Character Development - My Novel Writing Process

Regardless of the format you use, strong characters make the best stories. I’ve written about iconic characters in a previous blog. In this blog, I will talk about how I came up with the characters for my novel.


My novel is a story about a South Asian family and it has an ensemble cast. It is about five cousins who discover a family curse and go on a quest to break the curse. Each character is equally important to the story and is there to balance out the other characters. For example, I have a character that is strong headed with a need to control her life, one who is passive as a doormat, one who is too laid back, one who is immature and a bit self-centered, and one who feels like he has lost all control. All of these characters have distinct personalities and issues they deal with in life, but are all connected by blood and by the curse that haunts them.
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I spent over two years just researching for my novel before I began writing it. This research included developing my characters. I knew I wanted an ensemble cast and that it was going to be a story about a family curse, but developing each individual character and their storyline took research. Here are some things I did to develop them.

1. Start with who you know. I based parts of my characters’ personalities on people I know in real life. That made it much easier for me to imagine what they look like and how they would react in certain situations. I pull from real life for all my creative work so this was a natural step for me.
2. Get to know your characters. Once you start to develop your characters, you will find yourself having conversations with them in your head. This will help you get to know their personality and how they speak and respond in a conversation.
3. Write your character’s back story. Even if the character’s back story is not in the novel, it’s important that you know your characters inside out. For you to get to know them better, you need to know where they came from and how they grew up.
4. Visualize where they are from and where they currently live. Research the places where your character is from or where they currently live so you can understand their lifestyle better.
5. Socioeconomic status. This ties into where the character is from or where they live. You need to know their socioeconomic status growing up and where they are as an adult (if they are an adult character). This will tell you how they talk, how they dress, how they interact with friends/family/strangers from other socioeconomic statuses. This shapes a character. 
6. Family ties. What type of family did they grow up in? Did they have siblings? Were their parents around? How did their parents treat them? Did they have pets? How did they handle their family environment at home? This will give you a lot of insight into the type of person your character becomes. 
7. Make a Pinterest board. Make a board for each character that includes things like cultural aspects of the character, how they dress, where they live, what they eat, etc. It’s a mood board for your character to help you visualize them better.
8. What makes them iconic? What makes them special? Each character has something that makes them tick. They have positive and negative forces at work in the story that help their personality shine. Find out what that is.
9. Make your characters grow and change with the story. There are some iconic characters out there whose sole purpose is staying static through everything life throws at them. These types of characters are very difficult to write well. Characters with flaws who grow and change over time are more relatable and give your readers hope that people are capable of change. Make sure your character’s personality/mentality flows and develops with the story arch. 
10. Write characters that look like you. If you are a person of color or from a marginalized community, I encourage you to write your own stories whether fiction or nonfiction. I encourage you to write about characters that represent you or your community. There is a serious lack of diversity in the literary world. This will also help you write the most unique/iconic characters. Only you can write a character that represents you and your unique experience in the world. 
    
    
    

These are some of the strategies I used to write and develop the characters in my novel. I also noticed that after I began writing my story, I had to change who I thought my character was to make the story make sense. You might find your characters evolving through the writing process and this is natural and a good thing as long as the story makes sense. 
Do you have any character development techniques that I didn’t mention in this blog? Please share them in the comments. I’m always looking to improve my process. 

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In my upcoming blogs, I will share more of my process with you and introduce you all to my characters. I would also love to hear about your experiences and suggestions that could make this journey more fun and interesting for me. Feel free to leave comments below or contact me personally through this website. 


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Happy Writing! :)


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Art by Loso F. Perez of Prime Vice Studios