13 Incredible Tips To Master The Art Of Character Development

Learn how to develop characters for your next book.

Think about your favorite book—what’s the very first thing that struck you? The mind-blowing plot; the unforgettable characters; the conflict; or the climax?

Whatever be your favorite part, a character is what makes the story come to life. Without them, the plot is just like a no man’s land. Crafting memorable characters is one of the toughest nuts to crack in fiction.

A character that is well described and developed in the writer’s mind will most likely be a memorable one.

The tips mentioned in this article will help you craft your character from scratch and develop it as your plot progresses. But before we dive into that, let’s discuss why this “character development” thing is important.

TL;DR

Is Character Development Important? Why?

13 Tips For Character Development:

1. Naming your character and introducing him early
2. Creating a past for your character
3. Find out what his goals and motivations are
4. Give him strengths but make him flawed
5. Give him a unique physical appearance
6. Give him unique quirks
7. Put yourself in your character’s shoes
8. Let your readers see your character the way they want
9. Put physical as well as mental conflicts in his path
10. Decide his character type (dynamic or static)
11. Show his personality and traits through dialogue
12. Don’t balance his strengths with flaws
13. Research thoroughly

Conclusion

[ Disclaimer: I will use “he” to refer to the character of both genders for the sake of simplicity. I fully acknowledge that many great leaders and protagonists in a story are female characters.]

Is Character Development Important? Why?

Character development is a crucial part of creative writing or literature in general.

Well-developed characters with clear arcs can make a mediocre plot great, and at the same time, flat characters can lead your extraordinary plot to certain doom.

Character development is especially important in the long form of fiction, such as novels and novellas, where certain characters appear more than once.

While there are lots of different ways to develop characters, the ones in this article will help you get the essence of your character and present his clear-cut picture to you, so you can satisfy your plot.

13 Tips To Develop Your Unique Character:

1. Naming Your Character And Introducing Him Early

Many new writers make the mistake of introducing their protagonists in the middle of the story.

If you want your readers to know your characters well and connect with them, then you should introduce them in the first chapter.

Naming the character is as important as the character itself, if not more. Your character’s name should resonate with him.

For example, if your protagonist is a strong guy with an athletic build and raw features, you should give him a name resonating with strength, like Mark or Jack, you shouldn’t name him Barney.

When naming your character, you should also consider his ethnicity or the culture he belongs to and name him accordingly. For example, you shouldn’t name an Italian character Edward Collins.

2. Create A Past For Your Character

In order to know your character better than he knows himself, you should dig deep into his past. Things that happened in the past have made him into the person he is today.

For example, your character might have trust issues because he’s been betrayed by his love partner in the past. Or he has trouble being around people because he’s been bullied in school.

You can create his whole life, from being born to the day before your story begins, but you should only reveal the details that contribute to your story and ignore the rest.

For example, your character doesn’t connect well with people because he has been bullied in the past, but the fact that he was an average student shouldn’t be mentioned unless it is important for your plot.

3. Find Out What His Goals And Motivations Are

Find out what your character wants to achieve, i.e., what his goals are. Does he want to be rich? Does he want to get promoted? Or does he want to find a partner? Anything he wants to achieve is his goal.

After discovering his goals, find out what drives him to keep going to achieve those goals, i.e., his motivations. Is it the desire to live in a luxury villa, the dream of a higher position, or the love of a partner?

Once you identify the goals and motivations of your character, you can dive deeper into his mind and understand his way of thinking and why he does what he does.

4. Give Him Strengths But Make Him Flawed

Every character in fiction has its own strengths that make them distinctive from other characters. Your character should also have his own strengths — something he’s good at — to make him stand out from the rest.

For example, your character may be selfless and run head-long into danger to protect his family or friends, or he may be extraordinarily clever and always two steps ahead of everyone.

But your character shouldn’t be all about strengths. To be relatable to your readers, your character must have some flaws, at least one.

Readers can relate to flawed characters and connect with them because all of us humans are flawed, and we start resonating with the flaws of others.

Also, flaws in the character are essential to making the plot interesting; if your character has no flaws and goes around easily, it won’t be much fun to read.

For example, Indiana Jones, the great treasure hunter, fears snakes, and our beloved Superman has a weakness called Kryptonite.

A weakness doesn’t have to be a fear or something supernatural, it can be a part of your character’s nature.

For example, your character might be brave but short-fused and make rash decisions.

5. Give Him A Unique Physical Appearance

This is where you picture your character in your head. Give your character a distinctive appearance so it’s easy to identify him.

Easily identifiable characters are also easily connectable.

To create a unique physical appearance for your character, imagine:

1. What’s his height?
2. What’s his body type (skinny, athletic, ripped, etc.)?
3. What’s his skin tone?
4. What’s the color of his hair?
5. What’s the shape of his face?
6. What’s the color of his eyes?
7. His facial features (nose, mouth, forehead, jawline, etc.)
8. What does he mostly wear?
9. Does he have any tattoos, scars, piercings, etc.?
10. How does his voice sound?
11. What’s his accent?

You should keep in mind that some characters in your story might have the same physical features, such as hair color and skin tone.

But it’s very unrealistic for two characters to share the same facial shape, or it’s too much of a coincidence.

Your character shouldn’t be the only one with blonde hair, but it can be the only one with a square face and hazel eyes. You get the idea.

6. Give Him Unique Quirks

Along with a distinct physical appearance, your character should also have unique quirks that separate him from the others.

Knowing how your character interacts with everything around him will help you shape his personality.

For example, imagine your character interacting with people at a cafe, and then ask yourself:

1. How does he speak with different people (his tone)?
2. How does he look at different people?
3. How does he behave with different people? Does he treat everyone equally, or is he partial to some of them?
4. How does he walk down the road?
5. How are the people around him affected by his presence?
6. Does he eavesdrop on people?

You get the idea.

This is the quickest way to find out the basic quirks of your character.

You can also think about some deeper quirks like “what does he do when he’s at a tough spot? “, Like Harry Potter, when his scars hurt, he rubs his forehead, or “what does he do when he’s caught in a lie?”

7. Put Yourself In Your Character’s Shoes

There’s no better way to get to know your character than by embodying yourself with him.

If you have difficulty figuring out how your character might react or feel in certain situations in your plot, then simply imagine how you’d react if you were him.

Let’s say someone has pulled a gun on your character, and he’s afraid. Imagine the same happening to you, and multiply your feeling of fear 100x.

You should do this whenever your character finds himself in a situation you’ve never been in. Something like being trapped in a dark room or being separated from your friends in a jungle at night.

It doesn’t have to be a dangerous situation. It works for any situation, good or bad.

8. Let Your Readers See Your Character The Way They Want

While developing the character, every writer has an ideal picture in mind. But the thing to keep in mind is that you have described a character based on the picture in your mind; your readers might picture him differently when they read your story.

Let’s say your main character is a tall, dark-haired, handsome man, and in your mind, he looks like Ben Affleck, but you shouldn’t force this on your reader with too much description of his physical and facial features.

Describe your character, but don’t force a certain image in your readers’ minds. Leave it for them to imagine.

9. Put Physical As Well As Mental Conflicts In His Path

Conflicts are the essence of every story. Conflicts in a story help your character grow and change over time.

They are like spices, and your story is the recipe. Without spices, your recipe will be tasteless, just as without conflicts, your story will be pointless.

Without conflict, it’s like your character wants to do something to achieve his goals, and then he achieves them without any difficulties, and voila! Here’s your story that no one would like to read.

When there are conflicts in front of your character and he struggles to deal with them, he either succeeds or fails.

But in both cases, he either learns and grows into a better person or he changes into an evil one.

This makes the plot of your story interesting and keeps readers intrigued and engaged.

But conflicts shouldn’t be present in the outer world; your character should be conflicted from the inside as well.

Let’s say your character is a detective who is working on a homicide case, and he’s reached a dead end.

Now he’s struggling to solve the case, but he’s also troubled from inside; he thinks his wife is cheating on him with her co-worker.

He is trying his best to examine the evidence all over again, but he can’t stop thinking about his wife and her co-worker.

The struggle to solve the case is the external conflict, and the disturbing thoughts of his wife cheating on him are the internal conflict.

10. Decide His Character Type (Static Or Dynamic)

It’s very common in fiction that the characters in the beginning become somewhat or entirely different by the end.

After each difficulty, they change and develop into a better or worse person, depending on their traits.

They either learn something if they lose or become stronger if they succeed. We call them dynamic characters.

One example is Lucifer Morningstar in the Lucifer TV series. In the beginning, he is a narcissistic devil who came to earth for vacation, but later he starts working with police to solve homicide cases.

He becomes friends with some people and even falls in love with his partner, Chloe. By the end, once the self-centered devil turns into one who cares about humanity,

But there are some characters that shine because they don’t change. Not because they are portrayed as foolish or because they are meant to die, but because their beauty is in their unchanging nature. Those are the static characters.

Like Chloe Decker in Lucifer. Her story starts as an honest detective and a responsible parent who believes in law and order. By the end of the series, she stays that way.

11. Show His Personality And Traits Through Dialogues:

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on a broken glass.” Anton Chekhov

A classic technique in fiction writing is “show, don’t tell.” To make your character a living person, you have to apply the same technique whenever he is at the center of attention.

Meaning, you should describe him via dialogue, not just from the narrator’s point of view.

For example, if the detective who is working on a homicide appears to be very angry, you shouldn’t write that “the detective looks very angry”.

Instead, you should express it in the form of dialogue, like, “Damn it! Dead end again!” He screamed, and his face turned all red.

12. Don’t Balance His Strengths With Flaws:

This is the most common mistake writers make when developing characters.

We discussed how your character must have strengths as well as flaws; nonetheless, there are still chances of getting messed up.

There’s a common mistake that many writers make and that is, they give their characters a flaw to balance all their strengths.

Your character can have strengths and flaws, but they don’t have to balance each other. It will just nullify their effect.

If your character has many strengths and just one flaw, that’s fine. As long as he’s flawed like a human.

Let’s take Lucifer again, He is super-strong, immortal, and brings out people’s desires, but he is vulnerable around Chloe. But being around Chloe doesn’t take his super-strength away.

It is important to give your character flaws, but you shouldn’t give him a flaw to balance his strength.

13. Research Thoroughly:

It would be best if you didn’t write your character without researching the parts of his life you are unfamiliar with.

Otherwise, there’s a huge risk that you might write a stereotypical character and face backlash from the readers.

You can feel what your character might feel by stepping into his shoes, but some aspects of his life that you know nothing about will require good research. Like his job, his ethnicity, his culture, etc.

For example, if your character is a dermatologist and you are totally unfamiliar with the field, it is better to set up an appointment with a dermatologist and meet in person so that you have a better understanding of how dermatologists work.

You can also look to some authoritative sources on the internet for additional information.

If your character is from a different country than yours, then make sure you research their ethnicity, culture, accent, local slang, etc.

It is very important to be as factual as possible in order to make your character believable.

Conclusion:

Truth be told, there are no set criteria for developing a character. You can develop your character however you like.

But these tips will make your life a hell of a lot easier and save you a hell of a lot of time by portraying him with as many details as possible.

Make sure you go through these tips over and over again until you get the essence of them.

By following these tips in your character development journey, you’ll have a living figure of your character in your mind as well as in your notebook by the end.