5 Tips for Developing Characters in Fiction

When it comes to reading interesting fiction, it is a good idea to make your fictional characters interesting without making them caricatures or cartoonish, unless, of course you're writing for a cartoon.

The main character, in order to be a good fictional character, should be good enough to relate to and empathize with without being so good as to be boring. It's fine to work evil or despicable fictional characters into your story, probably even necessary unless you're writing a Christian story.

Here are my five tips for creating and developing characters for fiction writing:

You Can't Handle The Truth!
1. Don't use real people in their entirety for your fictional characters. It's better to take bits and pieces from different people you have known or known of for your characters. Basing characters solely on a real person could cause hurt feelings or even result in lawsuits from friends, family and acquaintances.

Ebony And Ivory...
2. In developing fictional characters, remember that very few people, if any, are totally good or evil. We all have good and bad in us. Don't be afraid to show a few warts in your main character, or a little bit of good in the "bad guys."

Just The Facts, Ma'am
3. Be descriptive about the personality traits of your fictional characters. It helps the reader to understand the motives and character of your main character in particular if they have a description of the physical characteristics of the fictional character.

The reader should know the age, ethnicity and personal characteristics of most of the fictional characters. Tell the reader the name, where the character is from, whether they are married or single and so on. Just don't give away too much. Save a surprise or two for the end of the story.

What's In A Name?
4. Pay special attention to the names of your fictional characters. As the saying goes, there is a lot in a name. Having characters named John Smith or something extremely common, for instance is too cliche. Choose some unusual names, but don't give all your characters a name like Channing Higginbotham or something along those lines.

Of course, I don't always follow my own advice, I suppose. In a story I wrote called Above Ground Gene Poole, everyone in the short story had an unusual name, but that is an exception to the rule, as it's part of the story.

Save Us From Ourselves
5. Last, but not least, be careful in developing your main fictional character not to make the person a carbon copy of yourself. It's fine to incorporate yourself up to a point, but most people are uncomfortable with readers knowing every little detail of their personal lives.

It is important to reveal personal details of your main fictional character, but if you make the person yourself, you lose all objectivity. Objectivity to me is an important part of writing, as the more objectivity a writer has, the more interesting their writing is to the reader.

If all a writer is doing is trying to advance their own personal agenda or opinion in their writing, even (especially?) fiction, it would seem to me a personal blog or journal would be more suitable.

One of the things I try to keep in mind is to write, at least mostly, with the reader in mind without pandering to the reader. After all, you don't catch fish by baiting the hook with what you like to eat, but what the fish might like, is one way to put it.

If you abide by these 5 tips for developing fictional characters, you just might enjoy your writing more and hopefully transfer that enjoyment to the reader. Enjoy your writing and I hope these tips for developing fictional characters have been helpful!