmates and would throw himself into the line of danger to help them.
More Tips and Advice
When it comes to creating memorable characters, you need to strike a balance that makes sense with their individual personality and their surroundings. Joel from Soldat had a lot of mental trauma from losing his family, but he is a resilient man who prefers to face his challenges head-on, but he lost his way. However, he grows again over the course of the story and becomes an almost completely different person by the end. In contrast, Blide from Malware is a stagnant personality as he is a psychopath but the way he changes throughout the story is still evident. The more Blide digs deep into the corrupt world he’s uncovered, the more obsessed he is with finishing the mission and taking care of things himself.
You also should be open to change with your characters. The first version I wrote of Blide was a very different person than the one I ended up with. The original Blide wasn’t really a psychopath and was actually quite emotional and had a strong moral compass, albeit corrupted in some ways. However, the final version of Blide became a cold-blooded, calculating psychopath who cares only for his objectives. I felt that it fit the overall story’s tone more. This is a common experience you’ll have when you’re writing your own books.
It’s also important to maintain consistency with your character’s personality. If you want to introduce a dramatic change, you’ll have to introduce the event to justify this change, otherwise it’ll feel forced or out of place.
It also helps to read other books that have popular characters and try to find out why those characters succeeded by almost studying that particular story. I have a list of 10 fantasy books that I recommend, which I think each have a range of character types portrayed, making it a great resource for you to use in your own research of memorable characters.
Before you head on out, be sure to check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga and to subscribe to my newsletter so you can get updates on all my posts, WIPs, and more!