Five ways to develop your story’s main character

The elements of storytelling greatly control how you can create an effective character development in your story. Think of the important traits of your character that you want to reveal to your readers.

You can employ the use of dialogue, narration, description, or action in developing your character. Each element contributes in their own style. Below are some methods you can use to achieve that.

Lay down the details of your character

Create a list of your character’s personality and traits. Provide a backstory in order to help the readers understand what events in the past have helped shape your protagonist’s behavior at present. Also, reveal her motives, weaknesses, strengths, fears, and other traits that define a person. These factors should help dictate how your character emerges in the story.

Employ narrative exposition

It’s important to disclose where your protagonist comes from, perhaps in the middle of the story to keep the suspense element. The idea behind this is to show how your character has developed from her early beginnings to where she may end up in latter part of the story. There should be a contrast between where she came from and where she is now.

Personality in dialogue

Employing dialogue is a great way to reveal your character’s personality. Your protagonist’s voice can show a great deal about her nature, whether she’s kind or cruel, aggressive or submissive, and a lot more.

Unravel some actions

A character’s actions and decisions can help shape their development process. The changes that may occur to your character as the story progresses can untangle some interesting details about her.