Building a Character Profile

For me, character profiles are essential. You can think of the people you want to tell your story about, give them names....but they aren't believable unless you really figure out who they are.

No one person has a single facet. So we have a life-saving, award-winning surgeon...who also works as a volunteer at the puppy shelter (aaaaaaw) Or we have the life-saving, award-winning surgeon who kidnaps and murders women in his free time (oooookaaaaaay). Just adding that one other attribute to the same character completely changes who they are, it gives them another dimension than what we first see on the surface....be that good or bad.

Once we start adding lots of these different sides to our characters, they become 'real' people. They have motivations, fears, quirks etc - they aren't just made from a cookie cutter mould, each person on the page is unique to your story.

So how do I do this?

Some writers prefer to just get to know their characters as they write, which is great - but I need something more to work with before I start. Then, when I start writing, I feel like I truly know who my characters are, and how they would believably react in given situations....as well as getting to know more about them as I write.

Brainstorming and Research

So I'm FINALLY done with the first stage in my novelling process - the brainstorming and research.

I feel like I know enough about my world, characters and plot now so I can jump into my story, start fleshing out the plot and working on my outline - the part I've been looking forward to and dreading in equal portions - but we can talk about that another time.

Overall, I spent roughly a month brainstorming and researching for The Prince of Blades. This was a brand new idea to me. When I first thought of it - I knew next to nothing, so I had ALOT of work to do before I was convinced that this was a story I could really work with.

I know that some writers do very little brainstorming and researching when they first begin their novel. They prefer to discover things as they go, and that's great. But I'm a planner - and I can't move from one step to another without feeling secure in what I have done so far. So I brainstormed up a whizz, and I researched my little butt off - and I got WAY excited about this book and everything that I came up with along the way.