How To Improve Character Writing and Avoid Pitfalls

If you’re reading this, you probably like to write stories. Stories consist of epic narratives or something as mundane as a time you went to order at a restaurant. In all stories of great significance to people, there are always people or characters behind it. Character writing is an art, one of bringing a person to life who may not have even existed in the first place. There are best practices and things you can fall into that act as traps, ruining the writing experience and inhibiting what might have been an otherwise incredible narrative. Within this post, I hope to convey some of my experience in ways you can try.

• Ideas
• Piftalls
• Summary
  
  

Idea 1: Leave Space For Characters To Breathe

First recommendation I’ve got for you is to leave space for your characters to breathe. I’ve seen people that have a 50 page Google Doc for each character and by the time they were done with it, they were too overwhelmed to write the character. Is that bad? No, but if its too much you’re forcing yourself to stick to, it’s going to become debilitating.

Comic book characters especially need to breathe and have life. They react, have feelings in the moment, and if you’re constantly going back to a reference sheet on every occasion, it’s going to lose the life that spontaneous reactions can give. It also tends to hamper the development of the character and no character remains stagnant for the entire story.

For art, you’re likely to have a very detailed reference sheet with as many notes as you can muster but for writing characters, the objective is to find their core and what matters to these characters today. Not just in their backstories. Once you’ve been able to find that, you’ll be able to write these characters like they’re real people.

Idea 2: Put Context To The Character

Second recommendation is to put context to the character. You’ll see this a lot with pilot episodes for cartoons and TV shows, where the characters you see tend not to line up one-for-one with the characters they become for the rest of the series. This is because the vision of the character in the pitch was very different from the vision you begin to form as you see these characters move and begin to have life.

Often times you’ll see groups on platforms like Discord and chat applications where you can find people to roleplay with, which gives you the chance to actually step into the character’s shoes. Another way is writing scenarios and seeing the way the characters you make would work through it. In the same way we as people can’t measure our character without our own actions, we can’t understand the characters we write without seeing them living. You don’t know a person until you see them in the moment.

Pitfall 1: Try not to overdevelop

First tip I’d give is not to overdevelop. What do I mean by that? Simply put, it means you should keep your characters as flexible as you can while still remaining identifiable. I’ve written a lot of stories over the years, and the biggest mistake I’ve made is overcommitting to an early vision of the character that doesn’t fit. You end up feeling out of place, like you’re not built for the story, and don’t actually have a place in it. Some characters get introduced without much vision to them but you end up catching that vision as you write.

Once again, I must reiterate, DO NOT go too complex and overdevelop. The vision changes. Instead of a roadmap, keep a compass and memorize opportunities along the way. You’re better off making a course as the story develops than locking yourself into one road map for the story. Of course, don’t feel bad pursuing that course but make it organic, be prepared for it to change as time goes on and as your story moves. Just like with life, nothing stays entirely on course without any complications. That’s part of what makes life worth living.

Pitfall 2: Don’t overcommit to the moment

Second, don’t overcommit to the moment. People change but it comes gradually. Change comes from consistent effort towards a direction, and it usually comes slowly. If a change happens in the character at the moment, they’re still that person but they’re putting in great effort to make changes in that moment and that’s what you want to portray. When I say “don’t overcommit to the moment” I mean that you cannot take the person out of who they’ve been and change them entirely at a moment’s notice, no matter how powerful that moment is.

Conclusion

Characters are always meant to feel alive, and understanding the ways the human condition plays into them is important for becoming a great writer. Gaining a fundamental grasp of these characters is more important than being able to write their entire life’s story, because often times you’re going to write the rest of their life’s story as part of the story.

People grow, change, and stay the same in different ways and at differing degrees but grasping the flexibility and rigidity of characters when you write is what it means to write great characters. It’s a tough skill but it’s what gives you the true vision of who it is you’re bringing into this story and about yourself.

Hopefully this has helped you discover new things about yourself and given you new directions to take your stories. My hope in making these blog posts is also to build a place for discussion so please share your thoughts in the comments and let me know your take on this.

For this week’s writing challenge, I’d like to see some of the characters you make and record what matters most to them. What their compass is. Share it on social media with us or send them in via email from the information on our Contact Us page where we can see them. While you’re still here, check out some of our other work down the line by clicking the link here to subscribe to our newsletter: Subscribe . For more blog posts from Dream Junction Comics, check Blog Posts for more.