Guide A5
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How to Build Your Characters Before You Write
What a character needs to contain before you begin, how to develop people who drive plot rather than follow it, and how to build enough pre-writing knowledge to write with confidence without over-engineering the cast.
Introduction
Character is the engine. Everything else is infrastructure.
A backstory is not a character. A character is what a backstory produces under pressure.
Plot is what happens. Character is why it matters. A reader who does not care about the people in a novel will not stay with the plot regardless of how well constructed it is. A reader who cares deeply about the characters will follow them through structural imperfections, slow passages, and even an ending that does not entirely satisfy. Of the two, character is the more fundamental. This guide covers what to work out first, and gives you a character profile template to fill in before you write.
The question of how much to know about your characters before you begin writing is one that divides writers. Some build exhaustive profiles before typing a word of prose. Others discover their characters entirely on the page, learning who they are through the act of writing them. Most end up somewhere between the two, and the right position depends on the writer, the story, and the kind of characters the book requires.
This guide covers what a character profile actually needs to contain before writing begins, how to develop characters who drive plot rather than simply follow it, and how to build enough pre-writing knowledge to write with confidence without over-engineering the people in your novel. It is written for writers who are approaching a new project and want to arrive at the first chapter knowing something real about who they are writing about.
A note from Nick
My main characters emerged before the plot did in any detailed sense. The protagonist, the antagonist, and the woman who would become the protagonist's love interest were the first three people I knew. A handful of secondary characters followed naturally as the story took shape. What I did not do was invent characters in isolation and then find places for them. They grew from the story's needs, and the story grew from them. The two things developed together. Looking back, that felt like the right order. Forcing characters into a predetermined slot produces people who feel like they were assembled for a purpose rather than discovered. For peripheral characters, though, that approach is perfectly fine.
How Much to Know
The case for preparation, and the case against over-engineering
Know enough to write them with confidence, and leave room for the page to reveal the rest.
There is a version of character development that is genuinely useful before writing begins, and a version that becomes a way of avoiding the manuscript. Understanding the difference is the first practical skill.
What preparation gives you
A character you understand before you write them is a character you can write consistently. Consistency is not the same as predictability. A complex, surprising character can still behave consistently within their own psychology: their surprises feel earned because they emerge from who they are, not from what the plot requires at a given moment. Pre-writing character work builds that psychological foundation.
It also saves revision time. A protagonist whose core motivation is vague at the start of drafting tends to produce an Act Two in which the story stalls, because the character has no clear internal engine driving them forward. Clarifying motivation before you begin is one of the most reliable ways to prevent the structural problems that force large-scale rewriting later.
What over-engineering costs you
A character who is exhaustively mapped before the draft begins can feel known rather than discovered. The writing process itself is one of the most powerful tools for developing character: things emerge on the page that would never appear in a profile. A writer who arrives at the manuscript with every detail locked down can find that the character stops surprising them, and the writing loses the quality of genuine discovery that makes fiction feel alive.
The goal is not to know everything about your characters before you begin. It is to know enough to write them with confidence, while leaving room for the manuscript to reveal the rest.
A note from Nick
I built psychological profiles for my main characters early on. I wanted to understand not just what they did but why, and what they were capable of that the reader would not yet know. One character in particular interested me as a problem: I wanted the reader to be genuinely uncertain about his motivations for most of the book. He appears one way for a long time. The reader thinks they have him. They do not. Getting that right required knowing his true psychology in detail before I wrote a word of him, so that every scene he appeared in was controlled from the inside, even when what the reader was seeing on the surface was something quite different.
What a Character Needs
The essential elements of a character before you write them
Three elements do more work than any amount of biography.
Not every character in a novel needs the same depth of pre-writing development. The protagonist and antagonist require the most. Major secondary characters need enough to be consistent and purposeful. Minor characters need only what is required for their role. The following elements are essential for any character who will carry significant weight in the narrative.
1
Motivation: what they want and why
A character's motivation is the engine of their behaviour across the whole novel. It needs to be specific enough to generate consistent action, and deep enough to sustain interest across hundreds of pages. Vague motivations, revenge, love, power, produce vague characters. Specific motivations, revenge for a particular wrong done to a particular person by a particular act, produce characters whose choices feel inevitable and whose psychology feels real.
Motivation also operates at two levels: the conscious goal the character is aware of and pursuing, and the deeper need that is often in tension with it. A character who wants to solve the murder (conscious goal) but actually needs to prove their own worth (deeper need) is more interesting than a character who simply wants to solve the murder. The gap between the two levels is where character complexity lives.
2
Flaw and vulnerability
A character without genuine flaw is not interesting to read and is not believable as a person. The flaw is not a surface eccentricity or an endearing weakness. It is something that actively costs the character something across the story, that creates genuine problems, and that they must either overcome or fail to overcome in a way that matters to the outcome.
Vulnerability is related but distinct. A flaw is something the character does. A vulnerability is something they feel: a fear, a wound, a point of exposure that other characters and the plot can press on. A character who is vulnerable in specific ways allows the story to hurt them in specific ways, which is what creates genuine emotional investment in the reader.
3
Contradiction and complexity
Real people contain contradictions. They are capable of great generosity and surprising cruelty. They hold beliefs that conflict with their actions. They behave differently in different relationships and contexts. Characters who are too consistent, who are wholly good or wholly bad, reliably brave or reliably cowardly, feel thin because they do not resemble the people the reader actually knows.
Contradiction in character is not the same as inconsistency. A character who is warm to people they trust and cold to strangers is not inconsistent: both behaviours arise from the same underlying psychology. The contradiction is coherent once you understand the character from the inside. Pre-writing character work is largely the process of building that inside understanding so that the contradictions you write are coherent rather than random.
A note from Nick
One character I particularly enjoyed developing was a secondary figure who begins the story as someone who has simply failed at life and drifted into petty crime. He is not a lovable rogue. But the reader understands that his behaviour is a product of circumstance, and there is a modicum of sympathy available for him. As the story develops he becomes progressively more pathetic: bullied, mocked, treated with contempt, dismissed as a loser by the antagonist who uses him. He grows more bitter as he fails constantly and is admonished for his incompetence. The reader will wonder why the antagonist puts up with him at all. There is a reason, and it reflects something about the antagonist's own psychology: the urge to control the weak, a projection of his own insecurities onto others. My secondary character presents, in every scene, as a victim rather than a perpetrator. But that is not what he is. What he actually is only emerges towards the end of the book, in circumstances that are genuinely tragic. It is one of the scenes I am most satisfied with. The long patience required to build a character that way, controlling what the reader sees and what it withholds for most of the novel, was one of the most rewarding things about the whole project.
Template
Your character profile template
Everything this guide has covered so far, in one place you can fill in.
The profile is where you do the thinking, so answer each line in full sentences rather than single words. A word like "brave" tells you nothing you can write from; a sentence about what this person did the one time they were brave tells you a great deal. Fill it in for your protagonist and your antagonist. For secondary characters, the first five rows are usually enough.
Field
What to write
Name and role
Full name, and their job in the story: protagonist, antagonist, ally, obstacle
What they want
The concrete goal they pursue in the story
Why they want it
The reason underneath the goal, which they may not admit even to themselves
Flaw
The habit or belief that keeps getting in their way
Vulnerability
What can hurt them, and who or what could do it
Contradiction
Two traits that should not sit together but do
What they stand to lose
What happens to them if they fail. This is your stakes test.
Who they are at the start
What they believe about themselves and the world on page one
Who they are at the end
What has changed, or why nothing has. This is your change test.
Three specific details
Things only this character would do, own or say. This is your specificity test.
Backstory that matters
Only the past events that shape what they do in this story
How they speak
Vocabulary, rhythm, what they avoid saying
Key relationships
The two or three people who put the most pressure on them
When every row has an answer you believe, stop. The profile is a starting point, not a finished person: the rest of this guide explains when the pre-writing work is done.
The Character Cheat Sheet
A practical reference tool for maintaining consistency across a long manuscript
The profile is where you do the thinking. The cheat sheet is what you keep open while you write.
A character profile written before drafting is useful for development. A character cheat sheet is useful during drafting. The distinction matters. The profile is where you do the thinking. The cheat sheet is a compressed reference document you consult while writing to keep the character consistent across scenes written weeks or months apart.
A cheat sheet should be short enough to scan in thirty seconds. If it requires careful reading every time you consult it, it will not be consulted. The following table shows what a cheat sheet for a major character typically needs to contain.
Element
What to record
Name and aliases
Full name, any names other characters use for them
Physical markers
Two or three specific details: not a full description, but the details you will reach for in scenes
Core motivation
One sentence: what they want and the deeper need beneath it
Primary flaw
The specific weakness that costs them something across the story
Key vulnerability
What the story can press on to hurt them
Voice markers
How they speak: register, habits, what they avoid saying
What they conceal
The thing the reader may not yet know, kept here so you stay consistent
Relationship notes
How they behave with specific other characters, particularly where it differs
Arc direction
Where they start, where they are heading, whether they get there
Update the cheat sheet as the character develops. A character who changes significantly mid-draft needs a cheat sheet that reflects who they have become, not who they were in the original profile. The document is a working tool, not a contract.
A note from Nick
I used cheat sheets throughout the drafting of my first book, and adjusted them as the characters evolved. When a character changed significantly, the cheat sheet changed with them. The more important function, though, was keeping the concealed elements consistent. When a character is hiding something from the reader, every scene they appear in has to be written with that concealment in mind. The cheat sheet was where I kept that layer visible to me while I was writing, so it stayed invisible to the reader at the right moments and became visible at the right moment. Without it, I would have slipped.
Characters Who Drive Plot
The difference between characters who act and characters who are acted upon
A cast is not a list of interesting people. It is a set of pressures on the one who matters most.
The most common structural problem caused by underdeveloped characters is a protagonist who reacts to events rather than driving them. A reactive protagonist produces a plot that feels like it is happening to the story rather than being generated by the people in it. The reader loses the sense that anything is at stake because the protagonist has no clear internal engine compelling them to act.
A character who drives plot has a specific want they are actively pursuing, obstacles that arise from who they are as much as from external circumstance, and decisions that have genuine consequences. Their choices cause problems. Their flaws create complications. Their relationships generate conflict. The plot emerges from who they are, rather than being imposed on them from outside.
Plot emerging from character
This is the standard most novels aspire to, and it is worth being precise about what it means in practice. It does not mean the plot is improvised or that external events play no role. It means that when external events occur, the character's response to them is determined by who they are, and that response generates the next event. The chain of causation runs through character.
A useful test: if you replaced your protagonist with a different character of roughly similar competence, would the plot unfold identically? If yes, the protagonist is not driving the plot. The plot is driving itself, and the protagonist is a passenger. The fix is almost always found by going back to motivation and flaw, sharpening both until the character's specific psychology is the reason the story goes the way it does.
Secondary characters
Secondary characters earn their place by doing something to the protagonist. They should not simply accompany the story or provide information. Each significant secondary character should either complicate the protagonist's pursuit of their goal, reveal something about the protagonist that no other character can, or represent a version of the protagonist's possible future, whether a warning or an aspiration.
A secondary character who does none of these things is a character the story does not need. Cutting them, or combining their function with an existing character, almost always improves the manuscript.
The antagonist wants something too
An antagonist who exists only to oppose the protagonist tends to feel thin. An antagonist who wants something specific and understandable, which happens to conflict with what the protagonist wants, produces real friction rather than manufactured obstruction. The best antagonists could plausibly believe they are the protagonist of their own story.
A note from Nick
My characters surprised me constantly, and that was where a great deal of the pleasure came from. As my understanding of them deepened, I found myself drawing on real experience, not inventing wholesale but translating. People I had known across a long life, business partners, friends, relationships that had gone wrong, people who had behaved unexpectedly well or badly: all of that became raw material. I am not suggesting I have known many murderers or psychopaths, or any for that matter. But psychology is psychology, and the patterns of human behaviour that produce betrayal, self-deception, and cruelty at small scales are recognisably related to the same patterns at larger ones. The characters I found most interesting were the ones where I could feel that real understanding underneath the invented circumstances.
Testing the Character
Three tests before you start writing them
A character who passes all three can usually carry a novel. One who fails them usually cannot, yet.
These tests work the same way the idea tests in the previous guide do: not as a hoop to jump through, but as a way of finding out early whether a character has enough substance to survive three hundred pages, rather than finding out on page one hundred and fifty.
1
The specificity test
Can you state the character's motivation in one concrete sentence, with a real object and a real stake attached, rather than an adjective? "Wants freedom" fails. "Wants to leave the island before her brother inherits it and she is trapped running it for him" passes. If the motivation can only be stated as a feeling, it is not specific enough yet to write from.
2
The stakes test
What actually happens if this character does not get what they want? If the honest answer is "not much", the motivation is not carrying enough weight to drive a novel. The consequence of failure needs to be something the character, and the reader, would genuinely mind.
3
The change test
By the end of the story, could this character plausibly be different from how they started, in a way that connects directly to their flaw? A character who cannot change, or who changes for reasons unconnected to their own vulnerability, tends to make an ending feel unearned rather than resolved.
How Much Is Enough
Knowing when the pre-writing character work is done
Can you write a scene with this character without stopping to invent who they are?
There is no objective answer to how much character development is enough before you begin. The practical test is simpler: can you write a scene with this character without stopping to invent who they are? If the answer is yes, you know enough. If every time you write them you are making fundamental decisions about their psychology that should have been made before the draft began, you do not know enough yet.
The secondary test is consistency: if you wrote a scene with this character six months ago and write another one today, would the character behave in recognisably the same way? Not identically, because characters change across a story, but coherently, in ways that arise from the same underlying psychology. If the answer is uncertain, the cheat sheet is not complete enough.
The backstory trap
Backstory is one of the most pleasurable parts of character development, and one of the most reliable forms of creative avoidance. There is always another detail to work out: a school memory, a family history, a first heartbreak. All of it feels like character work. Very little of it needs to survive onto the page. The test is the same one that applies to worldbuilding: is this detail shaping a scene you are actually writing, or are you building a biography instead of writing a story?
When to stop developing and start writing
Character development that continues indefinitely before drafting is usually avoidance. At some point, the only way to know a character more deeply is to write them: to put them in scenes with other characters, under pressure, making decisions with consequences. The manuscript itself is a character development tool. Use it.
The signal to begin is not the feeling that you know the character completely. That feeling rarely arrives, and waiting for it is a reliable way to never start. The signal to begin is the feeling that you know enough to write the first scene honestly, and that if the character surprises you as you write, you will recognise whether the surprise is true to who they are.
Before You Close This Guide
The character in your head isn't the character yet
They become one the same way every character always has: on the page, under pressure, not on an index card.
Every character who has ever driven a novel started out as vaguely as the one you are picturing now. What made them work was not more detail worked out in advance. It was a motivation specific enough to generate scenes, a flaw that cost them something, and a vulnerability the story could press on. The work in this guide exists to help you find those quickly, not to replace the discovery that only happens once you start writing them.
What to do next
Where you are: Starting out, guide 5 of 9
Motivation, flaw, vulnerability. Then write.
1. Do this now
Write your protagonist's motivation, flaw and vulnerability in three sentences. If you haven't set a weekly target yet, do it now.
2. Read next
B1: Story Structure: Which One Is Right for Your Book? (Open). Next on your path. Your character wants something; structure decides when they get it, lose it and change.
B3: Point of View: Choosing the Right Narrator (Ticket). How close the reader sits to your character is a point of view decision. Make it now.
D1: Dialogue That Sounds Like People, Not Like Writing (Open). Characters reveal themselves in what they say. This keeps their voices distinct.
3. Not sure?
Character clear but no plot yet? B1: Story Structure: Which One Is Right for Your Book?
Keep changing the character's backstory? A4: Plotters, Pantsers, and How to Find Your Method
Several main characters to track? A8: Keeping Track of Characters, Places, and Timelines
← Previous on this path: A4: Plotters, Pantsers, and How to Find Your Method
Next on this path: B1: Story Structure: Which One Is Right for Your Book? →