Let’s face it; character driven novels, movies, and television series are more engaging and garner the most emotional investment in the reader or viewer. Just look at the success of novels like Catcher in the Rye or Merchanter's Luck, movies such as Raging Bull, The Usual Suspects, and television masterpieces like Breaking Bad, Animal Kingdom, Yosemite. All of them are populated by well-developed characters who each speak with their own unique voice, have their own dreams and desires. Here’s my method of developing characters for my novels.
Once I cobble together basic age, gender, orientation, occupation, political/religious views I move on to …
Hey, good lookin’ …
I have a mental image of my characters that I pretty much keep to myself. I may hint at eye or hair colour, or if they have freckles or an overbite, or some other solitary physical description, but other than that I leave them blank. That way my reader can flesh out their looks as they see the character. A reader can come to either love or hate a character easier if that character fits with their perception of cute, evil, lovely, or handsome.
What’s so special about …
When developing a new character I often draw on people I know, usually an amalgam of a number of people mashed together. For Carrie, the love of Denny’s life in the Gangster series, I created a gentle young woman whom the world treated badly. Despite this, she had a naive belief that everyone was a good person, and if someone was unkind to her she internalized it as her own failing. I had set out to create a tragic character that Denny would risk everything for to follow his self-cast role of being the white knight. In That Dog Don't Bark, I needed a female lead who was a teenaged firecracker, so along came Angel who took no shit from anyone despite her being a hundred pounds soaking wet.
Finding their voice …
I won’t name it, but I recall a television series that sought to cash in on the success of The Walking Dead, by dropping their ensemble into a dangerous world filled with bloodthirsty zombies. In the pilot episode they trotted out a number of what appeared to be unique characters, but by the end of the pilot they’d lost me because every character spoke with the same voice. During one phase of my editing for each of my novels, I perform a pass for each character, one at a time, ensuring their speech pattern suits them, uses the same cadence and vernacular.
No one stays the same …
Not only must your main character have a personal arc in their journey, but so too must all your supporting characters. People evolve over time and so must your characters. You don't have to supply each of them with a groundbreaking epiphany moment, but each must be affected by the story as it progresses, plot shifts that can strengthen or rattle them, and large events that impact them emotionally.
Non-binary characters ...
I had a discussion on Twitter with a male writer who was afraid to write characters from the LGBTQ+ community. I asked him if he only wrote about men, he said no, he had female characters as well. Then what's so daunting about writing a non-binary character? In Leaving Wonderland there are a number of gay male characters, and one male-to-female transgender character. I wrote her as I would any other female character, and even included some steamy love scenes when she and the Cis man she loved came together. I did run some of their dialogue past two trans writers I know and they gave me some solid advice that amounted to 'No trans woman would say it that way', so I made the changes they suggested and it worked. And here's the thing; it didn't hurt at all. So don't be afraid to include non-binary characters in your novels.
Let them off the leash ...
Many times I have come to a point in a novel where I'd planned for a character to have specific reaction in response to an event, but when I got there I come to a screeching halt, realizing my well-developed character wouldn't respond the way I'd planned. I write the scene differently by allowing them to react and behave in a way that suits their nature. In That Dog Don't Bark, I set out to have Angel be a just another support character, but my main character Jackson fell in love with her – meaning I fell in love with her. This worked to make the story stronger because – even though the story is told in the first person by Jackson – it is Angel who drives the story forward to its explosive climax.
Cliff hanger or wrapped in a bow ...
There are two ways to end a story; the first it to put a period at the end of the climax of the story, the other is to skip forward in time and tell the tale of where the main character(s) end up. Cliff hangers are great for short stories, or if you plan a sequel, but I'm a sucker for the 'and-they-lived-happily-ever-after' ending, and most of my novels end this way. After putting the characters I've come to love and admire through adversity and sometimes a living hell, I feel I owe them that. Most of my final chapters occur days or months after the climax. My record was in That Dog Don't Bark; the final chapter occurs 25 years after Jackson and Angel's triumph over the sex slave gang they face off against.
That's my take on character development for a novel, and I only know what I know, so your mileage may vary.
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