A great story is defined by its characters. But developing characters that feel like real people is not easy, and it’s one of the aspects of story writing that my students ask me about the most.

Advice for beginner writers often suggests making a list of your character’s favorite food, color and hobbies, along with a list of physical traits like hair and eye color. But think for a moment about your best friend or a beloved family member. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of that person? It’s probably not their brown eyes or their stamp collection. Maybe it’s their sense of humor, maybe it’s the way they show their love with big elaborate dinners, maybe it’s the fact that they always pick up the phone when you call, no matter what. But regardless, these are all traits that are hard to capture in a list or even a paragraph of exposition. Instead, I always suggest to my students that they develop their characters by working in scenes.

Below are some writing prompts that will help you develop your character by putting them in a situation where a reader can see how your character acts in real time, rather than a simple list or paragraph of description. Not all of these will produce final draft material, but they will help you learn more about your character so you can strengthen the story that you want to write.

Save the Cat

A character’s moral compass is among their most important traits. First of all, it tells the readers whether they should love, hate or love to hate this particular character. The way the character handles moral choices early on also creates foreshadowing for how the main character will resolve the central conflict.

The screenwriting book Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need by Blake Snyder offers this advice: have your hero “save the cat” to engage your audience emotionally and make them root for the protagonist. It’s a shorthand trick for writers to get viewers to bond with the main character right away.

What does it mean to “Save the Cat”? A “Save the Cat” moment refers to any scene that makes the audience care about the protagonist by showing their noble, likable qualities. For instance, in the first chapter of The Hunger Games, Katniss volunteers to participate in a fight to the death in order to save her sister. The film Die Hard begins with Bruce Willis’s character bringing a teddy bear home for his son, revealing his soft, decent side before the action begins.

Alternatively, an anti-hero or villain might kick off the story by “killing the cat,” or doing something that makes them immediately unlikeable. In Charles Dicken’s classic “A Christmas Carol,” the story begins with Ebenezer Scrooge fervently turning down an invitation to celebrate Christmas with his nephew, calling the holiday a “humbug.” He then refuses to donate to a charity for the poor and only reluctantly allows his overworked assistant the day off for Christmas. Thus, his miserly, bitter character traits are well-established before the inciting incident of the story, the appearance of the first ghost.

Writing Exercise

Write a scene introducing your character. What is a simple way that you can show their ethical qualities? Whether it is showing generosity to a stranger or stealing a car for joyriding, the character’s first moral choice of the story will show the reader the inner workings of their heart.

The Moral Dilemma

As your story progresses, your character should continue to face difficult ethical decisions. When we think of what a story is “about,” we often think of the external conflict first. For instance, when we think of Jaws, we think about a town being terrorized by a killer shark, and the men who have to stop it. But a good story never simply has one external conflict. Your main character always should be wrestling with an internal dilemma that intersects with the external conflict. In Jaws, police chief Brody suffers from a fear of water. He’s also morally passive, allowing the mayor to bully him into reopening the beaches despite his own instinct that it’s not safe. To resolve the external conflict, he must overcome both of his internal obstacles: he must become a leader who takes decisive action, which also involves facing his fear of water by hunting the shark.

The stories that stay with us the most are stories where the main character is forced to make a moral stance in the face of ambiguous or incomplete information. In Hamlet, the titular hero struggles with whether or not to kill his uncle Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet’s father and married his mother. The ghost of Hamlet’s father appears in the first act and asks his son to avenge his murder. The bookish Hamlet is reluctant to act in part because he cannot be sure that his uncle killed his father. He has the word of a ghost, who in his view could just as easily be an agent of hell sent to deceive him rather than his father asking for vengeance. Yet he feels he is obligated to act due to his society’s views on masculinity and filial duty.

It takes Hamlet the length of the four-hour play to resolve the story’s conflict, and in the meantime we see different sides of his personality emerge:

• Philosophic – Hamlet deeply contemplates ethics, divinity, justice and morality when deliberating action. His philosophical nature is revealed through his solitary musings.
• Melancholic – The weight of his dilemma fuels Hamlet’s depressive tendencies, making him increasingly morose as he struggles with the decision.
• Idealistic – His values of honor, justice and morality conflict with the reality of revenge. He agonizes over preserving his ideals.
• Suspicious – Not fully trusting the ghost, Hamlet suspects deception which affects his response. His distrustful side emerges.
• Passionate – When stirred by rage, grief, or betrayal, Hamlet’s passions boil over, spurring him to lash out verbally and physically.
• Witty – Hamlet can never resist verbal sparring matches. Wit becomes his weapon and shield.
• Indecisive – Caught between competing imperatives, Hamlet wavers on the edge of action. Indecision defines his response.
• Impulsive – He acts rashly at times when emotions overwhelm reason, revealed in outbursts and confrontations.

Facing the moral dilemma brings out all aspects of Hamlet’s personality: his virtues, flaws and inner turmoil. We see his multifaceted nature emerge under pressure.

Without moral dilemmas, a plot is merely a series of meaningless actions. By putting characters into situations where right and wrong are complicated, moral dilemmas become powerful sources of story conflict, tension, and insight into the human condition.

Writing Exercise

What is your main character’s biggest moral dilemma? Spend a few minutes brainstorming three different ways that moral dilemma could be resolved, and how each one would bring out different traits in your character.

The Argument

By their nature, moral dilemmas involve conflict between characters. Whenever two characters disagree or are in tension with one another, it highlights the differences between them. However, not all arguments need to be a high-stakes debate about the ethics of using nuclear weapons. Lovers might tease each other. Friends might have goofy debates (Is a hot dog a sandwich?). All forms of argument, from the joking to the mundane to the morally imperative, reveal layers in our characters.

Too often in beginner fiction, I see dialogue that looks like this:

“Hi, David, how are you today?”

“I’m alright.”

“Enjoying the nice weather?”

“Yes, it’s great the sun is finally out.”

Not only is this incredibly boring, it doesn’t say anything about the characters. There’s no conflict, no tension, no disagreement. Let’s try this again but with a slight twist.

“Oh, it’s you, David. How’s it going?”

“You’re pretending to care all of a sudden. Never asked me before.”

“Nevermind. Nice weather, at least.”

“Yeah, that blasted sun finally decided to show its face.”

While the characters are still making small talk, there’s an oppositional dynamic that raises questions about the characters’ history. By disagreeing, the characters seem more vivid and full of personality, thus making the reader care more about what’s going to happen next.

Some of the most famous love stories in literature, such as Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice or Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, are characterized by the witty arguments between the heroes before they fall in love. Here is a repartee from the first scene of Much Ado About Nothing.

We get a taste here of the sense of humor of each character, especially Beatrice’s love of wordplay. And despite the hostility between them, we see how they are alike: both are proud and have sworn off romance, thus foreshadowing that the pair have more in common than they think.

Writing Exercise

A little disagreement can make an otherwise boring, expository scene lively and engaging. Try writing a scene where one character is trying to convey some important backstory to another character, who either isn’t listening or keeps interrupting. How does the first character express their anger? Why does the second character have trouble listening? Is it because they are daydreaming, being a smart-aleck, or something else? Your answers will help develop your characters.

Love

Relationships between characters need more than just conflict though. There’s one thing that I see lacking in many otherwise well-written stories in literary journals these days: genuine bonds between characters.

Relationships are at the heart of all stories. Some may center on a star-crossed romance, others a friendship blossoming under unlikely circumstances, or a parent and child with a difficult relationship coming to a new understanding. The clashing personalities and arguments that arise in any relationship—whether romantic, platonic, or filial—cannot be ignored, but love still ought to be at the heart of it.

Of course, there are exceptions. I’m not saying that you can’t write the next American Psycho if your main interest is exploring alienation or the mind of a sociopath. But if you’re writing say, a story about a marriage falling apart, I want to know why brought the couple together in the first place, not necessarily in a flashback, but in the little details of their interactions that hint at their shared history. If you’re writing about an adult child who has a difficult relationship with their parents, I don’t want the child’s resentments, however legitimate, to override the parent’s humanity.

I keep seeing these contemporary short stories where the main character is a perfect angel and the people closest to her are all terrible. Her mother, her father, her siblings, and her spouse, are all irredeemable. A story like that isn’t revealing any new insights into the human condition. Instead exploring both sides in a complicated relationship will interest the reader and make them want to read until the resolution.

Eugene O’Neill’s A Long Day’s Journey Into Night, is an autobiographical play dramatizing the conflicts of a family of actors. The story was so personal, O’Neill only wanted it published after his death. His stand-in, Edmund, has many reasons for resenting his father. He is miserly to the point of insisting on treating Edmund’s tuberculosis at the cheapest hospital possible. He’s squandered all the family money on property. And Edmund sees his father as responsible for his mother’s morphine addiction, as his acting career kept her isolated and unable to fulfill her own dreams. But by the end of the play, Edmund’s father opens up about his remorse for his failings as a father, and the two bond over their shared love of literature.

Writing Exercise

Choose two of your characters who are at odds, yet have a close relationship. Perhaps they are blood relatives. Perhaps they are stuck in the same environment, such as roommates in a boarding school or co-workers on a space station. They didn’t choose to be close, and the differences in their personalities make the proximity difficult. Describe a moment where your point-of-view character sees the other at their most vulnerable. How does this affect how they perceive the other?

Point of View Shift

This last tip is for when you are struggling to develop a secondary character. While your story should have a consistent point of view of your choice, it can be helpful when developing your ideas to play around with a different perspective.

A lot of times when we’re writing, we know out main characters much better than the others. After all, we are writing from their perspective and have been developing their unique voice. But when a secondary character drops in for a few scenes, we will want them to feel like a full and dynamic person.

Writing Exercise

Spend a few minutes rewriting a scene from the point of view of your secondary character from a first-person perspective. Think about what unique word choices they might use and where their sense of humor might come into play. Remember, that in your final piece your point-of-view must be consitant, but hopefully by doing this exercise, you are better able to incorporate your secondary character into your story.

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In the end, vivid characters come from showing, not telling. Avoid lengthy exposition about a character’s history or personality traits. Instead, reveal who they are through their actions, dialogue, and relationships. Put them in scenes that test their morals, challenge their relationships, and force them to argue. Play with perspective shifts during your drafting process to gain insights. If you follow these tips, your characters will come to life on the page.

Now it’s your turn. Choose one of the exercises above and spend 15 minutes developing your protagonist. Let their voice emerge through dialogue and their true nature shine through moral dilemmas. Readers will be eager to follow them wherever the story leads. Share your results in the comments below! Thanks for writing with me. Subscribe to the blog or follow me on Facebook and Twitter for more prompts.