BellaOnline Forums Career Fiction Writing Multi-dimensional characters

This week's article is on creating multi-dimensional characters. Do you like to start your book with your characters fully sketched out? Or do you prefer to let them unravel as you write?

I like to start with a little bit of information, so that I know I'm willing to invest my time in a character I actually like and respect. I've scrapped a main character before after two drafts (ouch!), because she was too needy and pathetic - it was only when I realised this, that the reasons the book was so hard to write became apparent. You get a lot of writer's block when you stick yourself with a loser for a character.

I had to laugh. So very true.
I have a "steady"- a man I've written a great deal about, and he's still my favorite. It's so easy to put him in a story, because I know how his thoughts and actions as well as I know my own.

That's a great way to study how different plots are swayed by a particular character's personality and behaviour. Will you use him in a novel one day?

Yes, in the one I'm working on right now. I've known him so long, so to speak, that it's almost like he helped build the story with me. Well, of course, he did, in a sense.

I feel like I'm interviewing my characters as I write. They kind of sit down and tell me their story. By the end I know them better than myself (depending of course on their personality--I had one that used to lie to me all the time until I realized that was just her--sounds crazy, I know.) Some characters, like people, are just fully present and I get their personalities right away, some have to be discovered and turn out to be very fascinating.

How wonderfully devious of her! I've had characters who say one thing, but their behaviour contradicts what they're thinking - but they've firmly convinced themselves.