MYC: Build Your Main Character

Welcome to this week’s Master Your Craft post! Each Wednesday we’ll  discuss prewriting and drafting a new book from the Big Idea to Querying. Last week, we covered the Big Idea and using Creativity to help you Create Loglines. This week, I’ll discuss Developing Main Characters.

Character development is critical to your story’s success and one of your most important pre-writing activities. You can probably begin writing your story with only a sketchy plot, but if you start writing without “knowing” your main character(s), it will be difficult to create a memorable story that connects with readers.

Task: Create a main character that readers are willing to root for throughout your story.

Within the first few pages, you must find a way to make the reader care about what happens to your main character. How do you do that? Develop deep, multilayered characters. Even if every detail doesn’t make it to the page, knowing your character as well as you know yourself will make your story stronger.

To create an interesting main character the reader will care about, you need to know the answers to these questions.

  • What makes your character special (talent, ability, difficulty)?
  • What’s your character’s weakness/flaw (what must she/he overcome for the conflict to be resolved)?

To answer those questions, consider the four main layers that make a character whole.

The Layers That Make Up a Character

Think through all the layers of your character before you begin to write. Often my main character comes to mind almost completely formed. Sometimes, it takes more effort. In both cases, I often fix a pot of tea and interview my main character(s) early in the prewriting process.

  • Outside identity:  age, name, gender, race, skin color, quirks, physical features [eye and hair color, birthmarks, teeth, height, body size, voice, teeth (crooked, missing, braces), health status, outstanding features (lazy eye, big nose, ears that stick out, mole, scar, birthmark, lost limb)]
  • Inside identity:  personality, traits, religion, values, sexuality, intellectual ability, gender, fears, mental health, beliefs
  • Frame (what makes up the character’s world):
    • family structure (parents happily married? birth order? dysfunctional family? traditions?)
    • house rules (no opposite sex in the bedroom? shoes off at door? anything goes in this house? strict parents?)
    • foods (ethnic? home-cooked meals? take-out? packaged foods?)
    • Economic status: rich, middle-class, poor
    • Social status: popular, community-minded, philanthropic, troublemakers, elitists, reclusive
  • Voice: How your character communicates the story. This will overlap with all the above and we’ll be focusing more on voice later in the series, but here are a few ideas to jumpstart your character into a bit of dialogue.
    • Consider these together:
      •  Age and birth order: these help shape personality which give your character a unique perspective
      •  Maturity: this will influence your character’s reactions and attitude
      •   Sense of humor: fart jokes or Shakespearean pun
    • Now, consider how your character communicates.
      • Writes notes, letters, poetry? texts? face to face? avoids others?
      • Type of words: short and to the point? flowery?
      •  How does your character convey their message: sarcasm? jokes? direct? indirect?

Final Important Tips About Your Main Character

1. Avoid Stereotypes!

If you chose to ignore this advice (don’t do it!!!), turn the stereotype on its ear or balance the stereotype out by adding many details to give your character depth.

Examples:

    • nerdy smart person (balance: very friendly and outgoing, loves riding dirtbikes)
    • troublemaking poor person (balance: who makes trouble for all the right reasons)
  • sassy black girl (balance: with high values that she’s willing to stand up for)

More tips for avoiding stereotypes: https://litreactor.com/columns/storyville-ten-ways-to-avoid-cliches-and-stereotype

2. Show/Don’t Tell!

Page after page of descriptions is a sure way to turn off readers. You definitely will need some telling, but try to convey details about your character through action or comparison.

Examples:

1. Character is an atheist (using action instead of telling)

Tell: She’d been an atheist from the minute she found out her Grandma left all her money to a televangelist.

Show: Even though her family still said grace before dinner, she’d given up on God the minute she found out her Grandma left all her money to a televangelist.

2. Character is white and artistic (using comparison instead of telling)

Tell: She was a white girl who loved to draw.

Show: She peeked into the classroom door to check out the other students before she walked in. Was she going to be the only white girl in the drawing camp?

I’ll end this post with a few resources. Come back next Wednesday when we’ll discuss Supporting Characters!

Resources: Tips and Worksheets on Building Character

https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/character-questionnaire/gotham

http://www.epiguide.com/ep101/writing/charchart.html

http://niemanstoryboard.org/stories/14-tips-for-building-character/

http://fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment.tumblr.com/post/50825149893/character-sheets-and-character-creation

Ready for more craft advice on writing middle grade or young adult fiction? Head back to our Master Your Craft page where you’ll find dozens of more topics to choose from!

MICHELLE LEONARD is a math and science nerd, a chocolate biscotti baker, and a SCBWI member who writes middle-grade and young adult fiction. Her young adult sci-fi short story IN A WHOLE NEW LIGHT will be published in the BRAVE NEW GIRLS ANTHOLOGY: STORIES OF GIRLS WHO SCIENCE AND SCHEME releasing August 2017. Connect with her on Twitter.

10 thoughts on “MYC: Build Your Main Character

  1. Hi, Michelle,
    It’s fun to see how other writers come up with interesting characters! I love these two questions:
    “What makes your character special (talent, ability, difficulty)?
    What’s your character’s weakness/flaw (what must she/he overcome for the conflict to be resolved)?”
    That’s the inner tension that makes stories go in my opinion. I’m devoted to Angela Ackerman’s and Becca Puglisi’s Backstory Tool for coming up with the answers. I’ve always had a hard time going straight into my characters from the “outside layers.” It’s the “why” of some quirky behavior that always gets me hooked. Thinking of trying out the rest of your process to flesh out some new characters once I have their inner hearts ticking. The idea of explicitly considering the character’s words is great too.
    Nice post!
    Laurel

  2. Gait is something often overlooked when working on character development. How we move, and the body language we fall back on, especially in times of stress, are great ways to give a character depth, and this has the added bonus of conveying feeling by itself once we associate that movement with a character’s internal landscape. If I get itchy arms, for example, when I’m feeling insecure, then after the first scene of this you’ll know how I’m feeling when I’m scratching madly without me saying a word. Matt Bird also talks about assigning metaphor families to characters, and I’ve found this really works well to help give a character depth in relation to other characters (double duty)!

    1. Yes! This is excellent, Gabrielle! And a very good example of how to use show-not-tell about the character that can carry all the way through the story.

  3. Hi Michelle. I liked that you mentioned stereotypes. I think the nerdy smart type has been used a lot in MG lit., but it still appeals to a lot of kids, doesn’t it?

  4. Nice post! I’m an editor, and it’s amazing how often characters are written either without flaws or without strengths. Those are so important!

    1. Thank you, Mica! Yes, stories with deeply fleshed out characters are so much more satisfying that stories that are purely plot.

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