For Part 1, click here!

Last time I was on here, I talked a bit about my journey to writing what I call “soul-deep” characters—characters that readers feel like they know inside out, who challenge them and with whom they can identify. We covered my first two tips for this: identifying the lens through which they view the world, and asking the question of who they have to BECOME to achieve their goal. Today we’re going to jump right in to tips 3 and 4.

What Is Their Gift?

I write faith-based fiction, so this is especially relevant in my space, but it’s something that can apply in any genre. We’ve all heard about interviewing your character or taking personality tests for them to determine their type on the different scales. This can certainly help you keep thoughts, reactions, and emotions consistent.

But I’ve started instead thinking of my characters in terms their spirits and the gifts that help them form communities with others. In the church we call these “Spiritual Gifts” and recognize them as coming from God and filling believers in some “extra plus” way—but we also recognize that they’re natural, and that most of us have leanings toward these things in general.

Here’s a list to get us started, along with my thoughts on how they might show up in our characters:

1. Administration – this is from a Greek word that means “to steer,” like on a ship. So this is someone who guides, directs, and keeps those around them on the path toward their goal.
2. Apostleship or missions – these are the people who believe so firmly in something that it becomes their life’s work to go to others and teach them about it; they are also very mobile, moving from place to place. You might see this as “wanderlust with a purpose.”
3. Discernment – these are the people who can also see through a liar, who see the good heart beneath the gruff exterior, who know the truth about someone.
4. Evangelism – this is, at its heart, being able to convince people and inspire them to believe in something. These people stir the hearts of others.
5. Exhortation or encouragement – these are the people who call out other characters. Sometimes it’s to show them their faults and sometimes their strengths. But always with the goal of helping them realize their own potential.
6. Faith – you know how some people just believe in something or someone, despite all evidence that they shouldn’t? It isn’t just naivete, and it isn’t being blind to faults or arguments. It’s a gift that enables them to do great things sometimes, often flying in the face of the “reasonable” and coming out victorious.
7. Giving – this is the character who is selfless, who will sacrifice their own goals for someone else’s or take a loss so that someone else might gain.
8. Healing – this could be the doctor or nurse who physically helps a character heal, or it could be the one swabbing emotional wounds and helping others overcome them.
9. Interpretation – literally this is someone who understands other languages (sometimes quite handy in a story!), but it can also be the person who can understand and translate one character’s motivations or words for others who just don’t get it.
10. Knowledge – this is actual book-learning, facts, and “smarts.” The experts in a field, the people who know how to do something and do it well. Not to be confused with…
11. Wisdom – the gift of knowing how to take facts and apply them to life, to answer moral questions of right and wrong, to make judgment calls.
12. Leadership – this one is closely associated with “administration” but has some differences too. The leader is best understood as a shepherd, who cares individually for those under his care. He’s less concerned with the journey than in how each traveler is doing along the way.
13. Mercy – this is the person who is always compassionate, who always seeks to understand others and loves them, even in our unlovable moments
14. Miracles – you know how some people seem like they can do the impossible? In a setting of faith this might mean parting the Red Sea or calming a storm, but in the natural setting it could simply be the one who does what no one else can in the exact moment it needs done.
15. Prophecy – literally “hearing from God” though we think of it as seeing the future. We’ve seen literal prophets or oracles in plenty of stories, but it could also be the person who knows something’s going to go right or go badly, who can see consequences others can’t—and who aren’t afraid to share their insights. Think of those characters whose “gut instincts” are always right.
16. Service – this can be the waitress, the orderly, the maid who literally serves, or just the person always eager to help in whatever way is needed.
17. Teaching – do you know any of those people who can’t help but instruct or teach in every single moment? Yep. They don’t need a classroom—they just want to share what they know and help others to grow.
18. Tongues – this is quite simply a gift with foreign languages; not necessarily with interpreting, as above, but in actually learning and using them.

If you take the time to determine what not only your main characters’ but also your secondary characters’ gifts are, then you’ll end up with a fictional community that can function or fail based on how they’re using or failing to use these gifts.

Moreover, you can explore how misusing gifts can result in faults, failures, antagonisms, and outright villainy—for instance, if someone with Knowledge chooses to deceive; if someone with Discernment chooses to manipulate; if someone with Administration steers people toward their own interests instead of the greater good or group’s good.

Let’s Practice! What gift or gifts does your main character have? What about your antagonist?

What Little Words Can You Add?

This one isn’t just for your main characters but can apply to ANY character in your book, but really work to add depth to them all. And it’s so, so simple.

Let’s look at how a few small words can entirely change how the reader perceives a character.

1. He pulled out his handkerchief. (Base)
2. He pulled out his ever-present handkerchief.
3. He actually pulled out a handkerchief.
4. He pulled out a pencil instead of a handkerchief.
5. He pulled out a blood-stained handkerchief.

See how just adding or changing a few words from the base sentence tells the reader something about the character—and also shows you what the POV character knows about them, or sees in that moment? They’d only know about an “ever-present handkerchief” or be surprised (in the “actually” example) if they were familiar with his habits. The pencil would show them that he’s distracted, or always focused on something other than the expected thing. Seeing a blood stain would tell them there’s something physically wrong with this guy.

I never actually plan these little things, they just pop up as I write—and then I double down on them. Never let accidental insights go unused. 😉 When they appear, make a note and then build on it. Let them help you add layers to your characters. Sometimes this is only done in edits, when you realize you dropped a helpful word or phrase in that you can then go back later and fully play out, and that’s totally fine. But as you read back over your manuscript, see where you can add these little things, or where you already have that you can expound on.

Let’s Practice! Take this sentence and add a few words or give it a new bent to give insight into the character: She had dreamed of this day.

Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award nominated author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary. You can learn more about her and her stories at www.RoseannaMWhite.com.