Samhain Publishing Ltd Weblog

Developing Character

Recently, I’ve been doing a lot more reading than writing. (Before you slap my hands, I should add that I’ve been traveling a lot. I need silence to write, but can read in the middle of chaos. And no, I haven’t tried Selena’s 39-cent tool yet, but plan to!)

One of the things I’ve tuned into is the way a writer develops his/her character. Some of the books I enjoy rely on descriptions of behavior. Memorable characters move in memorable ways (e.g. Quasimodo). Other writers distinguish their characters by their habits (e.g. nail-biters, toe tappers, Ben & Jerry’s bingers…). And still others rely on quirks of voice (e.g. Southern accents, street voice, cop-talk etc.) As a reader, I am most impressed by the latter. If I can ‘hear’ the character’s voice in my head and it sounds distinctly different from all the other characters, I am sucked in. (My favorite example is ‘Lula’ in Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series.) As a writer, I find it easy to develop characters with quirks of dress, habit or behavior. But I find it much more challenging to give them a voice that is unique.

Over the summer, my goals are to listen to the ‘characters’ in my daily interactions (e.g. the homeless man who always asks me if my coffee is hot, the teenager with the six nose rings who watches the neighbor’s cats, and the six year old who thinks she’s sixteen…to name a few), and write as much as I can to practice this skill. Hopefully, you’ll hear some unique voices in my next novel!

What modality of character development do you find most natural? Most challenging? Think about your favorite literary characters and tell me what makes them stand out in your memory.