The importance of initial character development

Within the Scrivener interface’s novel template, there’s a section for characters. Open up a character sketch and you will find a number of different headings, like “Role in the story” and “Internal conflict”. The idea is that you will use these headings to think about the characters that will be featured in your novel. Or, if you are like me, you will ignore those hints and jump straight into writing.

By the time I’d hit 8,000 words, I knew I had a problem. That problem was my main character, who I’d named Travis. Travis wasn’t particularly interesting. His failure to be engaging was mostly because he didn’t have a well-defined goal. I hadn’t considered that the nature of his goal had to be as interesting as the wordplay in the surrounding story, otherwise the story wouldn’t feel like it was going anywhere. But I wasn’t fully aware of this yet and instead was thinking that the problem was the story pacing – maybe too much exposition and not enough dialogue. I decided to temporarily abandon the book I was reading (The Salmon of Doubt, the posthumous Douglas Adams book) in favor of one certain to be more fast-paced (Killing Floor, the first Jack Reacher novel).

Coincidentally, Killing Floor‘s introduction is Lee Child explaining how he came to be a novelist, including his first steps in that direction and the importance of character development. I started reading with great interest and a few minutes later knew that I needed to flesh out Travis’s characteristics, motivations and back-story better before drafting any more story. He also needed a new last name, something associated with his late-bloomer status. That took all of my 90 minutes the next morning (more on time commitments later) but I felt much better about the character and the potential story arc afterward. Interesting to me, the antagonist and a third key character each have clear motivations and remain interesting to me. I just didn’t want either of them to be the main character.

So there you go, boys and girls: as much as it pains you to do so, slow down and develop your characters before banging away at the prose. You won’t regret it. Oh – and thanks, Lee Child.