But the remaining 90% is what makes characters actually feel well-drawn, flawed, and real - as though they could live outside of the book itself. The audience will only see a fraction (maybe 10%) of all that the writer knows about their character. In Creating Unforgettable Characters: A Practical Guide to Character Development, Linda Seger compares the depth of a character to an iceberg. Only use what's relevant to the actual story - otherwise you risk turning off readers with the dreaded "info dump."īut the author always needs to understand their characters like the back of their hands. In fact, you shouldn’t try to pack every character detail into your novel. What’s the point of filling out a character template? I never end up using all the information in my story, anyway! That’s true.
By answering the questions on a character profile, an author can better understand that character’s life, personality, motivations, and story function in a novel. What is a character profile?Ī character profile is a detailed biography of a fictional character that covers everything from a character’s age and appearance to their relationships. In this post, we take you through all the steps that creating a character profile requires - and give you a character template that you can use with any story you’re writing. If you’re having these doubts, you might want to turn to the age-old solution: a character profile. How do I make sure my character has an arc?.But sharp character development is also one of the toughest hills to climb, especially if you’ve struggled to think through those tried-and-true questions that keep you up at night: Ask any great novelist and they’ll likely tell you that good writing starts with good characters.
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