Writing Characters Effectively

Writing characters is a big part of character design, as whilst it isn’t how the character looks, it’s how the character is designed to fit within the story of their own world, and it makes a character interesting, rather than having them just be a husk of a character that looks visually pleasing. There are 8 points you should usually try to follow.

Step 1: Decide whether your character will be static or dynamic

Deciding whether a character will be static or dynamic will drastically change how a character is written throughout a story. If a character is written to be a dynamic character, then they will develop over the course of their story, and will be influenced by the situations that follow in the story and have their character altered by the end of it. This type of writing is much more suited to a character within a story-based form of media. If a character is written to be static, they will remain the same regardless of what happens in the narrative. This type of writing would work best in media such as an episodic TV series like SpongeBob (S. Hillenburg, 1997). Once this is decided, you can move onto how you will develop the rest of your character.

Step 2: Establish your character's motivation and their overall goals

Establishing motivations and goals gives the story around your character a reason to exist, and in turn, a reason for it to be told. It’s what your character wants from the story, which gives them a reason to keep progressing through it, otherwise, the story can fall totally flat due to a lack of it. The matter of figuring out what the character needs to do in order to reach their goal is also a large factor in this, as that is what gives the goal meaning. To figure out these points, you should focus on asking yourself “why” to everything the character does, and come up with a reason for it.

Step 3: Give your character both an external and internal conflict

A character becomes a lot more interesting once there are obstacles that are obstructing the path between their goal and them. To accomplish this effectively, you should have a mix of both internal and external conflicts. Internal conflicts being problems the character has with themselves that they need to overcome, an example could be something along the lines of getting over the grief of a lost family member. External Conflicts are things that physically get between the character and their goal, for example, a warrior would have to overcome an army of monsters to reach his final goal. There are 6 primary types of conflict, and they usually take the forms of Character vs Character, Character vs society, Character vs nature ,Character vs technology, Character vs supernatural and Character vs self.

Step 4: Make sure the character you are writing has both strengths and weaknesses

A large amount of intrigue in your character will be how they react in various situations, having a mix of both positive and negative reactions to said situations. Making a character have both strengths and flaws creates tension, and a feel for the characters at the heart of the story, as they feel more realistic. It also gets viewers to root for the character, hoping they overcome their flaws, or make good use of their strengths.

Step 5: Give your character a past

You should develop your character's past as much as possible, as that is what shaped them into the character seen in the media at the time, but you should try to avoid putting in any unnecessary detail, as this will bore the viewer.

Step 6: Make sure your character has distinctive mannerisms

Making sure your character has multiple distinctive mannerisms is important to writing a character, as it makes them stand out among the rest of the characters with the same traits. Three things of note you should keep an eye on are the communication style, gait, and tics. The communication style of a character is important, as it shows how they interact with other characters, and shows if they have any kinds of quirks or traits that impede or improve their communication. Next, the gait is the way your character interacts with the environments they are put in, and seeing if it affects how other characters treat that character, for example if they were incredibly large, people would fear them for the way they moved around or simply for their stature. Finally, tics are a way to showcase how your character reacts under certain emotions, such as losing their train of rational thought when they are angry, or giving up entirely when they are sad. Though these are important, you should also consider physical mannerisms, such as a snarky character having a constant sneer, or something of the like.

Step 7: Do research to make sure your character is believable and realistic

Research is incredibly important when writing a character, as whilst it is important to write of your own accord, you shouldn’t write about something that you aren’t sure about off the top of your head, such as writing an American character as a British person, despite never going outside of Britain, as it could most likely lead to incorrect mannerisms, and an inconsistent character. So make sure to look into characters when writing them, even something as simple as googling slang from that area would suffice.

Step 8: Make sure your character is well balanced

Finally, you should make sure your character is well balanced in all of these, as a focus on one area can end up making the character feel under-developed in other areas, and if it’s done incorrectly, would heavily disinterest the viewer. For example, making a character overly filled with flaws would lead the viewer to end up giving up hope for a character, or if a character has too many strengths, the viewer would not be surprised when they overcome challenges.

Overall, it’s important to focus on all of these areas, as without one of them, you could end up disturbing the balance of the character, costing them their intended role, or simply just become disinteresting to viewers and readers.

Bibliography

Character Development 101: Writing Characters Readers Won’t Forget (2019) – By ReedsyBlog (No exact author) – ( Accessed online at: https://blog.reedsy.com/character-development/#:~:text=To%20write%20such%20a%20character,an%20external%20and%20internal%20conflict on 025/02/22)