Developing Your Cast of Characters

[Rad Scribbler]

Obviously the genre and setting is a deciding factor e.g. Sci-Fi, Period Piece, Thrillers, etc, and whether the character is minor or major in the story.

How much detail do you use in developing the profiles of your characters? Do you produce brief overviews or do you develop biographies - physical build, colour of eyes & hair, likes and dislikes etc ?

 

[Naomasa298]

No. I conceive of characters as a sort of integrated unit - so a character already consists of personality, motivation, and background, where necessary. I don't much care about anything that isn't story related, so I have the freedom to add those details if they become important without being constrained by an outline. I mean, "character hates frogs" isn't that important if frogs never appear in the story. And kinda, if that specific thing that they hate appears in the story just so they can hate it, it feels cheap.

One thing I don't do and will never do, is write out a character sheet. It's a story, not a set of stats, skills, traits and an inventory.

It is very, very rare that I bother with physical descriptions except where it's again, important for the story. I'll mention *what* they are, and trust that the reader will form their own image of what the character looks like. Especially if the character has a recognisable role, like a butcher, baker, or chandler.

 

[Madman Starryteller]

I don't write character outlines. But I do write what their skin colour is, maybe their age, and their hair colour. I specify skin colour, because it has an importance in my universe. If I were to write stories set here and now, I wouldn't care about skin colour or hair colour.

It creates more freedom, in my opinion, to not specify characters so much, because then the story can form them better. But I do vague outlines normally as well, so...

I keep most of the important bits in my head about what kind of an arc a character may follow. Ideas for characters may pop up as I'm writing the story. Some ideas I just scribble down in notes and may or may not implement into the story.

 

[Naomasa298]

I don't write skin colour (usually), but I do often describe complexion, especially when I have characters who are a lot paler than normal, and I have a few of those. They're usually not about to fang you though.

 

[Schism]

I prefer to initially think of characters as philosophies colliding and a few physical descriptions when the context calls for it. Or sometimes the physical description will feed into a specific quirk the characters have.

 

[Trish]

For short stories, flash fiction, etc. no, never. For novels and series? Kind of. I don't do full character sheets, but I do have folders of characters - on each sheet is name, hair color/style, eye color, complexion, any defining marks (tattoos, scars, etc.), voice, quirks and mannerisms (each of those only if mentioned and applicable). These aren't long descriptions, just general info I can double check for continuity. I update their sheet if they gain a scar or are changed in some way. Clothing doesn't feature often, but when it does I'll make a note of that as well. When they die or are killed I move that sheet to the "dead" folder, lol.

It works well for me, because when a new character is introduced by name I just pull up a sheet and add whatever features I just stated in the writing, move that sheet to main, incidental, villain, creature, etc. (whatever folder they belong in) and move on. Takes less than a minute and doesn't break my flow, but it does preserve continuity if I question anything while writing. If they don't get a name in the story, they don't get a sheet.

 

[JT Woody]

I make up my characters as i go along. No initial planning. But the more details i weave into my story, i do end up collecting them into a separate document/character sheet so i can remain consistent

 

[Homer Potvin]

Never to start with or anything like that. It's not Dungeons and Dragons. But I will compile notes if I need to keep things straight. In the novel world, you will sometimes need a defining physical characteristic to use as a cross-reference down the road. Or some other indicator. I will jot notes for little bits of a character's arc if they come to me and I feel like I might forget them. Or if a situation arises where I need one of four characters to do something but I'm not sure which. l might then make little maps of the character's whatever to see which would fit best.

I do a lot more planning now then I did in the past, though. I still make things up as I go but prefer to have a better defined skeletal structure in place beforehand so the shape of things doesn't get lost. As an example, I have a group of five characters in my WIP and I'm pretty sure I want one to betray the rest of them. And I'm pretty sure I want one (and only one) to die in the process. So before I get too deep, I may jot out some things about each character so their roles are adequately setup earlier. But it's nothing crazy.

Again that all goes for novel things. Short stories usually don't have the legs or the background for any of that to come up much. Plus you can rewrite them in an afternoon if you need to change something. It's not like a novel where you may lose things never to be found again.

 

[Rad Scribbler]

It is good to read about the various ways you go about developing your characters.

My own approach is to produce brief overviews of the characters. Judging by your responses, I need to give more thought to developing the characters in my stories.

Thank you all for your responses.

 

[Homer Potvin]

It is good to read about the various ways you go about developing your characters.

My own approach is to produce brief overviews of the characters. Judging by your responses, I need to give more thought to developing the characters in my stories.

Thank you all for your responses.

It just depends on your approach. Lots of people can't write anything without outlines, maps, character sheets and all that. Others can't write anything unless they have a blank page with nothing prepared. Plenty of arguments for either method. I've become more of a hybrid over the years. Too many pantsed plots that were beyond repair when I belatedly figured out what I was doing. And too many planned plots that never got off the ground because they only worked "on paper." Now I usually make something up on the spot, wait to see if it has legs, then plan the general shape of it. My general rule is that if it hits the 5 figure mark (10K words), it behooves me to sort out what needs sorting before I get much deeper.

 

[Banespawn]

Bits of backstory will often help to shape the most important characters, but for the most part, I discover them as I write.

 

[Naomasa298]

I know one of my characters starts with 16 charisma and gains +2 as she gets older.

 

[Rzero]

I often jot down some notes about backstory or how characters are connected early in the outlining phase just to get things started, but I don't rely on them later. Once I get a feel for a character, which usually happens pretty quickly, I trust my intuition more than any initial ideas I wrote down. That intuition shapes the arc of the story quite a bit, and by the time I'm through outlining and ready to write, I generally understand my characters inside out. I know how they react, how they relate, where they come from, how they fit into the story, etc. Psychological realism is very important to me.

Of course, that process only applies to novels. I don't bother with outlines or notes or any of that when I write shorts and flash. Those, I pants. But even then, I usually feel like I understand my characters' psychology pretty well.

 

[Night Herald]

That really depends. My character creation process is very organic, it's only in a few rare cases that I develop them before they pop into the story. On first appearance they tend to be relatively flat and generic, but get more defined over consecutive drafts.

I don't keep character sheets or anything like it, though I work with such big casts that maybe it would be a good idea for me to do so. Sometimes I'll scribble down a pertinent detail and keep it around until I've committed it to memory. There comes a point where I've integrated a character so fully that I can't possibly forget what they look like.

As for how much detail I put into the description of each one, that is wildly inconsistent. Being a main character is no guarantee that you'll being rendered as anything more than a rough sketch, as far as appearance goes, whereas even the minorest of minor characters can get a paragraph or more of description. It's all about what I find interesting and visually striking, what adds some style and color to a given scene.

I don't usually mention things like eye color, or at least I don't belabor it; I might mention a given character's eyes as "dark" or "bright" here and there, but nothing beyond that. I make exceptions where a character has some unusual hue or something else going on, or if they have particularly soulful, expressive eyes I can use to convey their mood. Same with skin color, that typically gets a passing mention at best, though I use things like blushing and blanching fairly often. Exceptions get made for non-human races. I have a couple of silver-skinned races in my stories, for example. And in one story, I've got goblins running around. I trust the reader to see those as green (and it's no problem for me if they envision purple ones). Suffice it to refer to them as "the little green folk" once or twice. Again, an exception is made in the case of one particular named goblin character, who has something like vitiligo going on. That's just how that guy manifested. He has a number of features that make him stand out.

What I pay a lot more attention to is wardrobe and, to a lesser extent, hair. There's much more room for characterization in how people choose (or in some cases are made) to dress, whether it be for style or function, rather than what color their eyes or skin happen to be. I also just think clothing and armor is really fun, and it adds a lot of visual interest.

I also tend to make at least passing mention of things like height and build. It occurs to me that's quite important for the composition of a scene. As for likes and dislikes and such, if it doesn't arise naturally through the course of the story, it can't possibly be all that relevant. I like to think I know my characters well enough not to keep an encyclopedia of that sort of stuff.