Creating Characters in Concert
Designing the characters around your protagonist to contribute to their growth
How do you create characters? Do they come to you intuitively, or do you design them? How do you flesh them out from your initial sketches? For a lot of people, it’s with character questionnaires. You’ll find questions like:
- what is your character’s favorite childhood memory?
- what kinds of clothes do they wear?
- does your character have a good relationship with their parents?
- when is their birthday? Do they like to celebrate it? How?
Adding these kinds of details can bring about realism to small moments, perhaps, but once you’ve done this for the, say, six main characters you have planned, how do you fit them together? Do you try? How do you know they even belong in the same book?
Haphazard character development can make it harder to achieve story goals. Just like we talked about when it comes to intentionally building a world, having characters around your protagonist who believe different things about the theme will force your character to go through the change you want her to.
The solution to this is, once again, found in Truby’s The Anatomy of Story. One of his main, and perhaps…
