Plot Twist Magazine issue #1

Character Development

By FCCleary

I want to assume that this will be one part of a series, but I also feel like I should hedge my bets and not unintentionally leave people hanging. To that end, I'm going to focus on the role of the character within the art of storycraft.

I won't say character development is the most important part of the story, but it's one of the critical pillars along with plot, worldbuilding, and narrative. Characters give your story empathy, they guide your reader through its emotional landscape, they provide context and motive, and they're usually the conduit of tension and release - the heartbeat of every good novel.

There's no one-size-fits-all solution. Your characters will influence and be influenced by your plotline and every subplot, likewise the world you place them in, the troubles they encounter, and the solutions to those problems. Since every story is different, I can't give you a recipe for character building and you shouldn't go looking for one, but since the goals are the same - getting people to read and keeping their interest - we can look at a few things they all have in common.

Make Them Relatable

The next few paragraphs boil down to the human experience. The same things that help us connect with one another will influence your audience's relationship with your characters. Do they have qualities we admire? Are they likeable? Are they familiar?

The answers to all those questions don't have to be a resounding "yes." Familiar doesn't necessarily mean likeable: the overbearing boss, the crappy best friend who keeps getting you into trouble, the apathetic love interest. Admiration isn't the same as familiarity: a superhero with eye lasers, a genius baccarat player, a noble orator who champions the rights of blobfish. Likeable doesn't have to mean either of the other two: a sweet and unassuming girl who keeps fairies in her closet, a tender hearted man who builds cardboard shelters for homeless dogs.

But what do all of these have in common? They make you feel something. A popular truism in marketing is "nobody will remember what you said, everyone will remember how you made them feel." This is amplified in your stories because people come in looking for that feeling.

This is the "chemistry" that people talk about when they just click with someone, the je ne sais quoi that binds them together, but we can take it a step further. It's not just the reader's impression that matters, it's each character's chemistry with the rest of the ensemble. Your reader is living vicariously through your cast and how they interact with each other will take those individual impressions and launch them into orbit.

Give Them Room to Breathe

Your character isn't a static figure in the story. They're meant to progress along with the plot and that means something about them is changing throughout the narrative. They can't do that when they're perfect from chapter one.

This ties back to empathy, because it's hard to care about someone who has no challenges to overcome. How many times can you read about Superman stopping bank robbers when he's never in danger and always wins before you get bored? Kryptonite wasn't invented with Superman, it was introduced to give him something to overcome.

The closer a character is to the A-plot of your story, the more they should experience growth, face challenges that push them to their limits, and change as a result.

Beat the Crap Out of Them

Conflict is the crucible through which a character is refined. It's through adversity that characters reveal their true selves whether that conflict is due to personal desire, the struggle against society, or battling their arch enemy. If done well, these conflicts intertwine with the core traits of your characters creating a natural path for growth while leaving room for unpredictability.

This is one of the most relatable things you can do with your characters, because everyone can empathize with pain as a motivator. As a species we move away from pain and toward pleasure, and it's one of your most effective tools for prodding your ensemble toward the final confrontation.

These conflicts don't have to be overt. One of my own characters, Sunny Summers, is designed to be a "Mary Sue," a word used for characters who are too perfect. On the surface she's true to form - beautiful but not vain, confident, top of her class, athletic, knowledgeable, and possessing a variety of unrelated skills that can solve whatever problem is thrown at her. But some of those traits end up causing the biggest conflicts. Her curiosity pushes her to uncover things, people, and events meant to remain hidden. Love for her friends influences her decisions, sometimes against her better judgment. Because she's so self-reliant, she forgets that she can lean on the strengths of the rest of the ensemble. These might seem like small things, but it's up to me as the author to exploit them, to bruise her weak spots and then kick the bruises until she cries for mercy. In the end, Sunny's confidence is tempered by humility and she grows as a person because she has an incentive to overcome.

A character's reactions to conflicts throughout the story will highlight their moral compass, resilience, and set the stage for that essential growth. As my dad liked to say, "calm seas never made a skillful sailor."

Let them Feel

Your characters are more than a tapestry of traits, they're "real people" with feelings that we as readers should be able to understand, and those feelings are going to emerge in two ways.

One way is for them to tell us. Introspection is a good (and very direct) way to share what the character is feeling, it leaves no room for misinterpretation, and it underlines the thought process they're dealing with while addressing problems, relationships, conflicts, and their own character arc. But it's also a brute force solution, more telly than showy, which should be used when there are no other decent options.

The other way is through their relationships, their encounters with other characters. Dialog tends to bring out feelings in a way that self awareness can't. Characters tend to express sooner than they have the wherewithal to process it, so a swell of anger or tears, spontaneous cheers, laughter, or bursts of manic giggling, will all help the reader gauge the temperature of everyone involved.

Relationships also amplify a character's arc because you're not relying solely on the reader to pick up on subtle tells in the mind of the protagonist or waiting for them to spell it out. The reaction of friends, lovers, and even enemies can reveal much about them without ever having to say it.

Embrace the Journey
Character development is a process, not a goal. It's an ongoing process of exploration, refinement, and empathy. As you write, keep your characters close to the heart of your story because it's through their trials and triumphs that it will discover its soul.

In the end they're more than just vessels for our narratives, they're a reflection of ourselves. By investing in their development we connect readers on the most fundamental level: the shared experience of being human.