Hi, writers! I hope you enjoyed your holiday season and have come out on the other side feeling rested and energized. Holidays can also be uniquely draining times, especially if you’re the sort of person who thrives with routine and structure. That’s me! I enjoy Christmas and the extra family time. I also enjoy returning to our normal rhythms of school and work.

Recently, I’ve had a lot of thoughts rolling around in my head about characters. One of the best parts of stories is characters. Maybe it’s even THE best part. And every writer wants to write captivating, compelling characters. All over the internet, you can find character questionnaires and helpful resources. I’ll link to a few of my favorites as I write this series.

If you’ve hung out on GoTeenWriters.com for any amount of time, you probably know that we rarely use words like “never” or “always,” nor do we ever claim that a technique is “the one right way” or even, “the absolute best way.” This series will be about discoveries I’ve made about character creation during my years of writing novels. While I hope all of them will be helpful or affirming to you in some way, it’s more likely that some will help you and others won’t.

Discovery One: Characters are created within the writing of the story, not separately.

Sometimes we approach character creation as its own piece of the puzzle. We develop our plot and our setting and our characters. But the characters are formed in the creation of the story, and the story is formed by the development of the characters.

Think of Frodo carrying the ring to Mordor. The Frodo who exists at the beginning of the book isn’t the same as the Frodo at the end of the book. His character has been shaped by the journey to Mordor, and Middle Earth is in flux because of Frodo’s journey. Creating each individual piece—the character, the set, the plot—in a vacuum and then mixing them together is ineffective. They should be created alongside each other.

There are lots of questions to ask and tools that are helpful, but in doing those things you will only know about that character. You will actually know them when you have written their story. It’s like the difference of knowing about Taylor Swift because you’ve read some interviews and own all her albums, and knowing your best friend because you have shared experiences, everything from playing pranks on younger siblings to being a shoulder to cry on when her parents got divorced.

Because of the value of shared experiences, I don’t make myself do a bunch of character exercises before I write my manuscript. Sometimes, I don’t do any ahead of time. While I’m brainstorming a story, I might ask questions about my character, like, “What is her favorite childhood memory?” or, “What does he want most?” but only until I have enough information to start writing. Then, after I’ve written a few chapters, if I get stuck in a scene, I’ll pull out a piece of paper and do a character journal. Or if I’m doing dishes, I’ll think about what Enneagram number my character is or what word they would use to describe themselves or what they would say their greatest fear is. But mostly I figure out the answers to those questions as I write, because writing the story teaches me way more about my characters than doing a set of exercises beforehand.

So, if I don’t start discovering my characters until I start writing . . . where do I start?

Here’s what I’ve learned: baked into your story ideas are clues about the characters that you need. When I’m developing a story idea, I nearly always have some long, sloppy blurb I’ve written about what I think the book will be about. Below is an early version of a story description that I wrote for what became The Lost Girl of Astor Street.

For all her sixteen years, Piper Gray has been known for being sassy and mischievous, which is why no one expects her and Lydia Levine to be best friends. Lydia is an obedient, sweet, and genteel girl, and when she goes missing in the summer of 1919, it’s a shock to everyone. Girls just don’t get kidnapped from the Astor Street district of Chicago.

Piper is sure that wherever Lydia is, she can find her. After all, wasn’t she the one who solved the mystery of who had been damaging Mrs. Hemsworth’s prize lilies? No one at the police department, however, seems to recognize that Piper is an asset they need, and they’re about to learn what the administrators of Piper’s school already know—that Piper is determined, daring, and perhaps too clever for her own good.

She’s unwavering in her search for Lydia, even when the trails lead to undesirable Chicago neighborhoods and powerful mafia families. But what will she do when the trail leads right back to her own front door?

I wrote this blurb before I’d written any of the story. And if you’ve read the book, you know this isn’t an entirely accurate description of the final product, but it’s useful in showing how character traits are baked into story ideas at their inception.

Let’s look at the characters who are already there and how they’re described:

My main character, Piper: Because my story idea was about a girl who tenaciously looks for her missing best friend, I knew some things from the beginning. Piper needed to be determined, headstrong, confident, and loyal. I also knew she was rich because that was part of my story idea as well.

A side character, Lydia: Something I know from experience as a reader and writer is stories work better when characters are different from each other. Piper needed to be headstrong and determined, so that informed what kind of friends I wanted to surround her with. She doesn’t need a bunch of other headstrong and determined people.

Also, part of the mystery of Lydia’s disappearance is how sweet and kind and perfect Lydia is. How could something have happened to a girl like Lydia in an elegant neighborhood like this? So that helped shape my initial view of Lydia.

But if you go with straight opposites, you end up with readers scratching their heads and saying, “Why are these two even friends?” So I knew as I shaped the story that Lydia also had a touch of rebel to her, and that Piper had a soft heart.

Antagonists: If Lydia has disappeared, somebody is responsible for that. That somebody is my villain character. You may not have a true villain, and that’s just fine. Not every story needs one. But you will still have antagonists, which are simply characters who are getting in the main character’s way.

This doesn’t mean they’re necessarily bad guys. In a romance, actually, the antagonist is frequently also the love interest. It’s helpful to have them be people who have a reason to spend time with your main character because having them apart the whole story is tricky and rarely works well. Even when a villain is physically absent from a story, like Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, they should still be present in the minds of the characters.

K. M. Weiland wisely observed that your antagonist is the most important character in that the stronger you make them, the stronger your main character (and friends) must be to overcome them. We remember the story of David and Goliath because of what a frightening antagonist Goliath was. If there was no Goliath, there would be no need for a David to defeat him. You want to build a strong main character? Then build a Goliath of a villain.

Love interest(s): Obviously, this is optional. Because I really enjoy romance subplots, my love interest character is someone I try to figure out early.

I knew when I wrote the blurb that one of those policemen was going to be my love interest. Because it’s a YA novel, I also knew he needed to be a very young policeman. And I had to think about what kind of guy would be attracted to a girl like Piper. There’s no wrong answer to that, as evidence by the fact that we have expressions to cover both sides of the spectrum. We say, “Opposites attract” as well as, “Like attracts like” or, “Your vibe attracts your tribe.” I knew I could make Mariano a sweet, gentle soul or he could be headstrong and determined like Piper. In my first draft, I floundered as I got to know Mariano Cassano. That’s okay! Again, we’re just looking for some general impressions for getting our story started, not a fully developed character before we write our opening sentence.

Other supporting characters: There are some implied side characters in that blurb. We’ve got neighbors and a school administration. Piper is a teenage girl living at home, so she has some kind of family who she lives with. She lives in a very nice neighborhood, so I thought they possibly had household staff as well.

Creating your supporting cast is where it becomes very easy to create a bloated character list as you’re trying to make the story feel “real.” In real life, the popular group at school might have twelve kids in it. That won’t work in a novel. Or you might be best friends with two Madisons and a Mackenzie. It’s real . . . but that would get confusing in a book very fast. Or in real life, Debbie might be your hairdresser, Mike is your volleyball coach, and Trina is your mom’s best friend. When writing a book, you want to combine roles whenever you can. So Debbie, Mike, and Trina can now become Demitri, who cuts your hair, coaches your volleyball team, and talks on the phone with your mom daily. A generally good guideline is to create each character with purpose. If you can cut them and the plot won’t change, you likely don’t need them.

Once I’ve mined everything I can about my characters (and my setting, plot, and theme) from the blurb, it’s time for me to start writing. I like to start at the beginning of the story, but not every writer does. Maybe you don’t know your beginning, but you know a different scene that needs to happen. In a current WIP of mine, I didn’t know where to start the story, but I knew that at some point the investigator would need to interview my main character about the events of an evening. So, I started there.

While, yes, we want to be writing useful scenes, at this point in the story development, when we’re fuzzy on all the details, the real purpose for me is just to get in there and experience the characters in their setting. Will you write them perfectly the first time? Nope. Will they probably read pretty thin? Yep. I know that feels frustrating in the moment, when there’s a gap between what you feel about the characters and how they’re actually coming out on the page, but try to think about this relationship the way you do other relationships. If you’ve only known someone for a short time, you understand that there are limits to how much you can know, understand, and trust them. It’s similar with the characters you’re putting on the page. You will have to spend some time together on the page and in the story to really understand and capture them well.

By the end of the first draft, I always have a much clearer idea of who all these people are. I have a better handle on who needs to be drawn out more and who, sadly, needs to be cut. There are no shortcuts to this knowledge, no magic ten questions you can ask, and no formula for creating characters that will make you a bestseller. The best starting point for creating compelling characters is to invest the time writing their story as best you can. The rest we can work on in edits.

Which character is usually your favorite to create? The main character? Side characters? Antagonists?

Click here to read the next post in this series, How To Understand What’s Behind Your Characters’ Decisions.

Stephanie Morrill writes books about girls who are on an adventure to discover their unique place in the world. She is the author of several contemporary young adult series, as well as two historical young adult novels, The Lost Girl of Astor Street and Within These Lines. Within These Lines was a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection, as well as a YALSA 2020 Best Fiction for Young Adults pick. Since 2010, Stephanie has been encouraging the next generation of writers at her website, GoTeenWriters.com, which has been on the Writer’s Digest Best Websites for Writers list since 2017. She lives in the Kansas City area, where she loves plotting big and small adventures to enjoy with her husband and three children. You can connect with Stephanie and learn more about her books at StephanieMorrill.com, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.