Judy Bloom describes it as ‘In fiction writing, character development is the process of building a unique, three-dimensional character with depth, personality, and clear motivations.’ Like real people, fictional characters have hobbies, pets, histories, ruminations, and obsessions.
You will need:
A main character (the person who leads the story- hero).
A victim (who the hero saves).
A protagonist (the bad guy who’s after the victim).
Sub-characters, different people who come and go in the story (usually short parts).
It is suggested that you keep files on each of your characters:
Name
Where they live or have lived
Hobbies
Job/career
Personality traits
What they look like and age
Who they are related to
Anything of importance
Favorite sayings
Your characters are what connect the reader to the story. It’s the human element that will resonate with your readers.
In reedsyblog, here is what is suggested.
- Justify the character’s reason for existence by establishing the character’s story goal and motivation
- Make sure the character has both strengths and flaws
- Give the character an external and internal conflict
- Decide whether the character is static or dynamic
- Give the character a backstory
- Develop the character’s external characteristics to make them distinguishable
- Make the character stand out with distinctive mannerisms
- Do your research to make the character believable
- Steer clear the biggest character development mistake… if your character has only a couple of minor weaknesses to balance out their tremendous strengths, they’ll still read as unrealistically perfect.