Working With a Full Character Cast

Hey, 

As you might recall I was having trouble with one of my characters in my novel, because I didn't know her back story. You've probably heard that most authors know their characters a lot better than they need to to write the story, and it shows, even if they never use any of that extra information in their writing.

So this week I started an exercise, where I took a list of all my characters in the novel I'm working on. This included all the background characters, including those who are unlikely to even be mentioned in the book, and were created more to simply fill the world. I then wrote their ages and species next to them, with a short physical description before proceeding to write a paragraph of backstory and personality. 

I feel that this is one of the most important things I have done for this story. I now know how my characters act, and why, and so can better understand them, and what they would do in any given situation. 

When working with a large cast of characters, I think this is an invaluable exercise. You may be very surprised at what you find about your characters, even the main ones that you think you know well.

I also have an announcement. I am hoping in the next few months to set up an email list. Those who subscribe will be the first to get updates for my blog which will hopefully be set up so they can choose to read the post within their email, or click on a link to go here. Subscribers will also have access to a monthly newsletter which will include a summary of all my log posts that month if you don't have time to read them all, everything I have done writing wise that month, a list of writing related social media posts, links to other helpful bogs and writing articles, and updates for where I am up to in. my writing projects. Sometimes I will also include excerpts and short stories like my sneak peek at Karcess: Wolves in Turmoil - Chapter 1, so stay tuned if you're interested. Also, as a special thank you, all subscribers are also getting a pdf file of the character profiles.