How much character development you do really depends on your writing style. Personally, I do little or no character development. My characters, to varying degrees, are living full-blown in my mind. I might make a few quick notes, but not much more than that. However, most of my writing is in the short story and novelette areas. I have not worked on a novel, and all of my books have been nonfiction. If I were to write a "War and Peace" beastie, then Im sure I would do at least a minor outline on all of my characters.

But why do a character development? To add depth and life to your characters. Most writers flesh out their characters to varying degrees before starting their story. Especially in a novel, this may prevent you from needing to go back and rewrite scenes because a character did something that, earlier in the story, he would never do. Or to contruct sure the characters are dissimilar. Theres nothing more boring than having two or more characters with similar habits, attitudes or ways of speaking.

One writer I met, Elizabeth George ("Playing For The Ashes") goes into workable detail for her novels. She creates a map of the area where the story is taking place, takes photographs of the area, or an area like the one she envisions, and has pages of data on each character. How they look, dress, comb their hair, their family tree, schools attended, etc. Elizabeth writes long novels, and says, "Why say in one hundred words what you can say in one thousand?" So with long, detailed novels like this, an indepth development of each character would be necessary.

When doing a character development, you will want to know as much about the main characters as you know about your family or best friend. As with your story, you should utilize all of your senses when describing your characters. Following are some of the things you should understand about your characters.

Physical Characteristics: Name (It must fit. Do not call a 98 pound weakling Thor, unless its some kind of nickname), appearance, age, voice (sexy, gravely, lisp), annoying or unusual habits (knuckle cracking, nail biting, pencil chewing. I wrote a fictional piece called "One Per Customer," and when the main character gets upset, he likes to throw his heavy glass paperweight through the office wall. Hes a cop, and his office looks like its made of Swiss Cheese.), wardrobe.

Mental Attributes: Personality, how they relate to their relatives, their intelligence and schooling, fears, goal, goals, dreams, priorities, drives, skeletons in their closets.

Environment: Where they live (house, trailer, apartment, condo), its condition (new, old, dirty), how its decorated (salvation army, creative on a budget, antique, fashionable), their job (politician, crook (if theres a difference), manual laborer, computer work), sports, hobbies, friends, enemies, pets (I have a pet wind-up goldfish in a jar of water. Low maintenance and high neglect threshold.), relationships (single, married, divorced, widowed, dating, kids).

As I said earlier, it depends on your personality and your writing style. I almost always dont do much of a character development because I like to see how my characters grow, and I like to be surprised by my characters and stories as I write them. Because of this I sometime have to go back and contruct changes in paragraphs, or chapters, but the surprises are assessment of value it.

So experiment and find out what you feel relaxed with. You may change it whenever you like. Above all, find a way to write that you enjoy. Thats what its all about.

Have Fun,
Jeff

Jeff Colburn is a freelance business writer. He could be reached at his site, The Creative Cauldron (www.CreativeCauldron.com), or at JeffColburn@CreativeCauldron.com