A Writer's Guide to Character Development

[Prof. Sky Alton]

Characters are the key to your story. Even more than a strong plot or a believable setting, characters are what make readers keep reading. They’re our point of connection with what’s going on and we enjoy watching them struggle, grow and succeed.
How do you make your characters ones people will want to follow? Unfortunately, there is no set formula of strengths, weaknesses and quirks that will do this. The only way is to try to gather together some of the elements of a person, tie them together with a name and chuck them into a situation to see what happens. The following 5 prompts should hopefully give you a solid start and set you on the road to populating your fictional world with people who seem far from fictional.

Part 1: A Face in the Crowd
Part 2: The Voice
Part 3: Just the Essentials
Part 4: Get Disruptive
Part 5: C is for Change