Read widely!

Now it might sound self-explanatory, but this is one of the best tips I can offer. Unfortunately, like lots of well-intentioned advice, it can be useless if you don’t know how to implement it. So, let me walk you through it!

Reading widely doesn’t just mean lots of books within the genre you’re writing. You need to read books from a few other genres, by an array of authors and even from different mediums. Granted, ‘characters’ in poetry aren’t going to be written in the same way as a novel structure, but you’ll still learn about descriptions and the art of painting a picture with less explicit phrasing.

While creating my main character Nadya in Tale of the Dragon Champion, I read fantasy books with popular female protagonists so I could see what everyone liked about them, and if they resonated with me. Without copying them, I could also lean into some of the traits that people liked, by making Nadya sarcastic and funny without being utterly disagreeable.

As this was a fantasy world set vaguely in an 1800s time setting, I looked to other books published in this period to learn about the norms, writing styles, and speech patterns of the time. That isn’t to say I tried to mimic them, but in reading Jane Austen and the Brontë’s helped me to learn about this and study their masterful female protagonists in Jane Eyre, Emma, and Elizabeth.

Then, there are the books I love from Matthew Reilly, who writes thrillers and adventure novels. These books focus far less on character and development, as they are primarily focused on the action. I loved his descriptions and wild scenes, but found that I really valued reading about the internal thoughts and struggles of characters.

I think you can begin to see how these different genres don’t really connect or share much in common, but they all taught me valuable lessons which I was able incorporate in my own story and heroine.

Know your characters

Now you don’t have to get a complete degree in this, but I found it both interesting and helpful to learn more about the human psyche. There are lots of ways to do this nowadays, from YouTube videos to blogs and articles to checking out books.

Ultimately, the goal is to understand a little more about what makes us all tick. For instance, the ways in which we grow up as children can form different ‘attachment styles’ in our later life. Does your book need to explain everything that happened in your characters’ childhood so you can explicitly state which attachment style your character has? Absolutely not, but it can add an extra layer of emotional depth to your own characters.

Once again, using my own book as the test site: Nadya grew up in a family that was kind and loving, and lived on a stable farm in her war-torn country. She was cushioned from the perils of danger and poverty until she was conscripted as a soldier at sixteen. As a result, she was better adjusted going into the war than most others, and retained some of her fire even in the army.

In comparison, my other main character Alek lost his family and livelihood in an extremely traumatic event at about seven years old. He fled from a life of comfort and happiness as a royal, and became a beggar and later rebel. As one would expect, he grew up in bitterness and anger, and his life relationships are turbulent and prone to big arguments.

This is obviously not stated in the text because reading a psychological report on every character you read about leaves no space for analysis or interpretation, but it adds an extra layer to their interactions and goals.

Try changing them up

I know, I know, that’s basically blasphemy, but hear me out.

If you are struggling to really connect with one or more of your characters, try changing them up. Maybe a little bit, or maybe a lot. Sometimes we get so caught up in fitting these characters into their little moulds that we forget how they will change with us naturally as we write the stories. While you are growing as a writer, you may outgrow the previous version of the character, and all of a sudden their confusion becomes naïveté or their anger becomes too violent or perhaps childish.

Don’t try to force them to be something that they aren’t anymore, because that inauthenticity will kill your readers interest.

Here’s a secret: Pretty much all of my characters are fundamentally different to their first conception.

When I first imagined Nadya, I was a young teen and super excited about imagining a whole world of my own! Re-reading my old manuscripts now, I can tell that she would have been hated haha. I was too young and unaware of the world to write Nadya as she needed to be. So, as I reworked the drafts, she developed into a more headstrong, cunning, and kind character that had the skills she needed to survive as a soldier and rebel.

The same goes for Alek, who was your standard wise mentor character, until I began fleshing out his past. As I worked out the details, I realised how angry and bitter a character who had suffered such a fate could become. I didn’t want him to seem too insufferable yet, but by giving him more flaws and tunnel-vision, he became a more complex and integral character.

Don’t be afraid to change them, because you’re all growing together.

These tips are only the tip of the ice-berg, and I’d love to delve into them all a little more in the future, but I’ll leave you with that today.

What do you think? Have you heard this advice before? Which of these tips will you try implementing next?