Writing for the Week: How Creating Deep Character Personality Can Take You a Long Way

Last week, I mentioned that planning a good book includes creating characters with personality. Today, I wanted to dive deeper into creating characters that readers will remember. Now, don't get me wrong, names and physical appearance can be important, but names can be forgotten (if you are anything like me). And some might remember your cunning hero for his muscles and dark hair, or the female main character for her long blonde hair and expressive green eyes, but that is not all. The way a character acts, the way they feel, the way they overcome challenges throughout the story. 

For example, are they stubborn or gullible? Quiet or demanding? Do they humble themselves before others or do they tend to be a showboat? The answer to these questions will determine how they conduct themselves and navigate their troubles. Likewise, you must ask yourself, what past circumstances has caused this character to set out on a journey to change. Is it past trauma? Are they simply too proud? The answer is pretty much endless, but again, very important.

There are two final things I want to touch on. The first is their likes and dislikes. We non-fictional people (that is a sad thought, isn't it?) all have things we don't prefer. Annoying typos, earwigs, rude people; the list goes on. Same with things we do like. If you don't like spiders, you certainly aren't going to pick one up off the sidewalk and carry it around thinking, Well isn't it just adorable? Keep that in mind when writing your character.

On to the second and last thing before we do our own character overview. Every MC needs their dark moment. This is simply a scene – or group of scenes – where the character either realizes the flaw that they have, and they feel hopeless and fall into despair (drama!). This then leads to the “aha” moment. That is when they figure out how they can make it out of that dark situation and their perspective of the world changes.

Now, to show this, I want to do a quick character overview or breakdown with one of my favorites: Lucy Pevensie. On the outside, she is small and young. On the inside, she is adventurous, kind, loyal, and naive, but often feels misunderstood. One of her insecurities is that she is not as beautiful as her older sister, which leads to her dark moment. It happens when she finds a spell book that can change her appearance. It ends up causing more problems than good, and she needs to fix it, realizing that she is beautiful in her own way. Do you see what I'm saying? That was pretty short, but every character of a good book or even movie has each of these sections in their journey. By taking your own favorite character and finding each of these things in them, it can make it easier for you to make your own unique characters.

And remember, if you have a certain topic you want to touch on for next week, or a question you want answered, let me know in the comments! Happy writing! - Aviya ❤️