Five Practical Exercises to Deepen Your Characters

By Sandrina de Klerk

You can read hundreds of books and articles on what makes a well-developed character, but if you’re anything like me, sometimes all you want is someone to tell you exactly what you need to do in a practical way. So that’s what I’m going to do! First let’s briefly establish, describe, and define what a well-developed character is and why we need it. 

There are two major points of a well developed character.

Right, with that out the way, read on to discover five specific tips on how to deepen your characters. 

1. The Everything Paper

This one is not very complicated. Basically, get a piece of paper, or three or four, and just rant on the character. Every single thing that comes to mind, put it down. Another more technical sounding term for this method is “flow of consciousness”. You write whatever you think of. There are no bad ideas and you should not be shy of writing things down even if you think they sound crazy or strange--your character has been in five car accidents and that’s why they hate driving. Sure, write it down!  When you’re brainstorming, nothing’s a bad idea. When you have done this, you can go through and pick out the things that work.

Usually, I think of a character, and maybe I have one or two thoughts on their personality. I know the role they are going to serve, and sometimes their name. To develop them, this is where I start. 

Backstory, quirks, lines of dialogue, random observations, and interesting things about them write it all down. You can use this method to develop a character from scratch, or if you are trying to flesh out an already existing character. 

2. Read Their Journals 

This is a fancy or creative way of saying: get into their head. If you want to write a character in a realistic and memorable way, you need to know what they're thinking. What’s going through their head and why? You could attempt writing a journal entry from their perspective, or try thinking like them. In your head, pretend you are that character, and consider what your character would be thinking in certain situations. 

Another idea is to write journal entries for key points in their life (or big turning points in the book). This will help you focus on what they're feeling and how they’ll be inclined to react.  This is one of the most important aspects of a well-developed character--know what they’re feeling. 

3. Write Them at Different Points of Their Life

To really know and understand a character, you need to see them in different areas of their life. I can’t recommend this enough. Write the random scenes that pop into your head that you know could never make it in the book. 

Have fun with it and just write your character! The benefit to writing the character outside of the story is that you are not constantly concerned about plot, voice, the scene structure in regard to the rest of the story, how you’re structuring in your theme, etc, etc. All you’re doing is having fun writing the character. 

4. Role Plays

A friend and I discovered this by accident. We were sitting on her bed, waiting for her mom to call us for lunch. We started talking about how funny it would be to see one of my characters in a counselling session. I don’t remember whose idea it was, but we started playing it out. Me as my character, and her as one we created on the spot. The hour we spent on that brought some of the best ideas, and some of my favourite dialogue lines. After that, we started doing it via text too. We’d pick any character, a situation, and then go back and forth. Usually in a style like this: 

*Jon picks up a rock and tosses it into the air.* “Why do you think he does it?”

*Wilder narrows his eyes and catches the rock.* “Does what?”

Honestly, if you do nothing else from this article, try this! Find a writer friend and try it out either in person or via text/email (we used to email back and forth for role plays). The Kingdom Pen and Story Embers forums are also great (and safe) online places to do this sort of thing.

If you cannot find anyone to do it with, never fear! It is possible to do it yourself. Granted, it may be a little harder, but I’ve still found it beneficial. In a boring situation or waiting room? Bring your characters along and have a conversation (perhaps in your head if you are in public), or imagine what they might be doing in that place. 

I’ve found by really focusing on the dialogue and actions, and not the style of writing, I discover a lot about the character. 

5. Never Stop Adding 

It can be easy to create a character, and then write the story. But in reality, the character is created, and then is crafted more and more as you write the story. You find out little things in the little moments that you hadn’t thought of before, and you fall more in love with the character as you see how they react to and interact with everything.

Don’t be afraid to change things and add things when you see the opportunity. I’ve written major additions to my character halfway through draft three. And that’s alright! He’s still the same character he was when I started writing him three years ago, he’s just deeper, realer, and more than he ever was back then. 

For finding inspiration, take specific traits out of favorite characters, and recycle them. Same for quirks or certain ways of speaking. 

Hold on a second though, I’m not saying go copy someone else’s character, slap on a new name and call them yours. No. But, say there’s a character in a story who loves swimming outdoors all times of the year, and there’s another character who quotes random people at random points. Maybe you take those two things, and you mix them into a character you have. Perhaps your character doesn’t quote people, but songs, or movies. You can do the same with real people you know--just, er, maybe don’t be too obvious… 

CONCLUSION

Characters make a story. Without them, no one would care about what happens. This is why developing our characters is such an important task! Imagine your favorite stories without the characters. 

Imagine The Silver Chair with no Puddleglum, Lord of the Rings with no Gandalf, Pride and Prejudice with no Darcy. All three are wonderful characters, if any were removed from the story, a big part of the story is removed. 

So! You have five practical exercises to help you. Go try them out, and if they don’t develop your character even a little bit, I offer a five minute time guarantee--better be quick!