How to Develop One-of-a-Kind Characters for Your Fiction

Creating a character for your story-be it a short story, screenplay, novel, or other writing-is never an easy task. Characters have multiple dimensions, just like any person you interact with every day. Understanding the different dimensions of your characters can be a difficult task; how do you know someone who doesn't exist? How do you give a fictional person a real personality/ Oftentimes, writing resources will suggest creating a character profile for the people of your creative works, which are little more than dossiers of the most basic elements of these newly created persons. Yet there are other ways to make your character really come to life. Here are just a few suggestions!

1. The resume. What does your character do for a living? Whether he or she is a doctor, lawyer, postal worker, or teacher, one way to really develop your character is to move beyond the basic knowledge of what your character does and showing-or at least, unfolding for yourself-how he or she got there. To do this, try creating an actual resume for your character. Using your own or someone else's resume as a foundation, have your character apply for a job, be it a college professor or a cart collector at the local grocery store, and make it the best resume any employer has ever seen! Remember to list past work experiences, education, skills and hobbies, and even references if you want to go that far. Challenge yourself to keep the resume to one page; this forces you to make sure you get all the most important details out there. Put yourself into the mindset of your character; what information would he or she want a future employer to know? As an added feature, keep a list of things that come to mind that your character wouldn't want an employer to know. This suggestion recommends creating a great resume, but let's say you want a character that is a total slob; in that case, put together a poor resume, or a mediocre one . . . whatever level of "good" or "bad" you want to use, get creative with it! This will also help you to understand the character as an outsider; after pouring yourself-as the character-into this resume, examining it as someone else-for example, the future employer-will allow you get an understanding of how someone else might see this character.

2. The shopping list and/or receipt. Everybody shops, and a shopping list or sales receipt can tell you a lot about a person. As you develop your character, think about what sorts of things he/she would purchase on a trip to the store, be it a grocery store, the mall, or hardware shop. Again, get yourself into the mindset of your character and create a list of things that are important to him/her. A variation of this suggestion may include using someone you know who personifies the character you hope to create; ask this friend if they would mind giving you a copy or copies of a shopping list they've made or old receipts they don't need (make sure their credit card and/or personal information is blacked out or torn off before you take it . . . you don't want to be accused of identity theft later!), and use this as a starting point for your character's development.

3. The angry letter. Wouldn't it be nice to get an idea of what your character shouldn't be? Rather than simply making lists of things your character hates or dislikes, or avoiding those things altogether in your writing, have your character write an angry letter to someone who has done some of the things your character dislikes. You could also have him or her write a series of such letters. To develop inter-character relationships, or to get a basic idea of how your character might relate to other characters, make the letter one to another character in the story, rather than an abstract figure. For example, let's say your main character's name is Andrew and his friend's name is Joe; Andrew hates how Joe makes fun of him and mocks him. Have Andrew write Joe a letter about how annoying it is when Joe does [this] or [that]. To mix it up even further-and get a chance to develop two characters at once-have the letter recipient (in this case, Joe) write the main character back (i.e., Joe might write back and apologize because it's in his nature to do so, or he may write Andrew a letter telling him what an emotional loser he is for taking the teasing too personally).

4. The music mix. So you know you want your character to be mellow and moody. Or maybe you want a character with a need for speed and a love of the outdoors and adventures. Maybe your character is shy and withdrawn and feels like nobody really cares about him/her. Whatever the nature of your character, there are probably a good number of songs that capture at least part of that personality. Create a playlist or mix CD of at least twelve songs you think your character would listen to, or songs that fit your character's personality very well; better still, make it a mixture of both. Let's say your character is moody in the public sphere but happy and at ease with one or two special people, or in solitude; try creating different playlists for each of your character's personality differences (i.e., an "Andrew's Moody Mix" and an "Andrew with His Girlfriend Mix", et cetera). This will come in very handy when you go on to start writing your story; if you have various music mixes, you can keep yourself in your character's mindset by switching between CDs when your character's mood changes.

5. The journal. This fifth and final suggestion may be a bit more time consuming than the others, and is best done well before you start writing your story. For this character building tool, take a notebook with you everywhere you go. Write daily or weekly journal entries from the standpoint of your character. If you see something interesting, describe it in the voice of your character (this is particularly helpful if your main character is also the narrator of your piece). You can also make notes in the margins if something happens your character might notice but not care enough about to write an entry about; this will be helpful in a further examination of what interests and/or doesn't interest your character. To make this an even more "personal" exercise for your character, choose or decorate a notebook that will match the personality of your character. These are just a few suggestions for creatively developing a character. As you engage with your characters and interact with them, you may find yourself creating more tools of your own to further develop your characters' personalities. In one case, an attempt to understand one of the villains in a story I was writing, I asked a friend-who was reading the story as I wrote it-to have a conversation with me on AOL Instant Messenger in which she spoke as the "good guy" and I spoke as the "bad guy," which led to some very interesting new discoveries about this villain's nature. Or, you could use these tools to develop numerous characters. For instance, you may be curious to find out what might happen if Andrew's girlfriend found his journal, or if she kept a journal in the same way that he does and they chronicle the same events in very different ways. No matter how you use these suggestions, remember this important point: it is important for the success of these prompts that you be willing to put yourself almost completely into the shoes of your character. Getting to know your characters personally-almost literally so-is a wonderful place to start in developing your story! Give it a shot, and enjoy what happens!