Shame Shelf Planning Tips: Creating Believable Characters

Whether your novel is more plot-driven or you allow your characters to take the lead, all stories require believable characters that are interesting and can hold the reader's attention. You might be one of the people that struggle with character creation, or you might belong to the group that finds it easy to come up with dynamic protagonists. Whichever category you most resonate with, we hope that this post will be useful for your novel writing journey.

Step 1: Motivation

The first thing to do when creating a character is to look at their past. Focus on the events that shaped them into the person they have become. Was there a traumatic event that makes them unable to trust others? Did the loss of a loved one force them to become closed off to new encounters?

The answer to these questions will enable you to figure out your character's motivation. This is closely tied to the lie, the false narrative, they were made to believe.

Let's look at Nora from Kay's example in last week's post (Shame Shelf Planning Tips: From Idea to Plot).

This is what we know about Nora at the beginning of the novel:

• Nora runs away from her murderous brother, Joseph.

• She needs to survive in order to save their sister, Page.

In these two sentences, we already know that Nora's motivation is related to Page, but we can dig deeper than that. Consider this:

• As children, Nora and Joseph were pitted against each other by their manipulative parents, and sibling rivalry dominated most of their childhood. Nora usually came out on top because of her ability to predict the future, causing Joseph to feel resentful.

• When Page was born, their parents doted on the youngest - which only fuelled Joseph's anger even more.

• One day, Nora caught Joseph attempting to drown baby Page out of jealousy. Nora stopped him and realised that the use of her foretelling ability had made Joseph a monster (guilt).

With these additional details, we understand that Nora's motivation stems not only from her responsibility towards a younger sibling but also her guilt for consistently outsmarting Joseph and feeding his insecurities.

In your novel, your protagonist's motivation should be obvious during the inciting moment.

Think about why they choose to accept the call to adventure when they could quite easily remain in their comfort zone.

NB: Your character should be motivated by multiple things, but there should be one motivation that prevails over the others. A dynamic character is multifaceted, so the complexity should show through their motives.

Step 2: Goal (aka Character Want)

Now that you know what motivates your character, you need to establish their goal. After all, character goal drives plot. Whether your character will get what they want is what keeps the reader engaged. It needs to be something tangible and specific, something the reader can easily follow.

Saying your character's goal is to find happiness is too broad. How can the reader tell if the character has achieved their goal? In fact, happiness in this case would more likely symbolise internal motivation.

In Nora's case, consider the following:

• Nora wants to stop Joseph from killing Page (goal) because she feels responsible for the rift in their sibling relationship (motivation).

Step 3: Theme (Character Need)

Once you've established your character's motivation and their goal, you will need to think about the theme of your book. All stories have a theme, even if it's not explicit. The term might sound daunting at first, but if you consider it from a simple angle, it's essentially the message you want to tell your readers.

Or, in the case of your character's journey, it's what they need to realise in order to grow as a person.

This is essential because readers care about character arc; they want to see that the protagonist has overcome their fears and changed in some way over the course of the book.

It's not crucial to put want (goal) and need (theme) in opposition of each other, but doing so will give you an interesting character journey.

In our example, it could look like this:

• Nora wants to stop Joseph from killing Page (goal) because she feels responsible for the rift in their sibling relationship (motivation). But what she needs to realise is that the fault lies in their parents' inability to nurture their children equally with love and kindness (theme).

Step 4: Additional Tips

Once you've established the above, you will hopefully have all you need to write an interesting character arc. Whilst motivation, goal, and theme are important, it's also crucial to think about your character's quirks and flaws.

They need to feel real and alive. Observe the people around you, and you will quickly notice that everyone has flaws or contradictions. This applies to your book characters as well. The villain in a story can still show compassion whilst committing atrocious crimes, and in the same vein the hero will feel more authentic if their kindness doesn't extend to all people.

There you go!

Hopefully, this post was useful, and you can apply these steps to your own protagonist. If you have any additional tips to share, please let us know in the comments section. We would love to see how you tackle character creation.