When I started writing my novella three years ago (as of now it’s been one year since I completed it), I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t have a plot except for one thing: Kaya would fall in love in the story. When I finished writing, I looked over it because I wanted to use this to start my adventure in publishing; I wanted this to be a novel that I would send to get agented and hopefully published.
When I looked over it, I noticed glaring issues, one of which what character.
While I had only one main character, there were other side characters: the two best friends, the love interest, the antagonist, and the love interest’s best friend. Besides the main character and the love interest, all of my other characters were one-dimensional, and though they had backstories, they didn’t really do anything to serve the plot. At one point, I had gotten two of the characters mixed up, and, since I was posting this on Wattpad at the time, no one noticed. That’s how forgettable the characters were.
So that was one thing that I needed to fix.
When you’re writing, your characters need to be memorable or at the very least distinct. The audience–and the author–shouldn’t be mixing up character names and personalities. Each character should be their own contained universe. After all, we may be the main character in our own story but we’re also the side character on someone else’s.
In my notes, each character had a background story, a personality, a hobby, a character trait that helped them stand out, but that wasn’t present in the main story. It should be present, because there are those of the opinion that if a side character has no purpose then they shouldn’t be there.
When writing, always add in little tidbits about the character that make them unique. Maybe they twirl the ends of their hair when they’re flirting, or they bite the inside of their cheek when they have something to say. Make your characters realistic, make them multi-dimensional, make them real.
Another thing that I noticed when it came to character in my writing was that the main character had no growth. Growth is essential to a character, whether the growth is bad or good. Growth can be shown through a characters actions when faced with a challenge. It can be shown through another character’s acknowledgement. If there is no growth, how can we know that a character has changed? If, at the beginning of the novel they would never admit they’re wrongdoing but is able do so at the end, are there places in the novel where the audience can see where they’re growing?
Make sure that your character is real. Observe people, do research, and learn what makes a character unique and how you can write them in a way that you can separate them from others.
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