Why is character development so hard?

Or, is it possible I'm making it much harder than it is? >< I feel like no matter how hard I try, I can't develop them enough. I've noticed a lot of my characters are rather flat. They lack personality and all that stuff. I always use Charahub to develop them, but it seems like that's not enough for me anymore though. I guess what I need is some advice on how to develop good characters.

So, how do you develop your characters? Is there any advice you can offer me to help me develop them more? I don't want like super difficult advice. I just want an easy start where I can possibly work my way up and what not... if that makes any sense? O_o

How do I develop characters? Well, that's a pretty weird question in of itself. However, what I usually do to develop characters is to highlight aspects of my character that I haven't shown yet. In one of my stories, a certain character is the teasing sister, she jokes around, she plays too much, and often times is pretty fiesty. However, I ended up showcasing that the character has sensitive emotions and has a deep care for her friends, almost borderline suicidal without them. Only thing is, you would notice this on a surface level from the start of the story.

One thing for developing characters is giving them a wide mix of emotions to play off of that would normally contradict to how that character usually acts. Every character has some form of inner conflict, so having them confront that conflict and get progress on that conflict is a good sign of character development. For instance, Jim is coping with the loss of his sister. He's upset and refuses to talk. Over the course of the story, Jim learns to be happy again and ultimately gets pass his loss. You compare Jim to the beginning of the story and the end and see noticable differences.

So my advice, start them off as flatter characters, but continually develop on them by giving them a wide range of expression and emotions, as well fight their own flaws or self-conflicts or even conflicts with other characters.

People use a lot of different methods for developing their characters; you might simply need to try some different approaches and see what works for you. For me, sites like charahub and things like character questionnaires, interviews, etc. aren't very useful. I don't really assign my characters traits, strengths/weaknesses, that sort of thing.

The process I use to develop characters is mostly intuitive. If a scene or story calls for a new character, I just jump in and start writing them as it comes to me, letting them react to things how they react and not thinking about it much. As the story goes on, I naturally learn more about them over time and start to fall in to more well-defined patterns when writing them. I can start to look over what I've come up with so far and actually analyze their psychology, decide what makes them tick based on how they've behaved so far. By writing ahead with those traits in mind, they come more to the fore, and the characterization becomes more prominent.

So there's really nothing to my method; just write yourself into a character, and figure out what kind of person they are later. Whatever you decide to do, it might be helpful to analyze more concretely why you're unsatisfied with your characters. You say they're flat--what do you mean by that? They lack personality? In what way? How are they actually interacting with the narrative, and what don't you like about that?

Characters are two things: a starting point and an end point. The starting point is determined by their past up until they are introduced, their preferences, their likes and dislikes, and their personality. Digging into a character's history is a great form of character development, and you as the writer should have a pretty good understanding of it regardless of whether it makes it into your story. I personally come up with a few defining moments for each character, and then create more as necessary.

The end point is determined by, or at least described in, your story. This is how your character grows throughout the story, the events and decisions that shape them. That might sound obvious, but like you said, it's not always easy. Again, I come up with a few defining moments for each character that plays out during the story.

So what are these defining moments? Basically, they're non-standard life events, something that would create a strong memory if it happened to a real person. Look at your own life: what memories really stand out to you? For me, they're moments of strong emotion, like when I rescued a cat off the road in the pouring rain or made one of my best friends upset by teasing them. The defining moments can be more mundane, as well: I swear dealing with traffic every day is turning me into some sort of supervillain. Said moments can even be in the future: dread or excitement about a big event can greatly affect our actions and perceptions.

So how do you create those moments? Well, that's up to you really. There's no "right" answer. I personally just go with whatever has that intangible quality of "rightness" for each character. The smart one struggles with the death of a family member, which is exacerbated by his notion that emotions cloud good judgment. The shy one struggles with being afraid but is capable of making incredible, soul-shaking music. The hothead jumps into situations without thinking them through, but has a fierce loyalty and compassion for her friends. As you just read those, you probably imagined scenes in which each character displays those qualities. That's character development. The sign of a good defining moment is: if the character told you about it, would you listen from start to finish or would you get bored? The same will go for your readers.

I always seem to do better when people ask me about my character. Either that, or like writing out a story, I play things out in my head too. I was just curious about how others wrote out their characters though. My methods always seem to fail me. Because when I go to write about the character, I can't write about them in a way that I have planned out for them. For example, if I want to write a childish character... I can't seem to grasp the idea of how the character is childish in their ways, you know? That's where I always end fucking them up. :/ All my characters end up being the same as the main character too.

Read psychology. Base your characters on psychological archetypes. You can find plenty of development there I guess.

Like it has been mentioned, there are basically N+1 methods for N writers. The methods to build characters do not have to be static themselves either.

I'm going to spare you the description of yet another method™ considering the above answers are pretty good, and instead jump ahead to a couple of details.

CrazyBunnyCoaster said:

My methods always seem to fail me. Because when I go to write about the character, I can't write about them in a way that I have planned out for them. For example, if I want to write a childish character... I can't seem to grasp the idea of how the character is childish in their ways, you know? That's where I always end psyducking them up. :/ All my characters end up being the same as the main character too.

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(Emphasis mine)

That's actually good! (up to a point)

When you find out you can't describe what a character is like, it's usually an indication you are missing on the vocabulary required to describe persons and behaviours -and here is where the above suggestion to read psychology helps a lot: there's a lot to a person's method in the madness than just being flat out "content" or being a "faithful" person. Or perhaps you have gaps in your character's personality development that you haven't accounted for -and this is a very good opportunity to close those gaps: after all if your character is childish it has to be for a reason hopefully better than "remembers school days fondly", and if that reason is not clear to you, you'll soon see you are not able to describe the character's behaviour in a way that reads stable.

re: doing better when you are asked about your characters, that's something that happens to me too. And yeah, you could always ask to be asked. Though it might depend on having more information about your setting, I always have a set of "personality unrolling" questions ready, in case you want to drop by my inbox sometime.

I break it down really simply, I usually start by knowing what I want my end goal to be for my character, what kind of traits or whatever I want them to have that really makes them who they are. Then, I basically just take those traits and sort of whittle them down until they're either flaws, or just simply non apparent. Then, I work ways to change those characteristics in the story.

Okay, so an example because I probably didn't explain that too well:

Let's say I have this character, Mary. I want Mary to be very charismatic, maybe even a little domineering or intimidating. She wasn't always like that, though. I start the story off with Mary as a very passive character - although still containing some qualities of arrogance that will later develop into her more domineering trait. Now, how does she become more charismatic? I then look for situations or scenarios relevant to the overall story that would work in favor with not only story progression, but character development.

And... voila!

I'm not sure as to your method but I would suggest developing them from the inside out. Before you put together your plot outline go ahead and take time to do character sketches of your primary cast. Write about their history and explore their likes/dislikes/passions/hates and so on. Once you fundamentally know who the characters are then you will have an idea as to how to push their arc forward.

Character development is just your characters reacting to the circumstances of the plot and allowing it to change them accordingly. Once you know who they are then you'll know how to make them react and thus grow.

Character development can tough. That is why I usually plan my characters thoroughly by following this simple formula:

Katamari said:

I break it down really simply, I usually start by knowing what I want my end goal to be for my character, what kind of traits or whatever I want them to have that really makes them who they are. Then, I basically just take those traits and sort of whittle them down until they're either flaws, or just simply non apparent. Then, I work ways to change those characteristics in the story.

Okay, so an example because I probably didn't explain that too well:

Let's say I have this character, Mary. I want Mary to be very charismatic, maybe even a little domineering or intimidating. She wasn't always like that, though. I start the story off with Mary as a very passive character - although still containing some qualities of arrogance that will later develop into her more domineering trait. Now, how does she become more charismatic? I then look for situations or scenarios relevant to the overall story that would work in favor with not only story progression, but character development.

And... voila!

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Exactly, the character development and the plot progression are tightly connected.