Creating a character is more than putting together a face and a name, but involves creating personality and attaching a life to the face and the name. A story can become complicated as the writer intermittently adds characters to the mix to increase the believability of the protagonists’ lives.
Creating a back story for each character, whether they are protagonists, antagonists, or minor characters, helps a writer fully develop round and flat characters alike; as well as organize relationships between characters; and remember details that may become important to the story’s plot.
Building a Thought Web
A great place to begin when it comes to creating good fictional characters is with brainstorming and creating a thought web. Begin with your protagonist. If you have more than one protagonist, begin with the foremost, the one who drives the story more than the rest. Try this activity for fully discovering who that character is:
- On a sheet of paper, write down the character’s name and age in the centre.
- Branch out and write down the names of the character’s family.
- On another branch, write the names of the character’s friends, acquaintances, coworkers, etcetera.
- Branch out and write the character’s job or school, or lack thereof. From this, you can branch out again and write a quality that makes them suited for that job. Another small branch can briefly describe the character’s attitude toward the job or school.
- Branch out from the character’s name again and write down his or her hobbies. More small branches can be made out of the hobbies to include talents or passions that makes the character good (or not) at these hobbies.
- Continue this pattern for each aspect of the character’s life until your thought web looks somewhat like a tree.
You can create a thought web like this for each protagonist and antagonist and even minor characters. It may seem time consuming, but this kind of brainstorming need not be done all in one sitting. In fact, as you write your story, you may think of new ideas for your characters, which you can then add to your thought webs.
Writing a Character’s Back Story
Perhaps a thought web looks too messy for you, and is not so easy to follow. For a cleaner look to your back stories, consider creating a chart. Begin with the basics including the character’s name, age, and any character traits that are important to the story. Next, add brief points on a character’s hobbies, interests, and activities.
The character thought web is a fairly in-depth look at each aspect of his or her personality. It allows the writer to know the characters well. Even if not all the information about the character is revealed in the story, the better the writer knows the character, the better the character becomes.
The character chart is less in-depth than the thought web. It includes information that would be pertinent to the reader and the story, but not likely as many details as are in the thought web. As you create a detailed thought web, or a chart, or both, you will successfully develop your character’s history and present life – otherwise known as a back story.
Consider creating a back story for each character in your story. Whether they be round or flat characters, protagonists, antagonists or minor characters, each one is important.
Michelle Wright - Michelle is an avid reader and writer, with a focus on book, film and music reviews, gluten free recipes, and fiction writing "how-tos."
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