Advice on: Characters

1)      DO NOT KEEP YOUR CHARACTERS ON A LEASH

You have your characters all picked out, you’ve made them real people with real emotions and flaws, and you’ve begun your story.  But where do your characters go from there? DO NOT KEEP YOUR CHARACTERS ON A LEASH!  This is very important.  I don’t know if it’s ever the same for you, but often when I’m writing I find that my characters that I created suddenly have a mind of their own.  They end up telling me what they want to do, what they want to say, and how they are feeling.  It’s important to listen to your characters when they try to tell you something.  You may have an outline, you may think you know where the story is going, but…do you really?  If your characters don’t fit into the mold of your outline partway through the story, don’t squish them into it!  After all, isn’t it technically their story?  When I listen to my characters, what comes out can be very surprising and I might never have thought of that without their urging…but it is often very good.  So listen to your characters. 

2)      MAKE SURE YOUR CHARACTERS CHANGE

So you’ve made sure you are listening to your characters and letting them lead the way...but sometimes they do need to be helped to choose the right direction when it comes to their emotions, physical status, or something that is changing in them throughout the course of the story.  Your characters should be somehow different than when they started and it must be a natural changing – you can’t just suddenly have someone be more trustful, they have to gradually learn.  Some things about them can naturally be sudden, but others cannot and sometimes you have to help them along in the right direction.

I hope these suggestions aid you in character and story development.