Everyone has a Best Friend. You know, that person who knows all you secrets, and you know all theirs. That kid you hung out with after school, knew their favorite color, favorite pair of shoes, favorite musical group, who they had a crush on, who they denied having a crush on even though you knew they really DID have a crush on them, even where they kept the cups in their kitchen. Well I have a lot of those kinds of friends. So many, in fact, that the number boarders near 100. The only difference is I don’t call them Friends, I call them my characters.

One of the most important elements of my Characters is that I know them inside and out. I know every little insignificant detail about them as if they were real people. Think about it, a real person often has a favorite song or season, so my characters all have favorite things as well things that I like to refer to a “personality builders”.  Now bear in mind, the reader doesn’t need to know all of this. Its fluff as far as the reader is concerned.

So why’s it still so important? After all I did just admit the reader doesn’t really care.  Here’s why. Have you ever read a book that to you just wasn’t believable? The characters just didn’t seem REAL. I know I have. If you don’t consider your characters as real people then that will translate into your writing. No, you don’t need to share that their favorite band is a heavy metal band. Once again, the reader doesn’t care.  However when it come to determining how that character would react in a certain situation then suddenly all that “fluff” comes into play. Isn’t it easier figuring out how Jason, a heavy metal rocker who is protective over his younger sister and builds cars, would react to a situation then how just Jason would react.

Character Web

So how do you make your characters more real? One of my favorite techniques is to use what I like to call a “character web”.  Start with a piece of blank paper. Write down the name of your character in the middle of that paper. No name yet? That’s fine you can just call them Character 1, as you move through the web you will more than likely come up with a name. From Character 1 draw several small lines outward. At the ends of these lines pick something simple, like a color or number, to be one of the little details. Now go back through your details and decide why your character favors these things. Perhaps their favorite color is purple, why? Maybe it’s because that was their mother’s favorite color. Now from all those little details draw a few more lines and add a few more details and reasons for them. As you go your details will become more complex adding depth to your character. Keep adding more until you feel comfortable with your Characters personality.

Now I’ll walk you through an example so you can really see what I mean. We’ll use Jason again:

Jason—Favorite music: Heavy metal, Why? Because he has trouble venting his anger—has 3 brothers and 1 sister—is protective over his sister, why? Because she’s the only one he has—builds cars, why? Because it’s something his father and he have done since he was a child.

And that’s how simple it is. Someone could easily get carried away with such an easy character development tool.

Related posts:

1. Where Do You Want to Be?
2. Voices In My Head
3. Who Are You?
4. What’s That? I Can’t hear You.
5. The New Girl