By: Emily Wenstrom
There are plenty of methods and
extensive questionnaires out there to help your character development.
Charlaine Harris sometimes goes through her characters’ handbags. Marcel Proust
famously used a list of thirty-five meticulous questions to determine
everything from nicknames to what talent your character would most like to
have.
And for sure, the more you know
about your character, the better. But I’ve always felt that these approaches
tend to be overly complicated and time-consuming … and they don’t necessarily
give you the information that’s really most critical to power your story.
Instead, I go for a more
efficient approach that cuts right to the character’s heart. I look only to the
key factors that define the character’s core and drive the plot. The more
cosmetic stuff like nicknames I figure out as I write.
4 Questions to Improve Your Character Development
So if you’re ready to get writing
and don’t want to waste time on extensive questionnaires, try out my four
questions to go deeper with your characters:
1. Where does your
character come from?
. . .
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