Developing a Compelling Cast of Book Characters

When you think about a favorite work, chances are there’s a character or two embedded in your memories, along with the plot of something like To Kill a Mockingbird, Crazy Rich Asians, or The Hunger Games. Readers buy into a story after connecting emotionally to someone in it -- even if the connection is to a dislikeable character like Miranda Priestley, the fashion force in The Devil Wears Prada, or Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. As an early step to developing your novel, or to considering how to portray yourself or others in memoir and literary nonfiction, it’s important to flesh out your understanding of all characters.

Some helpful geometric imagery to use when depicting the level of character development you’ll pursue for each depicts them by one of three shapes: characters can either be flat, square, or rounded in terms of how developed they are. A flat character may be relatively invisible, whereas fully rounded ones will likely need backstory on what drives them emotionally, where they grew up, and more.

Learn some broad tips on how to approach each type of character, as well as ways of digging deep into individual ones. The development part includes approaches from authors who discussed this topic at a Writer's League of Texas event in fall 2024.

To plan a book's ensemble cast, consider who needs to be fully developed (rounded), intermediate (square), or basic (flat) in terms of your understanding of them.

Fully Rounded Characters

To develop the more developed characters, first, it’s important to be crystal clear about who your main protagonist is that readers will follow throughout the primary narrative arc of the story. Your protagonist, and perhaps a sidekick or two and an antagonist, are likely to be the characters you need to understand most deeply, in terms of what their emotional and physical needs are that drive them, whether they have a capacity to change or not, the factors that shaped them, and more. Keep in mind that what a protagonist, or you in a memoir, think they need might well differ from what’s really needed, or what the world will supply. Defining their wants and needs, and what stands in the way of getting what they think they want, often provides compelling tension that drives the main narrative of your story.

Some books have more than one protagonist, such as in works of historical fiction; but more often than not there is a lead character, even among the leading ones. That’s partly because readers traditionally like to know who to follow throughout a story. For instance, in the dual-timeline novel, The Tea Chest, Heidi Chiavaroli spends almost as much time on the protagonist, Emma, in the 1770s as on present-day protagonist Haley, and both are presented in first-person tense. It’s Haley’s story of finding the tea chest that connects the two and starts the work, however; and the novel also ends in Haley’s world, related to her journey of learning how to trust again while renewing a relationship with an old beau.

In novels, you might make a character one of the leading ones—and thus, need to flesh out their story-- if they play some part in helping fix the challenge that is central to moving the plot forward. Or they may be among the characters in real life, or otherwise, that has the most capacity to change (although not every lead character does this by book’s end; for instance, in the compelling literary novel by Lily King, Writers & Lovers, the lead character stays doggedly determined to get her book published throughout, and what changes instead is the outcome of her efforts).

As you define the main characters, their internal story will be especially important to develop well, related to what emotions they gravitate toward most often, what they tend to think about, what beliefs they’ve developed through life experiences, or inherited from parents and others, and what motivates them to try to keep their world the way it is, and compels them to overcome that common tendency.

A square character lacks some nuances

Square Characters

I learned this term from W. K. Stratton about a decade ago, when the newspaper journalist-turned author of eight books taught at a weeklong writing retreat in West Texas. These characters may be fairly well developed, with unique voices and mannerisms and such, but serve a relatively contained purpose.

Take, for instance, “the midwife” that is a focus at the beginning and end of the second chapter in Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated. This unnamed midwife teaches Tara’s mothers the unofficial tricks of this profession. We learn a fair bit about the established midwife in the chapter, with much of it focused on the physical, such as the wart on her chin, and commanding voice. Yet what her fears and goals are isn’t a consideration. That the characterization doesn’t go deeper likely reflects that her story purpose is as a counterpoint at first to Tara’s mother’s timidity at the start of midwifery training. That allows us a measuring stick for her mother’s growth by chapter’s end, as she gains confidence in her capabilities through lived experiences as a midwife herself.

While in some cases these characters may appear in depth for just a chapter or more, they may instead play smaller roles, but be seen off and on throughout a work.

Fleshing out more complex characters

To help work through the specifics of who a round or square character is in terms of physical, basic or more complex emotional, and other traits, you can find online guides, such as this, more physically-focused one, this one that prioritizes characters’ internal traits, and is designed for novelists, and these wide-ranging ones. 

Among the developmental tricks for going further that the panelists shared were:

• Sherri L. Smith, author of The Blossom and the Firefly and many other fiction and nonfiction works, suggested placing a character into scenes at different ages over time, as a tool for understanding them more fully.

• Meg Vondriska, author of The Tail of Two Titties: A Writer’s Guide to Conquering the Most Sexist Tropes in Literary History, had noted she sometimes has rewritten content from the perspective of a different character, with Smith adding that that can be a way to determine who should provide the overall voice for a work. Another author, LaToya Watkins, who has written Perish and Holler, Child, was noted in the fall webinar for literally taking a key character to a therapist to talk through their motivations and such.

• Smith also recommended background work of having a character write a letter of protest to a newspaper editor or someone else, on a topic that matters to them, while fiction-and-nonfiction author and panelist Alex Temblador suggested asking yourself, What would they rant about on Facebook?

• To delve further into backstory, Temblador also suggested imagining that your character is looking at a house, chair or other object, and then think about what memories etc. the object would bring up for them.

• To step into a character’s overall persona, Smith also noted she sometimes stands up from her writing desk and pretends to be that character; or, Temblador shared, you could go to a coffee shop and inhabit that character’s mien while ordering a drink and such.

Flat characters in a book typically serve a specific purpose to move scenes along

Flat, But Functional, Characters

Main characters inevitably will cross paths with an attendant at a gas station while heading to a rendezvous point with an accomplice, a neighbor at a grocery store, and so on. These flat characters may or may not get a name, could have just a few physical features listed, and perhaps an age and an occupation to serve their intended role. Flat characters may only appear briefly in one or a few scenes. Smith noted in the fall talk that it’s important not to make these characters too flat. To avoid that, she recommended thinking about what a flat character represents to the main character, psychologically speaking.

The panelists also pointed out the importance, when keeping minor characters simple, of not making them into stereotypes (a topic I’ll delve into more fully in another post). This is about being more nuanced in your writings, while veering away from presenting something like having all the Chinese and other Asian-American students in a YA book about middle school relationships effortlessly get good grades and be rule-followers. The exception can be when a larger story point is being made by the homogeneity, such as depicting these students in that way from the viewpoint of a less-popular, Asian character at the school who has self-esteem issues. Otherwise, this genericization can alienate some readers, while taking away from the richness of your content--which is part of why authors create a diverse range of characters in the first place.

How Many Characters?

Another important consideration is how deep your “deck” should be. Unlike films, which can have a gazillion extras crammed in to even the tiniest town square to keep visuals alluring, a typical reader can only follow so many characters at once.

Studying genre expectations can help you understand what’s typical: a contemporary romance, for instance, often will have just a few players beyond the couple that’s the central focus, whereas an epic fantasy or lengthy historical novel may include a pretty hefty list. That readers struggle with a work that has extensive characters is why books like Nicola Griffith’s wonderful historical, Menewood, includes a list at the back of names and what roles characters play.

By Barbra A. Rodriguez

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Learn more about flat and round character examples and development, including ways a flat character can “round up.”

Dig deeper into character thinking and how to strengthen their development with a Janice Hardy of Fiction University's reference book, in which what I refer to as square characters are denoted as Important or Minor characters.