Characterization

I’ve been writing this novel since I was fifteen years old, and there is one thing I’ve always struggled with: developing my characters. I’ve always found it easier to write the end of my novel rather than the beginning. The characters are already developed, so I am able to concentrate on the actual story.

I’ve never taken a formal Creative Writing class until this semester. Everything I’ve learned came out of books I bought from the Reference section in Borders. I have a million books on the different aspects of writing: plot, dialogue, characters, and even quotes. (I love quotes. I’m a huge quotes person. I quote everything from movies and books.) Now finally, I am in a Creative Writing class, and I am learning a lot about character development.

My professor calls it “bits of cheese.” As a writer, you drop little pieces of cheese (hints) about your character, subtlety of course. It doesn’t necessarily have to be what the narrator says about the character, but what the character says about themselves, what the character does, and what other characters say about them.

I subscribe to Writer’s Digest emails, and awhile back, one of the emails included an article titled, “9 Questions to Ask Your Main Character.” I like the idea of interviewing the main character. It makes them seem more real rather than just a made-up character on a flat sheet of white computer paper. And that’s the idea: to make your character more real, to you and the reader.

You can see the article here.

-Landman