Guidance in Character development and Character Resumes



In writing, it is crucial to have believable, complex characters for a successful storytelling. There are ways to develop these characters.

Characters must be concrete. This includes precise homes, medical histories, political opinions, taste in furnishings, and possessions. These concrete aspects suggest more information regarding the story you are writing.

You can describe the life of the characters by using symbolic association to things or settings. Or you can form symbolic associations with the names of the characters, similar to the writing in comic or ironic writing.

Through speech idiosyncrasies, the personality of each character is conveyed. Along with speech or dialect, content and manner should also reflect social and ethnic background.

The behaviour should be consistent, but as the story goes on, it should reveal other and new aspects of the character’s personality. Behaviour should reveal the character’s ways of coping under stress.

It is important that the characters have ample motivation and adequate reasons for taking the actions they take in the story. This credibility of action is bolstered by the character having believable skills.

Characters should ideally react to each situation by changing, whether for better or for worse. If the character remains the same, the reader should know the reason or factors that prevented the character from developing.

It is useful to know more important information about the character by filling out a resume for them. It helps in making your characters real. It also provides helpful ideas on everything about the character’s motivation and circumstances so that it is easier to show the character’s traits. A character resume serves as a useful reminder of the issues that the character needs to address in order to develop.

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