The Write Stuff

Character Development Workshop – The Twelve Step Program for Avoiding Personality Disorder

By Sable Grey

Developing characters before writing may seem like a waste of time.  I know what you are thinking.  Sable, I just want to write. But being a published author isn’t just about thinking up a good story.  Sable, I just want readers to read my stories. No – not just because if that’s all you wanted you would just write your stories and offer them for free on your site.  You want to be published so readers will buy your stories and you get paid for them.  And to do that, writers must work on their craft.  Character development is part of that craft.

As a publisher, for me, one of the most irritating things to see is a manuscript that introduces two characters, and then midway through the story the characters become split personality behaving in ways that were not already established as part of who they were.  A heroine who is a go getter, no nonsense partner in a law firm that she fought to build from the ground up will not be the damsel in distress weeping in the corner when someone tries to blackmail her for money.  She also won’t be the woman who lets the hero tell her what is good for her.  By developing a character fully, the author knows the heroine and won’t make the mistake of allowing her to develop a personality disorder midway through, ruining the chance of publication.

I am starting with the heroine because many times authors are so excited about their Hugh Jackman look-alike hero that the heroine ends up being a two dimensional character – with obvious personality disorders as a result.   But the heroine is the most important character in a romance novel. Because more than 95% of romance readers are women, she is the character that the reader will most likely relate to first and who the reader will care about most in the story.  However, this process should be done for heroine AND hero.

While every author is different in how they go about developing their heroine, this is my step by step procedure for developing the leading ladies of my own books.

1. Name and physical description.  Not so much for the reader but for me to get a clear picture of the woman in my head.  So let’s name our heroine Eve.
2. Character Goals.  Every person has goals.  What are your heroine’s goals?  Does she want to start her own business?  Buy a house?  Go on a vacation and get away from a psychotic ex husband?
3. What is her motivation?  Now this is different than personal goals.  If your heroine wants to start her own business, her motivation might be to reach success so she will never have to worry about how to pay the light bill again.  The Goals are the “what”, and the motivation is the “why”.
4. What past events cause inner conflict?  She grew up in a poor household with a mother that was not allowed to work and a controlling father who told his children that nobody loves those who have nothing.  Due to depression, her mother killed herself when she was only nine.
5. What are the effects of that conflict on the heroine’s personality and life?  She married a man much like her father right out of college.  Divorced and is now a workaholic who has no time for relationships.  She is untrusting of men and looks down on women who are not as independent as she is.
6. What are her worst fears?  Unless she is a successful businesswoman she has no worth and no one will ever love her.  Yeah, deep huh?  How about this to boot, she is scared that if she doesn’t succeed it will mean she is weak like she perceives her mother was?
7. How are her fears faced in the story?  (For the hero, what must he do that is heroic when facing those fears?) Psychotic ex husband sets her new business on fire and burns down all her dreams.  He’s stalking her down and wants her dead – she’s placed in a victim situation.
8. What lesson(s) is she supposed to learn by the end of the story?  That it’s doesn’t mean she’s weak to need someone.
9. What obstacles MUST your heroine go through in the story in order for her to learn her lesson(s)?

Okay so now we have a character that readers will care about.  It’s a pretty good start.  But characters to be believable can’t be just black or white. Let’s add a little shading.

1. What is something your heroine is responsible for that has nothing to do with her goals or motivation?  So Eve, despite her struggle to prove her father wrong, goes to the old folks home to visit him every Sunday.  She talks to him about her work but never receives acknowledgement for her success because he’s not all there in his head.  And just to soften her up a bit more, Eve has a cat named CrissCross who sits in her lap while she works at her computer after she comes home.
2. Habits help make characters individuals.  A problem that many authors have is giving the same habits to all their characters.  A lot of winking back and forth at one another when they say something clever or everyone in the story can raise one eyebrow.  It becomes very silly after awhile.  Each character should have individual habits.  What are your heroine’s?  And remember not to give the same habits to another character.
3. Dialogue – this is one of my own pet peeves.  “Hey let’s go to car.” And the hero responds, “Hey that’s a good idea.”  If everyone in the manuscript sounds like the same person when the dialogue is read aloud, the characters have not been developed. What does your character sound like?  Are there certain phrases she uses often?  And remember, that people from certain different places have little phrases of their own that are fun to build your character with.

While this twelve step way of developing a character is not a full worksheet, it is a good start to use when plotting the story and working in the character’s actions and reactions to the plot and can eliminate those pesky personality disorder mistakes.

ABOUT SABLE GREY

Sable Grey has been a published author since 2004, a cover artist who works in both electronic and print formats, and is a literary agent with her own company, Sable Grey, LLC.  She is also one of the owners of Cobblestone Press, an online publisher of erotic romance since 2006.  Visit her website at http://www.sablegrey.net