Character Development

Characters develop over time, much like a child will develop over her growing period. They go through growing pains much the same as humans do.

Writers who are planners will plan their characters before the start writing.

Writers who are pantsers will allow their characters to grow as they put pen to paper (so to speak).

That’s not to say that planners already have their characters developed before they write. I think all writers will admit that characters grow through their journey of the written word.

And why do we do this to our characters? Because we are all on a journey. A journey to find out who we are and why we are here. Characters in stories are no less inspired and the task of a writer is to document that character’s or those characters’ journey to be a more enlightened or balanced person.

We do this through hurdles and pitfalls that we put our characters through.

And for those of us whose characters talk to us, we will often go to bed thinking ‘what will happen to such and such next?’ And if you’re anything like me, you get a response like ‘shut up, you’ve just shot me!’ To which, your immediate reaction is to sit up in bed, shocking the cat sprawled out beside you, saying ‘what? What? What?’

But there has to be a balance between good and bad. l only found out last weekend that it is easy to break a character. It’s how you put the character back together that defines that moment for the character.