One way to flesh out your characters is through Memories, Identities, and Secrets.
You can first try this exercise by answering questions about yourself to see how the details
of your life reveal the larger picture of who you are.
You can then apply that level of depth to your characters.
First, think of three memories from your past: one happy, one sad, and one mysterious—something
that left you with an unanswered question in your life.
Be specific and choose moments unique to your experience.
For the unanswered question, you may put something that happened in your past that you still
think about, such as the identity of your birth parents, the day you decided to turn
down an ice-skating career, or what happened to a teacher who was fired because of you—the
lingering questions and what-if’s of your life.
A happy memory for me is sitting on my porch in the warmth of a summer evening, eating
a grape-flavored ice pop and waiting for the neighborhood kids to come over so we could
play bike tag around the cul-de-sac.
A sad memory for me is freezing up on stage while playing a violin solo in front of two
hundred people and hearing the hollow praise from my friends and family afterwards.
A mystery I sometimes think about is what my old friends thought of me—what kind of
person was I to them?
Creative, competitive, moody?
For your characters, you can turn these memories into short scenes.
These scenes don’t need to find a place in your actual manuscript, but they can help
you test out your character’s reactions in different situations.
Next, name three identities that define who you are.
That might involve your nationality, geography, religion, parenthood, career, education, gender,
or sexuality.
For me, I might say:
1. I am a writer.
2. I am a humanist.
3. I am a lifelong learner.
To take an example from classic literature, think of Elizabeth Bennet, from Jane Austen’s
Pride and Prejudice.
Her three identities might go like this:
1. I am a reader.
2. I am a loyal sister.
3. I am an opinionated woman.
Our past experiences and self-perception greatly shape who we are.
For example, I remember winning the writing Olympics in 3rd grade, and I see myself as
someone who sets the bar high and then surpasses it.
Going forward, I want to dedicate my life to writing.
Our future actions depend on the past, as should your characters’.
Then we arrive at the idea of the hidden self, which poses a single question: What is your
deepest, darkest secret?
Of course, I can’t tell you mine, or it wouldn’t be a secret, now would it?
But secrets are excellent tools for creating tension in fiction.
Give a character a secret, and they become infinitely more interesting.
It’s no wonder that the Netflix adaptation of Jay Asher’s novel 13 Reasons Why became
such a binge-watching hit; almost every character has a secret, and the urge to know the answers
to certain questions keeps you watching.
Secrets also add depth to a character, revealing a part of them that wasn’t visible from
the surface.
Perhaps they’re in love with someone they shouldn’t be.
Or they’re guilty of a crime but were never convicted.
They could have a physical or mental illness that they never let others see.
Maybe it’s a more innocuous secret, like the fact that they were the culprit behind
the school’s most epic senior prank.
PostSecret.com is a great resource for finding real secrets to inspire your writing.
People send in anonymous post cards describing their most intimate thoughts, which are then
published on the site and in book collections.
So what is your character hiding?
What would happen if someone found out?
What would they do to keep that secret hidden?
Once you’ve answered these questions, here’s a writing exercise you can try to put your
character in play.
Come up with a hypothetical conflict and create a list of ten options for how your character
could respond.
Say your character has been pining after his best friend for the past ten years, and he’s
finally mustered the courage to tell that person how he feels—only for the friend
to end their friendship as a result.
What does he do?
Does he:
1. Go home and cry himself to sleep
2. Get angry and dive into a monologue about why their friendship shouldn’t end
3. Send a mix tape of nostalgic songs as a way of mending their friendship
4. Delete every trace of the friend from his life—social media, photos, texts, etc.
5. Trick the friend into attending a therapy session with him so that they can talk
6. Become best buds with someone he hates and post happy photos all over Facebook to make
the friend jealous
7. Obsess about the friend to the point of becoming a stalker, earning himself a restraining order
and making him question his own moral fiber
8. Try to find a way to rewind time so that he can take back his confession
9. Make an embarrassing-but-heartfelt public apology in front of the friend’s family/school/country
club—perhaps in the form of skywriting or a gigantic cookie cake
10. Fall into a downward spiral of drinking and drugs, until he shows up at his friend’s
house one night and steals the friend’s car, cat, or gun—or even all three
The reason you should list ten is because the good ideas usually come at the end of
the list, with the beginning items being the most obvious ones.
After you have a list of potential options, you can choose the one that’s most appropriate
for the character based on their personality and life experiences—the memories, identities,
and secrets you listed earlier.
If my character identifies as an introvert and his worst memory involves embarrassing
himself while trying to make new friends, I doubt he would plan a public apology or
try to befriend someone new, although it would be interesting to see him forced to do something
out of his comfort zone.
If my character’s secret is that he’s the son of a super villain and he has a time
machine hidden in his basement, then maybe he will choose to change the past and face
the consequences later.
The tenth option would be perfect for an impulsive character, one who calls himself an adrenaline
junkie and has happy memories of trashing abandoned houses with his friends.
This option also stands out to me because I want to see what happens next—how the
friend will react and how the main character is going to get out of that situation.
After you make your list and choose a favorite, write a scene or short story about your character
using this hypothetical scenario.
Once again, this scene doesn’t need to end up in the main book; the purpose of this exercise
is to better understand why and how your character will react in certain scenarios.
Oftentimes, we discover our characters as we go along, with their actions in previous
scenes dictating how they behave in future ones.
Get to know your characters on a personal level, and they will feel more real to you
and to your readers.
What did you discover about your character after this exercise?
I’d love to hear your favorite item from your list of ten reactions.
Whatever you do, keep writing.