Understanding the Complexities Behind Crafting Character Progression Skills
Character development is a complex and challenging aspect of storytelling, as it requires creating multi-dimensional, evolving characters whose growth feels authentic and integral to the story. Balancing this with plot progression without letting characters become plot devices demands skill and intentional effort.
Meg, the creator of Novelty Revisions, a website dedicated to helping writers put their ideas into words, acknowledges the responsibility of creating a backstory for a fictional character and controlling their life, including making bad things happen to them and showing them how to overcome. She emphasizes the importance of a story's main characters transforming significantly from the start to the finish.
Writing hundreds of stories that miss the mark in one or more of a book's most important elements is common. However, developing characters fully takes a significant amount of writing experience. Even with all the preparation, there will still be surprises along the way in character development.
The Challenges of Character Development
One of the key reasons character development is difficult is balancing plot and character. Characters can easily become pawns of the plot, losing depth, or conversely, the plot may stall if character arcs do not move forward naturally. Creating believable, evolving personalities is another challenge. Characters need flaws, internal conflicts, and growth to avoid seeming one-dimensional or static. Connecting characters’ backstories and motivations to present actions also requires thoughtfulness to maintain narrative coherence and realism.
Improving Character Development
To improve character development, writers can make the plot driven by character decisions, ensuring characters stay active agents influencing the story rather than passive reactors. Designing conflicts that challenge and evolve the character is another effective strategy, as challenges should push characters out of comfort zones so growth emerges naturally from story events.
Using character flaws thoughtfully is crucial. Selecting impactful flaws aligned with story themes can deepen character complexity and create meaningful growth arcs. Showing traits through actions, not just description, engages readers to infer character depth, making characters feel more real. For authenticity, writers should study professions or lifestyles unlike their own to accurately portray characters’ perspectives.
Using tools like detailed character profiles or prompts can also generate well-rounded characters. Structured exercises (including AI-assisted prompts) that explore psychology, speech patterns, motivations, and relationships can help create characters that resonate with readers.
By consciously weaving plot and character growth together and focusing on authentic, well-rounded characterization, writers can craft compelling, believable characters that propel their stories effectively. Remember, even the most dynamic characters don't develop themselves; writers must have a starting point and let their interest and excitement carry them forward.
[1] The Write Practice [2] Writing Cooperative [3] C. S. Lakin [4] Writers Helping Writers [5] Helping Writers Become Authors
- To prevent characters from becoming mere plot devices, it's essential to craft their lifestyles and home-and-garden settings in a way that reflects their personalities and influences their choices, ensuring a balanced character and plot development.
- For a more authentic, evolving character, Meg, the founder of Novelty Revisions, suggests researching lifestyles related to the character's profession or personal background, as understanding their social environment can enrich their home-and-garden setting and enhance their character development.
