Cassie Beebe, author of fascinating, moral complex, compelling romance novels, kindly agreed to help me out with a guest post while I deal with Macron’s declaration that we can all work from home and educate our children at the same time because we are French!!! Happily, not only did Cassie step into the breach, she wrote an article chock full of new ideas for how to create characters that I intend to immediately steal – I suggest you do the same. Cassie’s latest novel, Moving On, is available on amazon by clicking this link.
Without further ado, here is Cassie herself. I’m off to 16personalities.com (you’ll know what I mean in a minute)
So you want to write rich, captivating characters, eh? Well, boy, have I got some tips for you!
Characters have always been an aspect of storytelling that has come naturally to me. They live in my mind, roaming free, living their lives and being themselves, and my job is simply to reflect that accurately on the page. But for my most recent novel, Moving On, things were different.
When I first began the writing process of this book, I had a surprisingly difficult time. The words weren’t flowing as naturally as they had in previous works, and I knew that the source of my mental block was the simple fact that I didn’t know these characters. They hadn’t become full, deep individuals in my head yet, and given that that usually happens naturally for me, I had no idea how to force them to develop. So I did something I had never done before: I made in-depth character sheets for each of my main characters and prominent side characters. I learned a lot through this process, and I’d love to share some of my discoveries with you. Hopefully these tips can help enrich your characters as well.
1: Utilize 16personalities.com.
You’ve all heard of the Meyers-Briggs personality test, right? Well, what you might not have seen is the lesser-known 16 Personalities site. It’s basically just a rip off of Meyers-Briggs, but they offer their personality test for free. But the test itself isn’t what I want to draw your attention to.
If you visit the 16personalities website, you’ll see a list of all 16 of the personality types, with a short description of each. From there, if you click on one of the types you think might fit your character, you’ll find an absolute gold mine of information to help you develop a well-rounded character. Everything from the strengths and weaknesses of such a person and what kind of a parent they might be, to what career paths they might be drawn to and—my personal favorite—how they are likely to operate in a romantic relationship.
Scrolling through this information can give you some really great ideas and a better, more well-rounded vision of the character you’re writing.
2: Figure out what your character’s love language is.
Okay, so the actual science of love languages is pretty unsubstantiated. However, people relate to them for a reason.
If you’re unfamiliar, the idea of love languages comes from a Christian marriage counselor named Gary Chapman. The concept is that everyone has one (sometimes two) prominent “love language(s),” or, in other words, one particular type of affection that makes them feel more loved than others.
The five love languages Gary Chapman lays out in his book are words of affirmation, gifts, acts of service, quality time, and physical touch. So, for example, someone with the love language of acts of service might feel most cherished when their partner, say, does the laundry without asking, or offers to take care of a task their partner has been stressing over. Whereas someone with the love language of quality time might prefer to spend the evening going for a walk or playing a game together.
Of course, many people enjoy all five forms of affection, but the point is that, for some, certain forms of affection are more likely to make us feel loved. You might enjoy a good hug, but if physical touch is not your love language, then a nice hug might not necessarily be an indication of love, and you may still feel that something important is missing from the way your partner expresses their affection for you.
Figuring out your character’s love languages can be helpful in many ways, especially if you’re writing a romance.
When it comes to your main character and their love interest, there’s great opportunity to add a bit of conflict, if they have different love languages. Of course, you don’t need to use the words “love language” in your actual book, but say our hero is trying to woo the heroine by leaving her sweet, thoughtful gifts all the time, but all our heroine wants is to spend the evening with him, talking and getting to know each other better. If they don’t fully understand their own love languages, or have a hard time communicating that with each other (or both!), that can cause tension and an opportunity for growth, once they overcome that hurdle and learn to love each other the way they need to be loved.
It’s worth noting that love languages can still be useful for you, as an author, even if you’re not writing a romance. Thinking through someone’s love language can tell you a lot about a person. Perhaps our hero’s love language is gifts because his parents rarely had time for him growing up, and the way they showed their affection was by giving him presents. And on the other hand, maybe our heroine’s family had little in the way of physical possessions, so they placed more value on their time together. Dissecting these things can help you understand your characters better, even if this information never makes it onto the page, and love languages play an important role in friendships as well as romance.
3: Understand Negative Communication Patterns.
My husband and I went through a great marriage program called “Re-engage,” created by Todd Wagner and John McGee, that featured a section about something called “Negative Communication Patterns.”
Essentially, this concept is sort of the inverse of love languages. Instead of analyzing how you best feel loved, we are analyzing how you most commonly communicate poorly. We’re all prone to poor communication at times, but our styles of poor communication differ.
There are four basic patterns of negative communication:
- Withdraw and avoid: unwillingness to have tough conversations, leaving the room, emotionally shutting down, faking peace
- Escalate: responding negatively, name-calling, hostility, sarcasm, other forms of mental or emotional attack
- Negatively Interpret: assigning unreasonably negative motives to your partner, interpreting questions as criticism/negative statements, defensiveness
- Invalidate: directly or indirectly dismissing, minimizing, or putting down the thoughts, feelings, or character of your partner
I think it’s fairly easy to see how this information can be really useful for adding tension and conflict to a story. And as with love languages, these patterns are useful for writing friendships, parent/child relationships, or any other non-romantic relationship as well.
4: Make each character the MC of their own story.
When I was trying to get to know my four most prominent characters in Moving On, I gathered all of the information from my research above, and I used that knowledge to make individual outlines for each character.
Of course, you don’t need to go as in depth as you might with your official story outline, but jot down the basic plot beats a novel requires (inciting incident, dark night of the soul, climax, etc.) and create a mini-outline for each of the characters you are trying to get to know.
Every character is the main character of their own story. They have their own lives, independent of the MC, and although you may never see much of those stories on the page, it’s good for you, the author, to know them well anyway. Consider what your story would look like if the side character was the main character, and you will be well on your way to writing a novel with rich, captivating side characters who feel authentic and well-developed to readers. Remember that your side characters have lives outside of the MC’s scope of vision, and while we might not see all of that in your story, we should be getting some glimpses here and there.
Well, there you have it! Those are my tips for how to better get to know your characters, and how to write great side characters that your readers can believe in and connect with.
Big thanks to Keith for asking me write this guest post. It’s been a pleasure sharing my tips with you all. If you’d like to check out my new book, Moving On, and see how I’ve implemented these tips myself, you can head on over to Amazon and pick up a copy. If you’d like more tips like this, you’re welcome to check out my YouTube channel, Author Cassie Beebe, as well, where I’ve gone more in depth on this advice, and more.
Happy writing!
Thank you so much Cassie for that excellent article – I know I’m about to revisit my work in progress to incorporate some negative communication patterns. Once again, check out Cassie’s latest novel, Moving On, on amazon by clicking this link.
