What do you do for good character development when writing?

It helps to write up a character sheet on each character where you make up and list certain characteristics of your characters. Things like their religion, favorite food, education, childhood memories, etc. Things that humanize your characters and make them seem more real in your own mind. Then you draw your written characterizations in your story from there.

You definitely have to know everything about your character before you’re writing, otherwise you might have inconsistencies and they won’t seem real.
You have to know how they’d react to every situation.

The best way is just simply writing a character map and writing down everything you can about them beforehand. Make sure they’re balanced, real, dynamic, and believable.

I ask as many questions of them and put them into as many impossible situations as possible. I try to write much of it down so I don’t have to remember it all. I acknowledge that some of it will be wrong as I start to write, so that I’m unafraid of editing.

Although some people find value out of giving their characters the same ol’ questionnaire, I find each character to be her own challenge, and worthy of her own consideration.

Sometimes I really get into the physical-description aspect and spend time looking for a real person who fills the bill—often an actor whom I would cast in the part. But I found one of my characters at a career workshop, one at a seminar on writing humor, and one was just a guy I chased out of the opera house at the end of a performance. Having a vivid mental image helps me a lot.

I have done extensive profiling exercises on some characters (was amazed to discover that the favorite color of one of them was white!), and things do emerge that way, but maybe not enough to be worth the trouble.

For main characters I need basic biographical information: full name, date of birth (month day, year), place of residence, birthplace, parents’ names, educational history, profession, etc., if applicable. And I need to establish personality traits, strengths and weaknesses, primary relationships, and so on. These are all necessary to orient me to my character and his or her place in the story.

Beyond that, though, I tend to just wait and see what develops. Often I have to go back and change things I started with—sometimes really drastically. Isn’t it great that we can do that? Power!

I just start writing about what they do and how they react to the things and people around them. When I write a story I don’t always know the character until I see him develop in front of me. Inconsistency (of a minor sort, generally) isn’t a problem; humans aren’t always so consistent, are they?

I usually sit back & imagine their life, try to actually live it in your head until you understand how they would react to any circumstance.

I usually pattern them after people I know that are like that. I just think what would so and so think etc. It’s pretty easy to get a certain type of character down if you just think about people you have met that have those kind of characteristics and what they have said and done and the likely reasons why. The character seems to really come alive when you do that.

Drawing them helps, if you’re any good at that. (And even if you’re no good at it, or so I’ve been told.)

And I “talk” to them. I write questions and then write what I imagine they would say back, until we’re having a realistic conversation.

I’m not particularly good at character development, though. I can usually make my characters “come alive” without too much effort, but they won’t always be very interesting characters.

@gememers: okay, first, “character development” means how the character develops in the story after the story begins. so, character development versus developing the character.

things to remember: at least in a naturalistic work of fiction, every person thinks of themselves as the main character of their own story. the lead character. the main character. even if they fawn on another character, even if they follow a cause, they think of themselves as the main character.

unimaginatively plotted stories—not that you have to come up with an unpredictable plot—have characters doing just the expected thing and especially having the other characters only exist in relationship to the protagonist. if you make the other characters multi-dimensional, the main character will also seem more real. how that works, I don’t really know. it works, though.

if you think, “why would X do that in that in that particular situation? I’d do some other thing…” go with it. have characters make the unpredictable choices.

also think that characters think differently. have that inform their actions and the way that they talk.

work out the absolute boundaries of the characters. what would break them, what would push them into drawing upon their strength. what would they, under no circumstances do, and what might they do if pushed and what would push them. (it would probably depend on a relationship they had with another person or with their nation, religion, etc.)

I don’t find the list method useful. you want to develop a character not list characteristics.

though it depends, it works best to have the story and characters work in concert, with each reinforcing the other.