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Choose a protagonist from your story and spend ten minutes learning more about your character’s traits. With a little thought, you can sculpt the four cornerstones of your character in progress. Ask yourself the following questions and jot down the answers.

 

  1. What is your character really afraid of?
  2. What is your character hiding?
  3. What is your character’s biggest weakness?
  4. What is odd or unusual about your character?
  5. Now go back to your story. You may find there are changes you wish to make to the way you reveal your character.

Chris Sykes, author of Complete Creative Writing Course

Emma Paterson, literary agent

Lesley Bown & Ann Gawthorpe, authors of Masterclass: Writing Plays

Juno Dawson, author of dark teen thrillers, and non-fiction including Being a Boy and This Book is Gay

‘I began to imagine my characters as the Scooby Gang’

I think character types are a useful starting point. In my debut, Hollow Pike, I remember the teen characters all sounded too similar to being with. I began to imagine them as the Scooby Gang – a Velma, Daphne, Freddy and Shaggy and it suddenly became much easier to know which character would make what…
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‘I began to imagine my characters as the Scooby Gang’

Jurgen Wolff, author of Your Creative Writing Masterclass

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Harmless Like You

Federico Andornino, Editor, Two Roads

Sarah Winman, author of When God Was a Rabbit and A Year of Marvellous Ways