Some writers know almost everything about a character before writing the first scene. They know what the character looks like, what they fear, how they make decisions, where they belong in the world and how their personality will change by the end of the story.
Others begin with little more than a name and wait to see who appears on the page.
I seem to do both.
I usually know my protagonist—or protagonists—before I begin. I know their role in the story, their central motivation and, more or less, where they need to end up. Then I build the other characters around them. Some will help them, some will obstruct them and some will reveal parts of them that could not emerge in isolation.
What I do not always know is exactly who all these people will become along the way.
A destination is not a personality
I have written before about beginning with an outline and gradually departing from it. I know the important turns and the destination, but not necessarily the precise route. My approach to characters is similar.
Knowing that someone must travel from one emotional point to another is not the same as knowing the person who will make that journey. I may understand what a character wants and why they want it without knowing how they speak when they are nervous, which insult they will refuse to forgive or what they notice first when they enter a room.
Hungarian novelist Judit Hidasi has described a similar experience: she had created her characters and could see the goal of the story, but did not yet know how everything would come together. The story continued to shape itself as she wrote.
That distinction matters. A destination can give a character direction without determining every decision they will make.
What the character reveals
Sometimes, when I introduce a character, I know little about their appearance beyond whether they are a man or a woman. I do not stop to complete a full physical description before allowing them into the story.
The details arrive when something makes them relevant.
Another character notices the mole above their lip. Someone realises how tall they are only when they stand too close. A scar becomes visible when a sleeve is pushed back. The description enters through an observer, which means it tells us something about both people: the person being seen and the person doing the looking.
Personality often develops in much the same way. I discover a great deal of it through dialogue.
A character begins to speak, and gradually I hear their rhythm. I learn whether they answer a difficult question directly, turn it into a joke or avoid it altogether. I discover what makes them impatient, what they conceal and which subjects make them say more than they intended.
Leigh Bardugo has spoken about the pleasure of discovering a character’s mannerisms, sense of humour and defining qualities. Some of her characters arrive almost fully formed and already speaking clearly; others take much longer to understand.
That is familiar to me. Not every character enters a story in the same way. Some seem to know exactly who they are. Others require several conversations before they are willing to tell me.
Motives are clearer than morality
I usually know whether a character means well or intends harm. But intention is only the beginning, because a good motive can produce a terrible decision, and a cruel action can emerge from a fear we understand even if we cannot excuse it.
No character or decision is entirely black or white. As the story progresses, competing motives appear. Loyalty may become possessiveness. Courage may turn into recklessness. The same person can be generous in one situation and selfish in another without either version being false.
This is how my characters become more complicated as I write them. I do not necessarily change their fundamental nature. I discover how that nature behaves under different kinds of pressure.
Occasionally, a character does something that surprises even me. At that point, writers often say that the character has taken control of the story or started guiding the writer’s hand.
There is some truth in that feeling, but it is not magic. Once a character has acquired a history, relationships, fears and a recognisable way of thinking, certain choices no longer feel possible for them. Others become almost inevitable. The character is not writing the book, but the internal logic already established around them begins to limit what I can honestly make them do.
A character may surprise the writer. That does not mean the character can do anything.
A character sheet that changes
I keep a character sheet for every significant person in the story. But I do not always use it as a set of instructions prepared in advance.
It is partly a plan and partly a record.
I write down what I already know: the character’s role, motivation, relationships and possible development. Then I add what the character reveals during the writing. A physical detail may appear in one scene. A new fear may become apparent during an argument. A relationship may change the way the character sees a choice I thought I had already understood.
Sometimes I record a single line of dialogue because it says more about that person than a list of traits ever could. It may be funny, cruel, unexpectedly compassionate or simply so characteristic that it changes how I understand everything else they say.
My character sheets are not rules the characters must obey. They are evolving records of who the characters have shown themselves to be.
They become especially important during revision. I return to them and ask whether a particular statement is valid for that person at that moment. Would they really say this? Does the reaction follow from what has happened to them? If they act differently from the person they were ten chapters earlier, has the story earned that change?
Discovery gives a character freedom. Revision tests whether that freedom is believable.
Which one is my favourite?
Every character comes through the writer’s own filter. They may not share my opinions, my experiences or my morality, but some part of me is inevitably present in each of them. I have to understand what they want and why their choices make sense to them—even when I strongly disagree with those choices.
That is why the question Who is your favourite character? can be surprisingly difficult.
Is it the protagonist who travels from one end of a carefully constructed character arc to the other? Or is it the minor character who appears in chapter seven, makes one perfectly characteristic remark and leaves me wondering where that entire personality came from?
Creating and discovering characters are not opposing methods. I create their place in the story, give them a direction and begin asking questions. Writing is where many of the answers appear. Then revision allows me to decide whether those answers are true.
I may decide where my characters are going. Writing is how I discover who arrives.
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