How I Create Characters

Hint: it begins with a lot of questions...

🚨 Don’t forget the new pre-order giveaway I’m hosting for The Hunting Moon. You can instantly gain access to my Beginner’s Guide to Revising a Novel course and a live workshop too—all you have to do is submit your receipt.

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Helen asked:

The question about developing characters: how do you go about developing characters? The characters in your stories always feel so real that you could spend an evening in the pub with them, so how do you do it?? And linking to things you’ve already written is perfectly ok, I may have read them but my brain is mush so I can’t remember anyway hahaha

First off, thanks, Helen. 😂 I’m thrilled you’d want to spend a night in the pub with Aeduan or Vivia or Darian. And thank you so much for supporting me as a paid subscriber!

Second off, I thought this would be the perfect time to share a lesson from the How I Write a Novel course in my upcoming Academy.

This is only for paid subscribers, but it is the entire lesson from the not-yet-course. May it help you in your own character creation process.

And once more: if you want early access to my Beginner’s Guide to Revising a Novel course, then enter the pre-order giveaway for The Hunting Moon here!

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Lesson 3: Character Creation

Whose story is it?

When I start sitting down to really dig into a new novel idea, I always spend the most time on character.

Yes, character often goes hand-in-hand with the world-building (we are products of our world, aren’t we?), but ultimately character is the most important piece of the novel-writing puzzle for me. Why? Because without a character, I have no story.

I can have a great world, but if there’s no one to fill it…then big whoopteedoo.

I can have an epic plot, but if there’s no one to make the choices that drive the action…then again, big whoopteedoo.

It should therefore come as no surprise that I will spend months, even years developing characters. They make or break the story for me. If I don’t connect and hear a character’s voice, then I know now is not the time to start writing!

The BIGGEST mistake I’ve made in the past was writing books before I could “hear” a character’s voice.

Or rather, I should say attempting to write because what always followed was a lot of wasted words and heartache. Two examples that come to mind are A Dawn Most Wicked and Sightwitch. Both were novellas for characters in my Something Strange & Deadly and Witchlands series, respectively, and in THEORY, they seemed easy. Sure, I could write stories about two secondary characters, right? I knew those characters, didn’t I?

Ha. It’s one thing to write about how someone perceives a character; it’s quite another to have to get into their head. Sure, I could understand Daniel and Ryber on a surface level, but I’d never actually heard their voices.

No surprise, those two novellas had more false starts and wasted words than any project I’ve ever written (except for maybe Windwitch, but we’ll get to that beast below).

What they both needed was simmer time. A lot more simmer time. With A Dawn Most Wicked,  I wasn’t able to take that time. And though I’m supremely proud of the story that came out in the end, I could have saved myself so much misery if I’d been able to wait a few years before drafting it.