Character Development for Fiction

In fiction, writers represent and develop characters for the sake of their stories.  Sometimes a piece of literature is all about the characters; sometimes the characters are fairly dispensable because the story is more about the plot.  Before the 1600's, writers had their characters doing a lot, but didn't reveal much of the character's inner life.  Much of our oldest heroic poetry and stories are about great exploits of strong men.

In real life, how do we know about another person?  How can we tell what they think or what motivates them?  In addition to what a person actually says, we look at facial expressions and other non-verbal cues. We expect that his actions will show us what's going on in his mind.  How do we get inside a character's mind?

In critical analysis, characters are either flat (simple), round (complex), static (stay the same) or dynamic (changing).  We learn about characters either directly (from specific information given from the narrator) or indirectly (through what he/she or the other characters say or do).  It takes a bit of perspective on the part of the reader to step back and remember that the character is an intentional creation of the author.

Below are some questions to ask as you're "unpacking" a character and the way in which the author develops that character:

-- Physical appearance:  How does he/she look?  How much description does the author give? What does the level of description tell you about the character?

-- Speech:  How does the character speak?  How do others respond to the speech of the character?  What level of education, intelligence, or training does the speech reveal?  Does the speech match the surroundings?  Is it plausible?

-- Thoughts:  How does the character think?  How deep into the consciousness does the narrator dive?  Do the thoughts match the actions?

-- Are the characters representations of a type?  A caricature or symbol?

-- Do they have traits that contradict"  Is this intentional and therefore causing internal conflict?  Is it bad writing or part of the author?

-- What changes does the character go through?  What are the step of this change?  Is this process realistic?

-- What problems does the character have?  How does he solve them?  What does this tell you about the character?

-- What is his/her general mood?  Does it change?  Do you have any background information to explain it?  Is it realistic and does it fit the situation?

-- Does the character experience an epiphany or turning point?  What do these reveal?

-- How do the characters relate to one another?  Are they believable?

-- How do we learn about their inner lives?  What do we know about their ideas, ambitions, fears, etc.