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A Writer's Guide to Character Development

I don’t know about you guys, but I can only answer “what’s your character’s favorite flavor of ice cream” so many times before I realize those lists are not going to help me actually write the character.

So, instead, I like to drabble practice. Answer these ten key questions about your character (answer in character). Then, after you know them a little better, write ten scenes (NOT part of your planned story) with the ten prompts below. Set it in your world, but it can be whenever you want—pre-story, or post-story, or mid-story. You could even write two scenes for one prompt, contrasting where your character starts the story and where they end up, or write one in first person and then write it again in third.

Just has to cover events that are NOT plot points. The point of the exercise is to come up with scenes you can toss out as soon as you finish them. You might end up using some of the lines or scenes you come up with, but for now you’re just playing around. 

QUESTIONS

What does your character tell everyone is their greatest fear? What is it actually? Is it the same? Why or why not?

What is their greatest strength and greatest weakness? 

Name the most important people to this character. All of them. Family and close friends and lovers.

Does your character have enemies? Who and why?

What is your character’s favorite holiday and why? 

How does your character like to present himself/herself? How do they dress? How do they act? Are they friendly or standoffish? Do they like to make a scene, or are they a wallflower?

What is their love language? How do they express it, and how do they best receive it?

What is their highest virtue? What is something that peers would praise about your character? What do they value most in other people?

Are they messy or neat? Why or why not?

If your character could change one thing about their life, what would it be and why? And, conversely, if they could only save one thing from their life, what would it be?

PROMPTS

Your character has had a bad day. What happened?

Your character’s loved one is sick. What do they do?

It’s your character’s birthday.

Someone is hiding something from your character. How do they uncover what it is?

Your character has just heard the news. A character they loved is dead. Describe the rest of their day.

Your character is on their own for dinner.

Your character has the day to himself/herself. No responsibilities, nothing. What do they do?

In the middle of the night, your character hears a noise in the house.

Your character knows they will die at midnight. What is their last day like?

Your character suddenly develops amnesia. Their loved ones try to jog your character’s memories by taking them to familiar locations and reminiscing. 

i respect people who want to keep their menstruation to themselves but i have to make it everyone's problem. Literally if it was socially acceptable to lead every conversation with "I'm menstruating" i would.

The most attractive thing to me is effort. Someone who really wants to talk to me, wants to see me, wants to make me a part of their day.

I love this and Irma

There’s a regular at the fabric superstore. She’s at least 80 years old, and she just got back into sewing after giving it up for 40 years. We’ll call her Irma.

I love Irma.

Irma is constantly surprised by the newfangled sewing gadgets our store sells. Today she bought some extra-fine glass-head pins and a magnetic pincushion. As I’m ringing her purchases up, she tells me very seriously, “did you know, if you’re careful, you can sew RIGHT OVER those pins? You don’t need to take them out!”

I told her that I liked that you can’t accidentally melt the head of the glass pins with your iron, and she nodded. “They used to all be like that, but times changed.”

I love old sewing machines and asked what kind of machine she has, and she goes, “Oh, it’s an old Singer Featherweight that my husband bought me when we were first married. It’s probably not worth anything anymore, but the thing sews fine. Have you seen the ones those girls over there–” indicating the sewing machine sub-store in my location “–have? Those things go in every direction and the needle always comes to the top when you stop sewing! Imagine how handy that is!”

I mention that I used to sew on my grandmother’s Featherweight but now there’s a intra-family war about who owns Grandma’s Featherweight and so no one gets to use it. It’s genuinely the best portable straight-stitch machine I’ve ever used.

I warn her to never let anyone tell her that Featherweight isn’t worth something. “I know, I miss my husband and it’s always going to have a place in my heart, just like your grandma’s.”

“I mean, Irma, there’s that, but they’re also worth a really notable amount of money. The Singer Featherweight is really financially valuable. I almost never see them for sale around here for less than about $400, and that’s in bad condition.”

“It’s a good thing my husband’s dead, honey, because if you told him that he managed to buy a sewing machine that’s worth more in 2021 than he bought it for in 1950, well, he’d be so smug that I just wouldn’t be able to tolerate driving home with him.”

I need everyone’s best character advice. STAT.

I'm so sad that my favorite teacher is retiring

She is such a real one

She literally made a new seating chart today and put me next to my crush

She's literally the best an I'm going to miss her so much

This year's soccer jersey are brand new and I could blend into the ocean wearing it. They aren't terrible but the crotch on the shorts is the worst part of the fit

Taylor calls herself crazy all throughout TTPD, but maybe I’m just as insane because I actually think she’s quite normal? Because if I ended a once happy 8 year relationship because the love was gone and we were both no longer in love to then get with a situation-ship who has been pinning for you for years only for them to abandon you when they finally got you, I’d commit full arson.

I think what really GETS me about Miss Americana is that the lyrics do really have double meaning.

If you’re not paying attention, you’d be like, ‘oh, yeah, it’s about high school love’... but then you listen closer with the context of her singing about AMERICA, or rather, TO AMERICA and it’s politics. “You know I adore you, I’m crazier for you, than I was at 16, lost a film scene.” This is really obviously symbolism of, ‘I was so caught up in my own life and being distracted by my career I didn’t really notice you, American politics, needed my attention.’

I now kind of read the chorus in two ways, too. She could so easily just be singing to the Heartbreak Prince as a love interest, saying, “It’s you and me,” and that the rest of the world doesn’t approve of her being with him... but the chorus is so much more layered when you approach it from the singing about her society / her country angle. It’s like she’s saying to America, ‘remember when I was known for my 4th of July parties? You were my whole world’, but then the Republicans claimed her for their own in her silence, and people were bullying her and talking about her, so ‘they whisper in the hallway she’s a bad bad girl.’

So when she says, “the whole school is rolling fake dice”, (which is !!!!!) This is her saying she realises the new America she lives in is run by those who manipulate the system, (just like she said in that Guardian interview as well??!). Then she’s like taking a dig, like, if ‘you’re doing to play stupid games with power, then your prize isn’t a real prize, either’.

This analogy is made even more clear and easier to see in the second verse with, “my team is losing / batteries and bruising / I see the high fives between the bad guys,” and “American stories, burning before me / boys will be boys then, where are the wise men?’ Because guess who said, ‘boys will be boys’ famously???? A certain President.

The whole analogy is genius when it’s then mixed with the American high school symbolism as well? Because to anyone who isn’t American, the MOST American thing is movie vision of ‘high school’, of cliques, of cheerleaders and bleachers.

And there ain’t nothing more cliquey and high school than two party politics at the moment, huh?