Character Development
Creating a Methodology
I’ve been working a lot on character development recently.
About 4-ish days ago I attempted to make a mood board for one of my MMCs and I realized that I didn’t know too much about him at all. I made a mental note to spend some time dedicated to his development. Which is good in theory, but when it comes to remembering stuff like mental notes, my memory is absolute shit. About 2-ish days ago I attempted to make a mood board of a different MMC. Surprise, surprise - I didn’t truly know much about him either (although, at that point, my brain did showcase the mental note I had previously forgotten about for the first MMC).
I’ve been so focused on my FMC lately that the MMCs have sort of fallen to the side (sorry guys!). So far in my writing journey, I’ve just been writing as I go along so that the story in my head gets on paper, but I don’t think that’s going to be sustainable in the long run.
Have you all heard of the whole “planner” vs. “pantser” thing in writing?
The planners develop their detailed outlines prior starting to write and the pantsers just start writing and develop everything as they go along (coming from the phrase “by the seat of your pants”). I definitely started out as a pantser, but I’m learning that the pantser method includes a lot of difficulties. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to be a full-on planner, but I do want to work on finding a balance that suits me. I bought these nifty little worksheets that help you plan your scenes, develop your characters, and more.
But back to the characters.
I’m going to keep trying to create mood boards for each of them. I’ll undoubtedly be going back to change things as time goes on, but that’s the point, right? Creating a mood board was what alerted me to this issue to begin with - looking at my characters through a different perspective showed me that I don’t know much besides a general idea of how they look and how they act in the scenes I’ve already written. If I didn’t catch that, I would’ve read through my first draft and realized they are flat characters that readers can’t truly get to know.
The mood boards will be a great exercise. The worksheets are going to be a useful tool that gets me thinking about a variety of character facets. And I think that I’m also going to introduce a new little writing prompt activity. I’ll spend some time creating random scenarios (for example: decorating for Christmas, opening a stubborn jar, finding a spider in the room, driving and seeing an injured animal on the road, etc.), and every few days I’ll write a short scene that shows how each character would act in those situations. Exercises like that will allow me to flesh out character nuances and gain a deeper understanding of who they are. Combine that with the mood boards, worksheets, and whatever else I come up with - I definitely think that will get me on the right track with character development and I’m excited to get started!