Get to Know Your Characters
I want to ask you as a paper writer do you know your characters as well as your closest friends? If you don’t, take the time to get to know them. Sit down and ask each one the things you would ask someone you just met. “Where are you from?” “How long have you been in town? Do you like it?” Or you can be more formal and interview the main characters, as you would candidates for employment at your place of work. Besides the more standard interview questions, try some original ones. Some examples: What is your biggest fear? What makes you laugh? What makes you nervous? What are your secrets? Do you like your job? Why or why not? Notice not only what each character says, but also how he or she says it. How does the character move? Does he shuffle, take giant steps, or roll his hips? What hand movements are characteristic? How does he talk? Is it slow and leisurely, broken by pauses, or quick and nervous? Does he use lots of slang or incorrect grammar? Does he have a big vocabulary? How close to people does he stand? What is his posture like?
When you have heard what the character has to say and the manner in which he or she has said it, you should get even closer. Imagine you are the characters (one at a time of course). Try living in their heads for an hour, walk like they would walk, think like they would think, talk like they would talk. If you can’t inhabit each of your main characters then you don’t have a fully fleshed-out human. Go back to the beginning and ask him/her more questions.
The level to which you need to develop your characters will vary depending on what you are writing and whether you use personal statement help. Literary fiction is deeply concerned with looking into the human heart, whereas thrillers are based more on action and plot. However, no matter what genre you choose to write, a book that reads well, and sells well, is a book with fleshed-out, believable main characters.
If you have extended scenes of characters' dialogue you should add their physical descriptions, such as “she turned her head sharply” or “he fiddled with the photo.” These physical descriptions give more detail and layer to the scene and help the reader visualize the conversation. Let’s look at a conversation with and without the description:
“Where are you going?” he said.
“Nowhere,” she said, then added, “anywhere I want.”
“Right. Go ahead.”
Now with:
He sighed. “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere,” she said, then added, “Anywhere I want.”
His hand tightened into a fist and then relaxed. “Right. Go ahead.”
In the first exchange, the two people are just floating heads. In the second conversation, we see the scene much more clearly and the situation seems more real.
Second, referencing body movement can make it clear who is speaking, which in longer conversations can be confusing. Look at this example:
“This place is strange.”
“I know, I am always nervous when I come here.”
Jenny looked over her shoulder. “Do you think anyone else is around?”
By placing an action right before a line of dialogue, the reader knows that the person who took the action is the one speaking and you don’t need to use “she said.”
Useful Resources:
What Makes a Good Children's Story?
Building a Strong Story Structure