Building Characters for Your Novel

There are basically two ways of developing a novel in your mind. The first one is to think a general story and start from there. The second way is to build a story to the Character you created. The Character path is an easier way to make readers empathize with your characters.

Before thinking about the characters, you must calculate how many of them you need. Usually, there is a proportion in the number of characters and the size of the novel. Huge novels with only one or two characters may become too dense, and too many Characters for a small novel will make all characters uninteresting. For a hundred thousand words novel you should never have more than 6 main characters, and following that proportion you will produce an adequate number of Characters.

Now let’s build the Characters:

1. Buy a nice notebook and a pen you like. Believe me; working with tools you enjoy make the work easier. You can extrapolate that to the other tools you have like desk, computer, light, or anything else you might want to use.
2. If you will build 6 characters, write on the top of six pages “character 1,2,3…6”.
3. Now, you will build each character separately. Go to Character number 1 and proceed. Now, you will think about what your character looks like physically. Black, white, tall, short, fat, thin, and every physical aspect that you think is important. Put everything on the paper and proceed to the next step.
4. Now that you built the body design of your character, is time to decide what he wears. I will not be the first one to say that a person’s clothes tell very much about her, so, think carefully on the clothes. The way your character dresses is the first impression he will give to the world. The body is under the clothes and will be the second.
5. Step 5 is when you will describe your character’s mood, the way he talks, walks and thinks. Basically, here you will build the Character’s personality.
6. Now that you know the way your Character looks, thinks and acts, it’s time to think what life he had to make him what he is. That’s right: Background time. That is also something that you should give careful thought, because Characters’ backgrounds interfere and relate directly to the novel. Of course, that’s also a nice opportunity to think about your story.
7. Repeat the same process in all the pages, and voilá. Congratulations, your Characters you be made and ready to use.

One last tip I want to give you is the way I build many of my characters. Sometimes you can just re-create a Character you already know. TV shows are great resources. You can copy a Character you like from CSI, for example, make some minor alterations, give him a completely different background, and you will have a new character in half the time.

Hope I could be of any help, and good luck in writing your novel.

The Thinker by Auguste Rodin

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