by Molly Crockett

Whatever kind of story you are writing, creating good characters is essential. Try to avoid these common mistakes writers make when it comes to character creation:

2-Dimensional Characters

The first mistake writers make is creating cardboard cut-out characters – to avoid this, try to give them life and make them seem like a real person. Humanize them and surround them with evidence of their lives, personality, and past to create believable characters with which readers can identify.

You also need to build strong and meaningful relationships for these characters – the relationships, whether romantic or not, do not have to be a major plot point but they should contribute to the characters. This could be in building a better sense of who they are and how the interact with the world, or by showing their humanity through their connections to other people.

Characters Without Roles

Perhaps a character is very well developed, fully rounded-out, and 3-dimensional – but if they have no role in the story, they really aren’t necessary or worth the time and space they take up.

This also means that each character needs their own arc of development – just as you build a full story arc for your main character, consider each side character as if they are on a journey of their own. When developing their story arcs, treat them like they are the main character of their own story. And don’t forget to include them – even in the background – when the story is focusing on the main character or plot. Don’t make the mistake of not mentioning a side character for a few chapters simply because they aren’t necessary for the plot at that time: you still need to include them in the periphery or at the very least explain or justify their absence.

Overcrowding

Kendra Brandon, a novelist at Revieweal and Bestbritishessays, explains: “Don’t waste prime time/space on minor characters – overcrowding the story will become confusing and distracting for the reader. Instead, focus on making your core group of characters memorable and distinct.”

It can be tempting to create as many fun, interesting, clever characters as your imagination can dream up, but at the end of the day it really is about quality over quantity. This may mean you have to combine a few people into one character, but ultimately this will help you create more in-depth personalities and make it much easier for your readers to follow your writing.

Overwriting

It can be easy to get swept up when you are describing a character’s actions, thoughts, dialogue, or motivations. Good creative writing is not about being overly descriptive and figurative and using as many words and ways to describe things as possible. Good creative writing is about conveying such rich descriptions in as few words as possible – being precise, effective, and clear. Less is more.

Thoughts Over Actions

Try not to spend too much time in your characters’ heads. Get away from describing their every thought and find ways to show these feelings and motivations through action. This is part of humanizing them and making them seem like real people readers can identify with. This doesn’t just mean following through from a character’s thoughts with actions, as this will seem repetitive and suggests you are not confident and competent enough to simply do what needs to be done. Readers will quickly lose interest if you describe what a character is feeling, what they think they should do about it, reviewing this course of action, and then finally doing it, and maybe even thinking about it afterwards. Get straight to the point. If the character is well-written enough, their feelings will show through their actions.

No Setting

Finally, you need to provide context for your characters and your plot. This means big picture settings like general surroundings and locations, which help provide a canvas for your plot, but more importantly when it comes to characters is the small-scale setting details. Put your characters in real life situations, vary their surroundings and circumstances, give them a chance to develop life and individuality through how they act in these situations. Francie Holt, a lifestyle writer at Uktopwriters and Bestaustralianwriters, says: “Use their senses to describe the setting and let their responses/reactions give more dimension to their character.”

Molly Crockett is a successful lifestyle writer for Bigassignments and Eliteassignmenthelp, where shares her inspiration and lifestyle tips with her audience. In her spare time, Molly enjoys teaching arts and writing skills for Stateofwriting.