Building Character Profiles for Your Book

Like most authors, writing a captivating book drives you to write; in many cases, it works. Knowing that your content will end up in the hands of someone who’ll appreciate all the effort you put into it is a rewarding thought.

One of the many aspects that go into an engaging book is the characters. As an author, you’re tasked with building them, ensuring they complement the story and keep the reader engaged.

Depending on the number of characters you plan on creating, a character profile template can help you organize the details more clearly.

Building character profiles is essential, meaning that today’s tips will help you excel at this part of the book-writing process.

Start With the Basics

Don’t start overthinking ahead when it comes to building a character profile. Start slow and think of the fundamentals of your character. In most cases, this includes name, age, gender, and occupation. Consider these as the foundation for each character, and build on top of them.

You can continue with other aspects of each character’s life, including personal traits, skills, and experiences. The more layers you add, the deeper and more complex the character. Remember that without the basics, you won’t be able to do any of this.

Explore the Background

A character has history, which is another aspect you should consider building. The background is what shapes a character and shows the current state. When discussing the background, you should consider things like education, family moments, life events, etc.

Having characters with no or limited history information will limit the dynamics. You can create them as you envisioned, but you won’t be able to explain why they’re as they are now. The richer the past you create, the more authentic the character and the experience can be.

Define the Personality

A character isn’t just about the past and current events. A character is also every possible emotion or personality trait, something you should consider developing to give each character more depth.

This segment is linked to the previous one in many ways, and with good reason. Even with us people, the past often defines us and makes us who we are, so you can apply the same rule to your characters. Certain events in the past caused a character to become an introvert or angry at life or anything else your imagination can think of.

Set Goals and Motivations

You’re building characters to be as close to real people as possible, meaning you’ll need to consider goals and motivations. Ask yourself what motivates a particular character. You should ensure that each character has a purpose and a driving force.

That said, you may want to throw in some mystery here and there. Leave a character with a mysterious past or not-so-clear motivations. This should help add some drama to the plot and keep the reader wondering what the driving force could be.

Don’t Forget the Relationships

Similar to how things work in real life, the characters in your book will need to have relationships. This is a significant step in any character development, so you’ll need to ensure you’re not skipping out on this step.

The characters can have friends, enemies, relatives, lovers, etc. As in the previous segment, keeping a certain amount of mystery can help keep the story interesting. You can also consider revealing this information throughout the book as the story unfolds.

Internal Struggles Can Help

As people, we struggle all the time, so you can apply that to your characters. Making them perfect won’t bring any excitement to the story. Even if you’re writing fiction, showing some of these imperfections deepens the characters and makes them more relatable.

Dilemmas, insecurities, struggles, and many other issues are good options for various reasons. Apart from this, giving depth to characters it also helps keep the reader engaged. Many readers are drawn to struggling characters, especially if they recognize themselves or someone closer to the character.

The Profiles Aren’t Set in Stone

During the development process of your characters, you should know that the way a character starts off, doesn’t necessarily mean it will end up that way in the final version. You may find better ideas and options throughout the wiring and creating the characters, so you’ll make some changes.

Regarding revisions, it’s a good choice to evolve some of your characters. Missing some information in the plot may give you an idea of a certain trait you can add to a character. Don’t forget, they’re made up, so it’s up to you to shape them in a way that you think would get the reader interested.

Creating characters for a book can be a struggle. You’ll need to create an entire persona using only your imagination and some inspiration. Following today’s tips will help you create characters that will almost feel like they’re real.

*This is a collaborative post. All views and texts are my own.