The Little Things to Consider When Making a Character (Finals)

Characters can often seem pretty hard to write for some authors, including yours truly. I mean, creating the illusion of an entirely new (probably) human being from nothing but a pencil, paper, and that black hole of sanity that sits between the ears of most writers? Madness! Madness I say!

But fear not, for I have made a small but useful list of things that I tend to do when writing up a character that make it easier for me to write them for the story itself.

1. Write Up the Outline of a Basic Backstory: Seems pretty simple, right? Well it can be easier said than done. It doesn’t take much for a writer to become overwhelmed by all the possible detail that the character can have, some of which the reader may never even see! So, start simple. Where and when were they born. Was their family poor, middle class, or rich? What jobs did their parents do? Was their family healthy, dysfunctional, or abusive? Etc. All of these can give you a basic outline of what to expect from the character.
2. Go Into More Obscure Detail: This is where most authors are having trouble. If you are one of them, then consider these questions: What is a deep, dark secret of the character? What is an important event in their life that the reader will never know about? Are they more extroverted or introverted? If you were to ask them how they expected to die, what would their answer be? What is their proudest achievement? What is their gravest mistake? With questions like these, the character becomes less like the silhouette that you made with the previous step, and more like an actual person.
3. How Does the Character Act?: Now that most of the characters background is squared away, it’s time to focus on the here and now. How has the characters background affected how they act today? How do they act around strangers? Friends? What are their preferences? Do they like pineapple or mushrooms on their pizza? Will we be finding them in dive bars, or coffee shops? All of these things may seem frivolous in the long run, but the details will make the characters seem more real to your audience. Because people do a have a preference on what they put on their pizza, and where they like to spend their free time. People have these things, so why not your characters?