Start With The Story, Not The Characters

Beginners are often advised to create a comprehensive profile for each character in the book. But that only keeps the author from starting to write. The story is more important.

When I started writing, I, of course, read the essential writing guides. In almost all of them, it was advised that you should know your characters inside out from the beginning.

Besides the body stature, the hair color, and the main character traits, one should also know the childhood and the family ties of the characters. Also, one should know the political attitude, the values the person lives by, where he/she likes to travel to, and a thousand other things.

I have tried and failed miserably. I couldn’t think of a real person on the drawing board.

I lacked the ability to see fictitious people in my mind’s eye because I am not a particularly visually inclined person. Also, the task of thinking up a life story for my characters presented me with great difficulties, because whatever I thought up seemed arbitrary.

What should I have used to determine the life story of my main character? There wasn’t even a detailed story at that time.

And then I realized that this was precisely where the problem lay. I couldn’t develop a story from a collection of random characters. Instead, I needed a strong story first, and only then would I consider what qualities the people in the story would need to have to make the story work.

The story demands the character

It should be evident that an action thriller needs different main characters than a romance novel. But it’s not only the genre that determines what kind of characters are necessary for our story. It always depends on the individual story.

Let’s say we want to write an action thriller in which a former soldier gets into a private conflict with a gang.

The only thing we need to know about our main character at this stage of story development is that he was a former soldier. His shoe size and his favorite food are not important right now. First, we have to make the story more concrete.

What kind of gang is he messing with? What’s the story about? What’s the conflict between our hero and this gang?

Let’s assume they are drug smugglers operating off the coast of Florida. These gangsters have captured a teenager who happened to be watching a drug delivery. They will take her out to sea and kill her there.

Okay, that sounds like a tense situation. So, where does our hero come in? Why is he getting into it with the smugglers over this girl?

Let’s say he’s been working as a street worker since his army service ended, helping disadvantaged youth. The kidnapped girl is one of his parolees. Another kid witnessed the kidnapping and turned to our hero for help.

Now we know more about this character. He has a social conscience, cares for young people, and enjoys so much trust with them that they turn to him in case of difficulties.

Which qualities would suit the main character well if we look at the story? The gangsters hold the girl captive on a boat on the sea. So it would be helpful if our former soldier could also drive a boat. Maybe he was in the Navy?

I like even better the idea that he’s a trained combat swimmer. Combat swimmers are cool because they’re an elite unit. Our hero is a silent killing machine.

Character and story develop each other

From this point on, the story and the background of the main character are tied to each other. Now we have created a dynamic from which we can derive the story’s progress.

For example, we have now established that our hero is a former combat swimmer. This, in turn, requires more of his characteristics. I haven’t researched this, but perhaps in our research, we will find out that combat swimmers need a certain level of training, that they are not allowed to be taller or shorter than a certain height, and that they must not have a criminal record.

Now we know a lot more details than we did before. Then we deal with the specialized skills that combat swimmers have. What tools, weapons, and tactics do they use? How can these things help in the fight against the gang? Which problems can’t be solved this way?

By the way: We haven’t thought about why our hero left the military service. Does he have a disability that can hinder him even now, in the hostage rescue?

Or maybe he was too brutal in operation and was suspended because of it. Maybe his unit even sunk a drug-smuggling boat after the smugglers killed one of his buddies. It’s possible that these smugglers were part of the same cartel that’s holding the girl now.

But I’m letting my imagination run away with me. I’m not going to write this book, so I’m stopping now. If you want, you can take the idea and turn it into your own story.

I just wanted to show that our characters often only come alive when we put them in a concrete situation.

The story has to be there first. It will tell you which characters it needs to work. It will even show you exactly what qualities these characters need.

Forget character questionnaires. If you want to write a story, write a story.

I hope that I could show you how to develop strong characters without thinking about them from the beginning.

What do you think about that? Do you develop your stories the same way, or are you of the opinion that it is the other way round and that the characters have to be there first?

I am looking forward to your comments on this article.

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