As I'm working on character in my current revision, here are some quick thoughts on a pitfall I sometimes have to reckon with when trying to make characters three dimensional.

Thread!

So sometimes, when I know I need to flesh out a character (often at the planning stage, sometimes in revision), I'm tempted to basically just add random facts about them.

Hobbies! Favorite music! Hopes and dreams! Random childhood traumas!

Here's the thing...

Those can help me get a grip on who the character is in the early stages.

If they're genuinely foundational to the character in some way, they can help me write the character better in the book.

If they're just random fun details, though, often they're not what I need.

Like, if I decide that X likes to play chess, great! That can help define the character if they're a big strategic thinker, or if they look at everything as a game, etc.

But if it's just a side hobby that doesn't really affect how they act or see the world, it's not helping me.

Doesn't mean I can't come up with those kinds of details as fun side quirks, but it's not doing work for me.

If my character always dreamed of being a chef but that's 100% irrelevant to everything they do & think & feel in the story, it's not really deepening the character.

The key is to come up with stuff that's coloring their interactions with the story and with other characters. Things that add weight to their decisions, subtext to their conversations, emotional baggage to their relationships, a focal length to their lens on the world.

It can be little or big! Sometimes "I owe this guy five bucks" can bear more narrative weight for you than "my entire village was wiped out when I was 7 years old."

I need to remember this when I realize a character needs Something More & am trying to give it to them in edits. If the Something More pulls away from the story, it's going to feel irrelevant. If it twines into the story, it'll infuse the character's whole arc with more meaning.

As always, there are lots of valid approaches to character! (SO MANY.) This is something that trips ME up, personally, and a solution that works for me. Some writers THRIVE on the random details of character and those WILL do tons of work for them. Go with what works for you!

This thread brought to you by me writing down all this stuff in notes about my characters' families and pasts that's unlikely to come up directly in the story and then realizing I was just...neglecting to push some big red buttons that were RIGHT THERE