Breathing Life into your Characters

If you want your reader to care about your characters, you have to make them so alive that they will step off the page. Your readers should continue thinking about those characters long after they have closed the last page of your book. Think about some of the characters you've met in literature. Who are your favourites? Do you feel as if they are alive, or actually lived in some part of the world, even though you never physically met them? Why do or did they seem so alive to you? Character development is one of those elements of writing that you will need to master before you even begin writing your book.

Analysis is a tool every writers should be prepared to use during their apprenticeship. Look at the writings of your favourite authors and try to see what they did to make their characters come to life. What do you know about the characters? Make a list. Don't list what the author 'told' you, but what you deduced on some other level. Look at the clues you, as a reader, were given by the writer - the character's upbringing and traumas they or someone close to them suffered. Everything that happened to them before they stepped into your book will direct their actions.

Humans are moved to do the things they do because they are motivated by some force, either external or internal. You have to give your characters the motivation to act in the ways that they will do in your book. Your characters will have to be well-rounded and do only those things that would fit in with their make-up. Don't 'tell' your readers all about them; plant clues and let the reader fill in the blanks. This will make that character more real to them than if you had placed a photograph on the page. Descriptions are just that - words to describe - but actions, as we all know, speak louder than words.

Make your characterts luminous so that your readers will continue to wonder about their lives, long after the book story is ended.