Character development

[Martin Shoemaker]

In Million Dollar Outlines, David discusses these sort of character templates. He points out some good things about them, but he also says that they can be overkill.

“An approach I have found to be far more valuable is one that I haven’t seen taught anywhere else. The basic idea is this: stories aren’t about characters so much as they are about growth. In other words, your characters will change and grow throughout a novel, and it isn’t necessarily the character herself that is interesting, but that process of change. So when I’m generating characters, I often find that I can kick-start a whole story by composing a character that is going to go through a change.”

The character templates you describe remind me of a lesson from my software design classes: Obsessive Compulsive Template Disorder. Project managers will adopt a template for a process (often a template pushed by a high-priced consultant) and insist that the team fill in every field of the template before doing any work. One team I taught had literally a 15-page document for how users would log in to the application; and it could be summarized as, “Our application is a Windows desktop program, and users will access it by logging into Windows.” In essence, ZERO lines of code; but they couldn’t proceed without filling in those 15 pages.

I try to teach that such a template is a suggested list of useful questions, NOT a mandatory list of mandatory questions. Read them and see if they make you think, but don’t feel bound by them.

[Sussu Leclerc]

Worldbuilding can be very overwhelming, Jim.

In my opinion (and in “Story Puzzle” I see that David thinks the same), characters grow from their environment.

If you know who your character is, think of his/her quirks and where the character might have developed these quirks.
For example, in “Avatar”, there is a big stance about protecting the environment and the environment means life.
From there, you can create a culture with people (and the character) that are intimately linked to nature.

You can also create a character who is in conflict with the environment. That gives more depth to your world.

In the movie “Avatar”, they can physically connect to the roots of a tree.
Also, the magical aspect of nature is that it is fluorescent, which symbolically draws a trail the aliens follow to their sacred places.
Also, bugs talk to the aliens by the way they behave. Bugs protect Jake when Neytiri wanted to kill him. They landed on him, stopping her from pulling an arrow on him.

If you focus on your character and who he/she is and what the character is most about, he or she has to be linked to the environment and culture in an organic way.
Hope something helps 🙂
I wrote a book on this subject if you want me to share?

[James Eggebeen]

When I create a new character, I often write several “trial” scenes where I work with them to get a feel for the person. I’ve written as much as 40K words to get a handle on a character before I outlined their book. I truly wanted to get to know them well enough to know how they would react to the things in the plot elements and what sort of things would drive them to take the actions I wanted them to take. It’s probably overkill, but it really helps me get to know them well. Then when it’s time to write them, they feel real. Definitely better for long series. I’d hate to throw away 40K or learning on a stand alone book with a “single use” character.