Well-developed characters are vital components of compelling fiction. Your protagonist, antagonist, and secondary characters are the heart of your story. They drive the plot and engage your readers on an emotional level. If you’re new to writing fiction, diving straight into a manuscript without fully fleshing out characters may lead to flat, one-dimensional personas. To avoid this, spend time developing your characters before start writing your book.

In this blog post, we’ll explore six different character development exercises that will help you flesh out rich, dynamic characters. These exercises are designed to add depth to your characters, so they are complex, memorable, and most importantly—relatable.

6 Character Development Exercises

Feel free to pick one exercise you like best, or spend some time practicing each character development style by using the listed examples below.

1. Interview Your Character

This character development exercise allows you to hear each character’s voice and understand their perspectives on the world around them. Treat characters as if they are real people, and you can uncover their thoughts, feelings, and motivations.

Examples

• What do you consider your biggest accomplishment? Why?
• How do you handle stress or difficult situations?
• What is one thing you’ve never told anyone? Why have you kept it a secret?

As you answer these questions in your character’s voice, you’ll start to see them as a real person with unique opinions and quirks. This depth of understanding will naturally flow into your writing.

2. Character Biography

A character biography is a detailed description of your character’s life. This character development exercise helps you explore aspects of your character’s background that you may not need to directly spell out in your book but will help you better understand the character’s inner workings as the author.

Start by answering basic questions:

• Full name?
• Age?
• Where were they born?
• What do they do for a living?

As you progress, dig deeper into their traits, flaws, fears, and desires. You can even explore their Enneagram number, Myers-Briggs, or astrology sign. Also, be sure to take into consideration their family dynamics, education level, friendships, and relationships.

Examples

• What is your character’s greatest fear? How does it shape their actions?
• Describe an important moment in their childhood that impacted their worldview.
• What are their goals? What internal or external obstacles will they face to achieve them?

Writing character biographies helps you understand each of their motivations. This will also influence how they interact with each other and respond to the events in your story.

2. Role-Playing Scenarios

This exercise can be an effective (and also fun) way to understand your characters’ reactions in certain situations. If you do this exercise, you will place your character in different scenarios and determine how they will react. If you need to understand how your characters may interact with others, this is an especially useful practice.

Examples

• Your character attends a high-stress business meeting. Their business is in trouble and needs investors. How do they prepare for the meeting? And how do they handle the stress and pressure?
• Your character unexpectedly runs into an ex while out with a newer partner. How do they react in the situation? What emotions come up for your character?

This exercise can be particularly helpful when you’re trying to understand authentic dialogue and behavior in specific social situations.

3. Visual Representation

If you’re a visual person, you may find this character development exercise to be enjoyable. Take time to find or create images that represent your character. These could include photos, or drawings that capture characters’ appearances. Pinterest is a great place to develop character boards where you can save images you can turn back to time and time again.

Examples

• Save photos that represent your character’s physical features. Use these images to add depth to physical descriptions in your writing.
• Find images that represent your character’s favorite place. Describe why it’s meaningful to them.
• Create a collage that represents your character’s dream life.

Visual representations can inspire unique traits or backstory elements that you hadn’t considered before.

4. Backstory Development Through Short Stories

As writers, we need to know our characters’ backstories, but not everything needs to end up in the final draft of your book. One way you can get integral information on paper without adding it to your main narrative is to write short stories that focus on your character’s past.

Examples

• Write a short story about a defining moment in your character’s life before the events of your book. How did this situation shape who they are today?
• Describe a day in your character’s life after everything changed for them. What were the circumstances? How did they react?

Writing these short stories can reveal details about your character that add authenticity and depth to your writing.

5. Character Monologue

Drafting a character monologue can be a powerful way to explore their inner thoughts. This is a similar technique to freewriting, but you write it from your character’s perspective. You may stumble on their internal conflicts, deepest desires, and worst fears.

Start by selecting a conflict that is central to your story. Then write a monologue from your character’s point of view. Make sure to express their emotions and thoughts without interruption or structure.

Examples

• Write a monologue in which your character shares a secret they’ve kept to themselves for years. How do they feel about the secret? Does it affect any of their relationships?

Character monologues can help you tap into your character’s emotional depth and allow you to see how they might react in certain situations.

TL; DR

Exercises like character biographies, interviews, monologues, role-playing, visual representations, and backstory development offer unique ways to discover more about your characters than just their physical attributes. Take time to dig deep into their minds using these character development exercises and Figure out what makes your characters complex and capable of pushing your narrative forward.

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