Character development
Illustration by Tim Martin
My next novel centres on a single character … or so I thought.
The more I work on the premise of the story, the more my initial thoughts have changed, and now I have a cast of characters.
As a novel novice, it turns out I have two protagonists and an antagonist. I also have two sidekicks and a goal. There are two protagonist helpers, two antagonist helpers and a further eight people, but I don't yet know what their definition is.
I have been reading a book named Story Genius, by Lisa Cron, and it turns out I have been doing it all wrong. My first two novels contained embellished semi-autobiographical content, so the characters came easily. My new novel is pure imagination, and is already proving harder.
Lisa Cron suggests throwing countless external events and challenges at a character is not the way to develop a story. The story is based on knowing the character. It makes sense, but given these people are imaginary, it is hard to do. At least, I am finding it hard to do.
The book highlights that no character is born on page one of the story (unless they are a newborn). If a character is thirty, they have thirty years of experience to guide them. Even a newborn has around nine months of development history. This history and the characters’ belief systems are what the author must tap into.
To make the characters believable, they have to act like you and me. They cannot turn up on page one and then react to things. Why did they do that? Why do they think that way? What would they do in this situation? Are they introverted or extroverted? What coffee would they drink and why? It is hard work.
All stories will have a main character or characters transform from one state to another by the end of the book. This means they have to be in a situation where they must change in some way. They must have a fear or a misbelief they must overcome. See. This is hard when all you have is a blank sheet of paper, a pen, and an imagination. It is hard to do it once, and I have to do it many times for many characters.
Development tools
To learn more, I have watched a few videos on YouTube. I have read a few articles and blog posts. I have read helpful prompts in an app I am using named Story Planner. There is so much advice that it has become overwhelming.
A colleague recently asked, “If you can be under-whelmed and overwhelmed, what is the right amount of whelm?” I had no answer at the time, but my response to feeling overwhelmed has been to create my own character template to help describe my cast.
If you would like a copy of the template, you can download it: I provide it in both Docx and plain text/Markdown formats.
I have also started to use an app named Mindly. "Mindly"). Mindly is a mind mapping tool, but it has a particular way of presenting the information that appealed to me. It is a little different to other mind mapping tools in that it always presents the information in one way. It presents layers as concentric circles where items look like planets.
I can add a title, then add connections or categories. Each item enables a sub-layer where one or more item can exist. I can add images, links and notes, and can color-code for ease of identification.
You can see how Mindly looks and works in the three images below. This is how I get from the novel title to a protagonist. See, a mindmap with a difference.
I can expand the map to show The entire universe. I can now see everything and everyone all at once.
The cast of Boxed
Three of these characters appear in one or more of my first two novels. I have a Mindly map for each novel, but have yet to join them up. I am looking forward to doing that. When I link them up, it will be a huge benefit to me as I can see everyone and how they relate.
What’s in a name
Giving characters names is the enjoyable aspect of character development. There are numerous methods to achieve this. You can utilise free online name generators, apps like Scrivener incorporate name generators, or you can rely on your creativity. Alternatively, you can combine and match elements, as I did.
A few of my cast members’ names are inspired by or directly derived from songs or bands I like. A couple are products of my imagination. The remaining names are the result of conversations with ChatGPT. I provided prompts such as popular girl names. Once I selected one, I requested ten last names until I found one I preferred. I also asked for twenty names of female journalists from a range of countries. After selecting what I liked, I repeated the process for male journalists. Eventually, my cast took shape.
As I’ve mentioned before, I now need to introduce some internal conflict for them, and then I should be ready to start plotting!
So that's it. I am inventing a world where soon I will think of these imaginary characters as real people. Now that will annoy my imaginary friend and inner critic, Eric. 🤭
My Boxed cast
Dan Cooper - Protagonist
Arabella Stark - Protagonist
Abby Harper - Goal
Genevieve Morton-Rees - Antagonist
Ant McDonought - Sidekick
Isabel Fitzgerald - Sidekick
Rollo Morton-Rees - Antagonist helper
Emily Tyler - Protagonist helper
Carla Adam’s - Protagonist helper
Richard Renfrew - tbc
Delphine Garnier - tbc
Marisol Vega - tbc
Hiroko Hoshino - tbc
Victoria Hawke - tbc
Isabel Cortés - tbc
Julien Moreau - tbc
Casey Maxwell - Antagonist helper
Haruto Sato - tbc
I am sure over the coming months the characters and the cast will change, but here, in March 2025, this is what I have to work with.
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