Tuesday Writing Tip: Building A Character

How to Start and How To Make Your Characters Evolve

Photo by Miguel Alcântara on Unsplash

When I start writing a novel, my characters are, to put it bluntly, crap.

They are cardboard cutouts, cliches, lacking depth or resonance. Worst still they are generic - my characters each resemble one another, and they could be anyone.

I don’t worry too much about it - at first. Mainly at this point, I am concentrating on the plot, trying to work out what happens next, and why.

But as a clunkily move my characters around the chessboard of the plot, I start to make notes.