When it comes to writing a fiction book, one of the most crucial elements is creating believable and relatable characters. They are the lifeblood of any fiction book. They breathe life into the story, they need to be relatable, believable, and compelling enough for readers to care about their journey and engage the readers emotionally, whilst driving the plot forward. A well-crafted character can make or break your story, drawing readers in with their unique personalities, motivations, and backstories. In this blog post, we will explore how to build characters for a fiction book by understanding who they are and developing them in depth, and delve into what makes a great character, how to build them effectively, and provide tips for bringing your fictional creations to life.

What Makes a Great Character?

A great character is more than just a name or a physical description. They’re complex individuals with their own thoughts, feelings, and motivations that drive the story forward. Here are some key characteristics of well-crafted characters:

1. A Unique Personality. – Each character should have a distinct personality, including traits like optimism, pessimism, humour, or seriousness.
   • This means considering what makes your character tick, what they’re passionate about, and how they interact with others. For example, if you’re writing a romance novel, the protagonist might be optimistic and outgoing, while the love interest is more reserved and introverted.
2. Motivation. – Characters need clear motivations for their actions, whether it’s to achieve a goal, overcome an obstacle, or seek revenge.
   • This motivation should drive the character’s decisions and actions throughout the story. For instance, if your protagonist wants to win a competition, they might be motivated by a desire to prove themselves or gain recognition.
3. Backstory. – A rich backstory provides context and depth to your characters’ personalities, motivations, and behaviours.
   • Think about what shaped your character into who they are today. What significant events occurred in their past? How did these experiences influence their worldview and decision-making?
4. Consistency. – Consistency is key when developing character traits.
5. Authenticity.
   A great character should feel real and relatable. They must have flaws, strengths, weaknesses, fears, and desires that readers can connect with emotionally. The more authentic the character is, the easier it will be for readers to immerse themselves in their story.
6. Complexity.
   Multi-dimensional characters are far more interesting than one-note archetypes. A great character should have layers, hidden depths, and unexpected quirks that reveal themselves as the narrative unfolds. This complexity adds richness to your story and keeps readers engaged.
7. Growth and Change.
   Characters who evolve throughout a story are more compelling than those who remain stagnant. A great character should undergo significant growth or change by the end of the novel, demonstrating personal development that resonates with readers on an emotional level.
8. Conflict and Struggle.
   The best characters face challenges and obstacles that test their limits and force them to make difficult choices. These struggles create tension in your story and keep readers invested in how the character will overcome these hurdles.
9. Relatability.
   Readers should be able to see themselves or someone they know reflected in a great character. This relatability fosters empathy, making it easier for readers to connect with the character’s journey and invest emotionally in their story.

Ensure that your character’s personality, behaviour, and speech patterns remain consistent throughout the story. If you establish a character as being sarcastic, for example, they should continue to be so unless there’s a compelling reason for them to change (e.g., due to trauma or personal growth).

“Characters should be like people you know but not exactly; they should be recognisable yet unique.” – Stephen King

How to Build Characters

Now that we’ve discussed what makes a great character, let’s dive into how to build them effectively:

1. Start with the Basics: Begin by creating a character profile sheet or template. Include essential information like name, age, gender, occupation, and physical description. This will help you get started on developing your characters’ personalities, motivations, and backstories.
2. Develop Their Personality: Think about your character’s personality traits, values, and flaws. How do they interact with others? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
3. Create a Backstory: Craft a compelling backstory that explains why your character is the way they are today. This can include their childhood, relationships, and significant life events. Consider how these experiences have shaped them into who they are now.
4. Give Them Goals and Motivations: Determine what drives your character forward. Are they seeking revenge, trying to achieve a goal, or overcoming an obstacle? This motivation should drive the character’s decisions and actions throughout the story.
5. Make Them Relatable: Ensure that readers can relate to your characters’ emotions, struggles, and motivations. This doesn’t mean making them perfect; it means creating empathy by showing their vulnerabilities, fears, and desires.

“The more real the characters seem to readers, the more likely it is that they will care about what happens to them.” – James Patterson

How to Build Unforgettable Characters

1. Creating the Foundation: The Character’s Backstory

A strong foundation is crucial when building any character, and understanding your characters’ past experiences is crucial to creating believable and engaging personalities. Their backstory shapes who they are, informing their motivations, fears, desires, and actions throughout the novel.

To create an authentic and relatable individual, consider their past experiences, upbringing, family dynamics, friendships, relationships, and personal struggles. Take your time to develop each character’s history, including family dynamics, significant life events, and formative experiences that have influenced them. This backstory will inform how they perceive the world around them and shape their actions in your story.

To build a compelling backstory:

• Consider their childhood: What were their early influences? Were there any significant events or traumas that shaped who they are today?
• Explore their family life: Did they come from a loving, supportive household or one filled with strife and discord? How did these relationships influence them?
• Delve into their education and career history: What were the key moments in their professional journey? Were there any turning points that changed the course of their lives?
• Examine their personal life: Who are their closest friends, family members, or romantic partners? How have these connections impacted their growth as a person?

2. Developing Personality Traits and Quirks

Personality traits and quirks bring your characters to life on the page. A well-rounded character has a unique personality with distinct traits that set them apart from other characters in your story. These characteristics should be unique to each individual while still feeling authentic and relatable. Take time to consider their quirks, habits, speech patterns, and mannerisms to create a vivid portrait of who they are. Use these traits consistently throughout the novel to reinforce their identity. To create interesting, multi-faceted personalities:

• Assign a primary trait: This is the character’s most defining quality – their ambition, curiosity, fearfulness, or kindness. It will shape how they approach problems and interact with others in your story.
• Add secondary traits: Give them other qualities that complement or contrast with their primary trait. For example, if they are ambitious, perhaps they also have a strong sense of loyalty to friends or family members.
• Incorporate quirks: These can be physical or behavioural habits, such as a love for wearing mismatched socks, an obsession with collecting antique teacups, or having a penchant for sarcastic remarks. Quirks add depth and make characters more memorable.

3. Establishing Motivations and Goals

Motivation is the driving force behind every character’s actions in your story. Every great character should have internal struggles or conflicts that drive their actions and decisions. These inner battles can be emotional, psychological, or philosophical in nature, adding depth and complexity to your characters. Consider what fears, desires, or beliefs might conflict within a character, and how these tensions will affect their choices throughout the story. In addition to internal struggles, great characters also face external conflicts that challenge them on various fronts. These challenges can be physical, social, or emotional in nature, adding tension and stakes to your narrative. Ensure that each character’s external conflict is relevant to their personal growth and development throughout the story. To create compelling motivations:

• Determine their core desires: What do they want most out of life? Love, power, wealth, or redemption? Their goals should be both personal and relatable to readers.
• Identify external conflicts: These are the obstacles that stand between them and their desired outcome – other characters, societal expectations, or physical barriers.
• Explore internal struggles: Characters must also confront inner demons, fears, or prejudices. This adds depth and complexity to your story while providing opportunities for growth and change.

4. Crafting Dialogue and Voice

Dialogue is a vital tool in bringing characters to life on the page. Each character should have their own unique voice that reflects their personality, background, and motivations. To develop distinct voices:

• Experiment with dialects or accents: If your story takes place in a specific region or time period, consider incorporating regional speech patterns or historical language styles.
• Vary sentence structure and word choice: Different characters will have different ways of expressing themselves based on their education level, social status, or personal experiences.
• Use repetition for emphasis: Characters may use certain phrases or words to emphasise their thoughts or feelings, making them more memorable to readers.

5. Building Relationships and Conflict

Interpersonal relationships are crucial in creating a rich, immersive story world. Characters often reveal themselves through their relationships with other characters. Developing a strong cast of supporting characters can help flesh out your main protagonist, while also creating opportunities for subplots and secondary narratives that enrich your overall story. Pay attention to how your characters interact with one another, as these dynamics will shape the direction of your plot. To develop these connections:

• Establish character dynamics: Consider how your characters relate to one another – as friends, enemies, or lovers. This will inform their interactions throughout the narrative.
• Create conflict: Relationships should be filled with tension and challenges that force characters to confront their fears, desires, and prejudices.
• Resolve conflicts in meaningful ways: As stories progress, relationships may evolve, change, or end entirely – providing opportunities for growth and transformation.

6. Edit and Revise

As you write your novel, revisit your character sketches regularly to ensure consistency in their actions, motivations, and growth throughout the narrative. Editing and revising your characters can help refine their personalities, making them more authentic and engaging for readers.

“The key to writing a good character is not just giving them traits or characteristics… It’s about understanding what makes them tick.” – Neil Simon

Tips for Building Characters

Here are some additional tips to help you build well-rounded characters:

1. Get Inside Their Heads: Write from the character’s perspective to gain insight into their thoughts, feelings, and motivations. This will help you understand what drives them and how they perceive the world around them.
2. Use Dialogue Effectively: Use dialogue to reveal your character’s personality, background, and relationships with others. Dialogue can be a powerful tool for showing rather than telling about your characters’ traits and behaviours.
3. Create Conflict: Characters need conflict or tension to drive the story forward. This can come in many forms, such as internal struggles, external conflicts, or interpersonal issues. Use these conflicts to test your character’s resolve and show their growth throughout the story.
4. Show Their Growth: Allow characters to grow and evolve throughout the story. Demonstrate how they learn from experiences, overcome challenges, and develop new skills or perspectives. This will make them more relatable and engaging for readers.

Formula for character development

While there is no one-size-fits-all formula for creating characters, here’s a simple framework to help you build well-rounded and engaging characters:

The Character Formula

While there isn’t a strict formula for creating characters, as it largely depends on the story and author’s style, here is an outline that can serve as a foundation to build your characters:

1. Start with the character’s basic information: Name, age, appearance (physical traits), occupation or role in society, social status, and any other relevant details. This will help you establish their identity within the story world.
   • Give your character a unique name that reflects their personality or background.
   • Determine the age of your character at the start of the story (or during significant events).
   • Describe their physical appearance, including height, weight, hair colour, eye colour, and any distinguishing features (e.g., scars, tattoos).
   • Establish whether your character is male, female, non-binary, or gender-neutral.
   • Define what role they play in society, such as a student, teacher, artist, etc.
2. Define their personality traits by identifying their strengths, weaknesses, fears, desires, beliefs, values, and motivations. Use tools like MBTI or Enneagram personality types for inspiration if helpful. Ensure these traits are consistent throughout the narrative.
   • Strengths: What are your character’s positive qualities? (e.g., courage, empathy, humour)
   • Weaknesses: What flaws or shortcomings do they have? (e.g., fear, arrogance, impulsiveness)
   • Internal Motivation: What drives them internally? (e.g., desire for success, need to prove themselves, seeking revenge)
   • External Motivation: What external factors influence their actions? (e.g., family pressure, societal expectations, personal goals)
3. Develop your character’s backstory, including family dynamics, significant life events, formative experiences, and how they have influenced their current state of mind and actions. Develop a rich backstory that explains why your character is the way they are today. This information will inform their motivations, fears, desires, and actions throughout the novel.
4. Create internal conflicts within your characters by exploring opposing fears, desires, beliefs, or values that create tension and drive their actions throughout the novel. These inner struggles make them more relatable to readers.
5. Build external conflicts for your character by challenging them with physical, social, or emotional obstacles. This adds tension and stakes to the narrative while enriching character development.
6. Develop your characters goal or goals.
   • Short-Term Goals: What do they want to achieve in the short term?
   • Long-Term Goals: What do they hope to accomplish over time?
7. Establish relationships between characters as a means of revealing more about each individual through interactions with others. Supporting characters can also contribute to subplots and secondary narratives that enhance the overall story.
8. Give your character a unique voice and dialogue reflective of their personality, background, experiences, speech patterns, dialects, or idiosyncrasies. This differentiation helps readers distinguish between characters.
9. Allow your character to grow and evolve throughout the story by demonstrating how they learn from experiences, overcome challenges, and develop new skills or perspectives. Their growth should be consistent with their established traits but also showcase change over time.
10. Consider cultural context if writing about diverse backgrounds, ensuring accuracy and respect in representing those cultures. Research customs, beliefs, and traditions to create well-rounded, believable characters who reflect their unique identities.
11. Maintain consistency in your character’s actions, decisions, development, and overall authenticity throughout the story. This will create a believable world where readers can immerse themselves fully.
12. Make your characters relatable: Ensure that readers can relate to your character’s emotions, struggles, and motivations.

By following this outline as a formula for building your characters, you can craft an engaging cast of unforgettable individuals that captivate readers from beginning to end in your fiction book. Remember, while there isn’t one definitive formula, focusing on authenticity, complexity, growth, struggle, relatability, and consistency will lead to compelling character development.

Example Character Profile

Name: Maya Jensen

Age: 25

Gender: Female

Occupation/Role: Student (pursuing a degree in environmental science)

Physical Description: Brown hair, green eyes, petite build, with a scar above her left eyebrow from a childhood accident.

Personality Traits:

• Strengths: Determined, resourceful, and passionate about protecting the environment.
• Weaknesses: Impulsive, reckless, and sometimes struggles to balance personal life with academic responsibilities.

Motivations:

• Internal Motivation: Desire to make a positive impact on the world by studying environmental science.
• External Motivation: Pressure from her parents to succeed academically and secure a stable career.

Backstory: Maya grew up in a family of scientists, always feeling like she had big shoes to fill. She struggled with anxiety and self-doubt throughout high school but found solace in volunteering for local environmental organisations. This experience sparked her passion for environmental science, leading her to pursue higher education.

Goals and Conflicts:

• Short-Term Goal: Complete a research project on sustainable energy sources.
• Long-Term Goal: Become a renowned expert in the field of renewable energy.
• Conflict: Maya’s impulsive nature often puts her at odds with her more cautious colleagues, causing tension within their team.

Framework for building characters

1. Characters should be complex, multidimensional beings with unique personalities, backgrounds, motivations, fears, desires, strengths, weaknesses, and flaws. They must feel authentic and relatable to readers so that they can connect emotionally with the story.
2. Develop your characters’ backstory, including their family dynamics, significant life events, formative experiences, and how these have influenced them. This information will inform their motivations, fears, desires, and actions throughout the novel.
3. Define each character’s personality traits through quirks, habits, speech patterns, mannerisms, etc., ensuring consistency in their identity across the story. You can use tools like MBTI or Enneagram personality types for inspiration.
4. Create internal conflicts within your characters by exploring opposing fears, desires, beliefs, or values that create tension and drive their actions throughout the novel.
5. Develop external conflicts to challenge your characters with physical, social, or emotional obstacles, adding tension and stakes to the narrative while enriching character development.
6. Build relationships between characters as a means of revealing more about each individual through interactions with others. Supporting characters can also contribute to subplots and secondary narratives that enhance the overall story.
7. Establish a unique voice and dialogue for each character, reflecting their personality, background, experiences, speech patterns, dialects, or idiosyncrasies. This differentiation helps readers distinguish between characters.
8. Allow your characters to evolve organically throughout the story based on their experiences and interactions with other characters. Their growth should be consistent with their established traits but also showcase change over time.
9. Give your characters flaws, imperfections, or vulnerabilities that make them more relatable and human, allowing readers to connect emotionally with their struggles and triumphs.
10. Maintain consistency in your character’s actions, decisions, development, cultural context (if applicable), and overall authenticity throughout the story. This will create a believable world where readers can immerse themselves fully.

By focusing on this framework when building characters for your book, you can craft an engaging cast of unforgettable individuals that captivate readers from beginning to end. Remember, creating compelling characters involves authenticity, complexity, growth, struggle, relatability, and consistency – all elements that contribute to the success of a fictional narrative.

Tips for your character framework

1. Start with a strong core identity and let the rest of the framework flow from it.
2. Make sure your characters have distinct personalities, backgrounds, and motivations to create believable interactions.
3. Use conflict to drive character growth and development throughout the story.
4. Consider how your characters’ relationships will evolve over time and impact their individual arcs.
5. Don’t be afraid to add unique qualities or quirks that make your characters stand out.

Key Takeaways

1. Establish your character foundations.
2. Develop their personality traits and quirks.
3. Establish the characters motivations and goals.
4. Build dialogue and a unique voice for each major character.
5. Build relationships and conflict for each major character.

Conclusion

Crafting compelling, well-rounded characters is an essential aspect of writing a successful fiction book. By understanding who they are, developing their backstory, personality traits, motivations, goals, dialogue, and relationships, you can create complex individuals that readers will care about and remember long after the final page has been turned. So take your time to build rich, multifaceted characters – it’s an investment in the heart of your story.