Character Development: How to Write Characters Who Feel Real

Character development is the process of creating complex, compelling characters. As an author, you want to create fictional people who live, breathe, and change through a story — characters who feel so profoundly real that readers forget they’re not.

In this post, you’ll learn how to craft these characters with the help of some literary examples. Follow the five steps down below, and bring your characters to life.

1. Give your character a wound

What’s the number one rule for character development? Your characters need to bleed. They should carry a wound somewhere deep inside: something in their life feels wrong.

A pirate who’s scared of water. A robot who wishes he had skin. A mother who’s running from a secret past that will tear her family apart. Any of these “wounds” could be an excellent starting point for a rich, satisfying character.

Challenge: Can you describe your character in a similar way? “A [person] who [has a wound].” The wound can be subtle, but it needs to exist. Try a few options out.

The wound is important for two reasons. First, it’s a source of conflict. A good story will often prod at a wound and see how the character responds. What happens when that pirate falls overboard? Or the mother’s secret is spilled?

Second, a wound makes a character feel a lot more believable. Real-life people have fears and pains — it’s rare to be perfectly happy — and your characters need to reflect this. Without a wound, a character feels flat.

Example: Hamlet and the death of his father

Shakespeare was the master of character wounds, from Romeo and Juliet’s forbidden love to King Lear’s impending madness. In the case of Hamlet, he’s riddled by grief after the recent death of his father. To quote the play, “the clouds still hang on [him].”

The story proceeds to prod at that wound when his father’s ghost returns to him. The ghost sets Hamlet on a quest for revenge, driven by that wound in his chest.

Example: Bridget Jones and her taste in men

Bridget Jones has a long list of character wounds. On the very first page of Bridget Jones’s Diary, the character resolves to stop drinking as much, to stop spending as much, and to stop falling for “alcoholics, workaholics, commitment phobics, people with girlfriends or wives.” 

This final wound drives much of the story, as Bridget stumbles through an ill-fated relationship with her toxic boss, and must eventually decide what she really wants from love.

2. Find their wants and needs

As Tom Bromley teaches in his course on novel writing, a want is something a character believes will heal them and make them happy. Imagine a child who hates their school — this is the wound they carry. To escape this pain, they want to run away and build a life in the woods. 

But this isn’t always what they actually need. In the case of that child, they hate their school because they’re lonely and don’t fit in there. Living in the woods will make things worse — to heal that wound, what they need to do is find a group of friends.

This oft-seen contradiction between want and need makes a character rich and complex. At the start of the story, they might act on their want, like that child running to the woods. By the end of the story, they might change their mind: they’ll act on their need instead.

Challenge: What does your character believe will heal them? What do you believe will heal them? Make sure your answers are different. This gives you a want and need.

Example: Scrooge wants isolation, but needs love

As a child, Scrooge was lonely and unloved, and he carries this wound as an adult. To heal, he wants to isolate himself — he hoards money, shuts people out. But this act doesn’t help. It leaves him bitter and mean. What he actually needs is the opposite.

Over the course of the story, he lets go of his want and embraces his need. He learns to open his heart to the people around him. That’s what heals his wound. 

Example: Gatsby wants Daisy, but needs to move on

Gatsby’s wound is Daisy, his long-lost love, who’s married to another man. He wants to win her back by accumulating wealth and impressing her with lavish parties. But what he really needs is to stop living in the past — his wound might heal if he finds a way to move on.

Unlike Scrooge, Gatsby never makes that transition from want to actual need. His wound festers as opposed to healing, which sends him down a negative character arc. 

3. Build their past (and future)

When you write your story, you won’t typically include the whole of your character’s life. Your story will cover one stretch of time, like a school year or a trip to the moon. It starts on one day, it ends on another — you don’t write the before or after.

But you do need to think about before and after. Strong characters need futures and pasts. 

Without a past, they’ll feel like they’ve popped into being on the very first page of your book. If they’re a newborn baby, that’s believable. Otherwise, it won’t ring true. To learn how to write a character’s past, check our post on character backstory. 

You may have already made a start on this when you came up with your character’s wound. Often (not always) a character suffers their wound before the story starts. From Scrooge’s lonely childhood to Gatsby’s romance with Daisy, these wounds come from a time before.

Unless they die at the end, your character will also have a future outside your story. To help you cook up this future life, you can use their want and need. Imagine two possible scenarios: Future A and Future B. Future A will take place if they get what they want, Future B if they get what they need.

Challenge: Write one sentence for each of the following: Past, Future A, Future B. To show you what we mean, let’s return to the examples of Scrooge and Gatsby (below).

Example: Scrooge’s past and possible futures

• Past: Scrooge had a lonely childhood, with a distant father who never showed him love.
• Future A: He becomes increasingly bitter and twisted, and ultimately dies alone.
• Future B: He opens up to the people around him, and finally experiences joy. 

Example: Gatsby’s past and possible futures

• Past: Gatsby had a short-lived romance with Daisy, which he never moved on from.
• Future A: He tries so desperately to win her back that it leads to self-destruction.
• Future B: He moves on from Daisy, finds someone else, and enjoys a happy life.

It’s easy to get bogged down by your character’s past and future. Some writers end up writing detailed dossiers with hundreds of facts, but in most cases this isn’t necessary. You also don’t need to include all the facts in the pages of your actual story. Drop details where relevant, using devices like flashbacks, or conversations about future plans.

4. Flesh out their appearance

As an author, when you’re choosing how your character looks, make sure to keep their wound and want at the forefront of your mind. Essentially, think of their physical description as an extension of everything inside.

There are two main ways to go about this. 

First, you could choose some physical details which reveal their wound or want. For example, let’s return to the example of that mother who’s hiding a terrible secret. You could give this character darting eyes, or make her jump when she hears loud noises. She could wear too much makeup to hide her face. These details suggest paranoia.

Second, you could choose some physical details which conceal their wound and want. In this case, that mother might have perfect hair and beautifully manicured nails. She’s always smiling and laughing — she’s seemingly at ease. This time, the details of her physical appearance stem from this character’s tireless efforts to hide her wound from sight.

Challenge: Write one revealing description of your character, then one concealing description of your character. Compare them to each other. Which one excites you most?

Example: Miss Havisham’s wedding dress

In her youth, Miss Havisham was jilted at the altar. This left her humiliated and heartbroken. Years later, she still wears her wedding dress, though the cloth is ragged and yellow. Her face is “withered like the dress” and she has “no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes.”

Every detail of this physical appearance tells the story of her inner wound. It outwardly reveals the pain she carries in her heart.

Example: Frankenstein’s monster

On the outside, Frankenstein’s monster is described as tall, strong, and horrifying. He has yellow skin, powerful limbs, and a “gigantic stature, that is to say, about eight feet in height.” But these details don’t match the wound inside: lonely and emotionally vulnerable. 

His appearance doesn’t only conceal his wound. It actually makes things worse for him. When other characters recoil from his monstrous form, his loneliness only intensifies.

5. Come up with a compelling foil

Finally, remember that characters don’t exist in a vacuum. As John Truby writes in The Anatomy of Story, “[to] create great characters, think of all your characters as part of a web in which each helps define the others. To put it another way, a character is often defined by who he is not.” 

This is where foil characters come in. A foil character is a secondary character who contrasts with your primary character. This contrast helps to emphasize things like your primary character’s wound. Take Scrooge, for example. He’s bitter and miserable. But he seems even more so when juxtaposed with his good-natured nephew, Fred.

Think of it like shining a light on your character; everything becomes more distinct. This is the final step in this process of making your character feel real. You’ve created someone with a wound, a want, a need, a past, a future. Now create another person to sit beside them — your main character will come to life.

Challenge: Remember when you laid out Future A and Future B as two possible paths for your character? While your character experiences one of these, create a foil who experiences the other.

Example: Sherlock and Watson

Sherlock Holmes is eccentric and brilliant, but also cold and detached. He struggles to form relationships with other human beings. By contrast, John Watson is more grounded and decidedly less brilliant, but he’s also warm and personable.

This is a classic example of a foil. Watson’s warmth makes Sherlock feel colder: it highlights his wounds and flaws. The balance of their two personality types also makes them a perfect team.

Example: Frodo and Gollum

Throughout The Lord of the Rings, Frodo struggles to resist the corruptive force of the Ring. Meanwhile, Gollum shows what will happen if Frodo ever gives in. Gollum is post-corruption: he’s been twisted into something dark.

While Frodo is striving for one future, Gollum is a glimpse of the alternative. The contrast between them makes Frodo’s predicament feel darker and a lot more real.

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There you have it: a five-step guide to writing characters who feel real. As a bonus step, check out our entire range of character development templates. These templates help to strengthen your character by asking thought-provoking questions, like “What is their idea of perfect happiness?" and “What is their greatest regret?” 

You never know where these questions will take you. We hope you enjoy the ride.