Preptober: Beyond Questionnaires — The Four Aspects of Character You Must Know Before Writing a Novel

How to craft characters intentionally

When I write a story, it doesn’t really start with character. Not in the “I woke up with a distinct voice babbling in my head” kind of way. I tend to start with plot or theme. You might start with a character’s voice, or a plot, or a world that you want to put characters into.

We talked before about how to brainstorm, and if you haven’t started brainstorming your novel yet, I highly recommend starting there.

Next in this Preptober series, we’ll talk about how to build out a plot from a premise to a beat sheet, to be sure the plot, well, does the plotty thing, but first we’ll look at how to write characters who fit the plot.

Writing a Character Who Needs This Plot

As tempting as it can be to reach into your big box of ideas, shuffle them around a bit, and match a character idea to a plot idea, you won’t end up with the strongest story with this sort of randomization. If you have a plot with a character who doesn’t need to learn the lesson the plot will teach them, the story will lack some of what makes it compelling.

Ironically, without the intentional crafting character in conjunction with plot, the story can actually feel more coincidental and less believable than if you build them in conjunction. I’ve written more about that in the article linked below.

Here I want to look in more detail at what it means to create a character that needs the plot: specifically the four aspects of a character you must know in order to make sure the story and the character suit each other.

No matter what the surface problem of the story is, the real problem will always be this: a character has developed coping mechanisms (mistaken beliefs) in response to a past hurt (the wound) that are no longer working for them as a method to get what they want. They must learn to correct those mistaken beliefs (what they need) in order to reach the plot goal — or learn the plot goal was the wrong goal all along.

Let’s take that summary and break it down.

The Wound

This aspect of a character’s backstory is called the wound in a lot of sources. Others refer to it as the ghost. Regardless of what it’s called, its definition is the piece of a character’s backstory that is holding them back from accomplishing the plot of the story you’re writing. Everything else about crafting a character that fits your plot will stem from this wound.

There are two aspects to the wound: first is the thing that happened to the character. They were orphaned, or their last boyfriend dumped them, or their parents expected them to be perfect.

While most wounds are something that happens to a character, occasionally wounds can be something a character failed at in the past. They had a mission to save everyone and didn’t. They messed up a huge presentation at work. They had some sort of responsibility and failed to see it through.

But there is a second part of the wound, too: mistaken beliefs.

The Mistaken Beliefs

Mistaken beliefs are what a character now believes — about themselves, the world, or both — because of the wound they experienced in the past.

It’s important to note that two characters could face the same wound and come away with different mistaken beliefs. Siblings faced with the wound of a parent expecting perfection from them can come away with beliefs as polar opposite as “I must be perfect in order to deserve love” and “I’m never going to be good enough, so there is no point in trying.”

These different mental responses to the wound are what make characters stand out from one another — it builds up their personality and makes them seem real on the page when we learn not only what happened to them but how they chose to internalize it and cope with it.

This doesn’t mean the wound needs to be revealed immediately. Often, this is the secret the character keeps in addition to the wound. However, its effects — these mistaken beliefs — should be clear from page one.

What Your Character Wants

I have a lot of conversations with my authors about character wants. Characters without wants can be problematic because stories happen to them, which isn’t the convention in postmodern Western storytelling. To craft a story that feels both organic and necessary, what your character wants should be at least one of the following things:

• something they want because of their mistaken beliefs that would be ultimately harmful (think: a relationship with the Bad Boy persona)
• something they want but cannot get to because of their mistaken beliefs (think: a lead in the school musical, but they believe they’re a bad singer and won’t sing in front of people)
• something they want that would, if acquired, be mutually exclusive with getting what they (don’t yet know they) need (think: they want to be class president, but need to learn a lesson about humility or cooperation)

What Your Character Needs

Speaking of that last one, let’s talk about what a character needs. Needs, of course, will change depending on the story. What Moana needs is to let go of tradition and go out on her own, but every time I listen to “Where You Are,” I think about how this mistaken belief — that the community they have is enough, without needing to leave to find something bigger — is the resolution to myriad stories.

What makes a character’s need poignant to the story at hand is that it will help them overcome their wound and let go of their mistaken beliefs. To complement the wants above, let’s look at what those characters actually need.

• The character who wants a relationship with the Bad Boy needs to find her own self-worth outside of a relationship.
• The character who wants the lead in the school musical needs to accept their talent and risk putting themselves out there.
• The character who wants to be class president needs to learn to cooperate with others and not always put himself first.

In each of these cases, the story can resolve one of four ways:

• The character gets what they need and because of it is able to get what they want too. The girl who learns self-worth helps the Bad Boy find his own self-worth and he stops being so toxic. The actor accepts their talent, auditions, and gets the lead. The wannabe class president cooperates with others for his campaign and wins, but is ready to lead a team rather than do it for his own glory.
• The character doesn’t get what they want, but does get what they need and is satisfied with this. The girl learns self-worth and realizes she doesn’t need a boyfriend at all, let alone this one, to be valuable. The actor doesn’t get the lead, but does audition and gets a small part, and is really excited to keep trying. The wannabe class president loses his race but gains friendship and realizes there is more to life than winning.
• The character never learns what they need to. They get what they want, but it feels hollow. The girl goes to great lengths to get the Bad Boy, and at the end they are dating, but she missed a chance to learn a lesson and this path is clearly destructive for her. The actor chickens out of their audition, but the cast lead is out sick so they get to perform on opening night. The wannabe class president pushes everyone down to win, and now has more enemies than friends.
• The character never learns what they need to, and because they didn’t learn what they need, they don’t get what they want. The Bad Boy wanted the girl, but she doesn’t like herself enough for their relationship to work, so he leaves her. The actor never auditions, and doesn’t get a role. The wannabe class president is a jerk to everyone trying to get his way, so no one votes for him.

Simply put, these arcs are positive, bittersweet, and two versions of tragic. The third of these is the hardest to write well, as it’s essentially nihilist, but the others are all valid ways of looking at a character’s arc in relationship to their wounds, beliefs, wants, and needs depending on what message you want to send. All three of these will result in a story that appears well-crafted, with meaningful, three-dimensional characters who need the world and plot you put them in.

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