Develop Your Characters to Plan Your Novel

Image from Pixabay by Enrique Meseguer (darksouls1)

Welcome to an 8-post series on preparing or planning your novel for Nanowrimo (or anytime.)

This series is part of our PLAN YOUR NOVEL: 30-Day home study course and annual October workshop. (And forthcoming book, Plan Your Novel Like A Pro.)

Today is the third in an 8-post series on preparing your novel for Nanowrimo. In today’s post, we focus on character development for your novel prep.

If you missed it, the first step in your novel preparation was your elevator pitch and the second step was crafting your story synopsis.

Keep in mind: Take note of your genre. This will give you a general idea of your story ending and the kinds of characters work best for the story you’re writing. If you have any questions about this, leave a comment below.

Time to budget: I recommend you take 30–60 minutes to do this exercise for each of your main characters. Of course, you can take more or less time. I like to work in 20-minuted timed writing chunks.

Brainstorm these essential elements of your main characters to get you started:

1. Goal, motivation and conflict, for both the inner life and outer life
2. Strengths, inherent and learned
3. Important relationships
4. Appearance
5. Education
6. Home, living circumstances
7. Preferred travel method
8. Backstory as it relates to story problem
9. The things in her pockets, or backpack, or car, or satchel, etc.
10. Habits, mannerisms, ticks
11. Other elements and factors that occur to you as interesting or important — jot them down!!

Here’s an image to share or pin and use for your brainstorming!

YOUR TURN:

Draft your characters so you know them well. Share fun details or your Ahas in the comments below.

You can also post it on my Facebook page to enter into fun weekly giveaways.

Plan Your Novel 30-Day Writing Challenge, starts October 1st

If you’d like hands-on support to plan your novel for Nanowrimo with your peers and with experienced instructors — Beth and Ezra Barany, then join us for our next course starting October 1st: 30-Day Writing Challenge to Plan Your Novel.

All the details for the course here.

~Originally published on Writer’s Fun Zone SEPTEMBER 15, 2014 · UPDATED AUGUST 15, 2018.