How to Create a Character Driven Book

Co-authored by Julia Martins

Last Updated: October 8, 2021 References

A character driven book is a book where the story focuses more on a character's internal journey than on external actions or events. A character in a character driven book must come to a realization or an epiphany of some kind. An emotional victory, rather than a literal one, usually marks the climax of the story. You'll need to spend a lot of time developing your characters and your theme before you even begin to write. Remember to place a lot of focus as you write on what your characters are thinking and feeling as they navigate daily life.

Method 1

Method 1 of 4:

Establishing the Basics

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Focus on character wants and needs. In a character driven book, your character's wants and needs should be of utmost importance. The primary action of a character driven book involves how a character's wants, needs, and opinions change over time. Spend some considering what your characters want as you begin to carve out the basics of your book.
- All characters should yearn for something. This can help drive their actions throughout a story. For example, maybe your main character desperately wants to be a professional ballet dancer. His passion for dance can be the driving point of his actions throughout the story.
- Your characters should, on a deeper level, need something as well. Maybe your main character's desire to dance is driven by a deeper need for control. Ballet requires a certain amount of perfection. If your character has had a messy life, for example, he may use dance as a way to create perfection from chaos.
2
Decide on a theme, or the central idea or message that the story will explore. Figure out your theme, or come up with some idea of what topics you want to explore, to help you develop your characters. The theme your work grapples with should be of central importance to the characters.^{[1]
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- Think about your favorite book. If you had to sum that book up with a few words, what would those words be? For example, say your favorite book is Mrs. Dalloway. What is the first word you think of when considering this book? Words that come to mind may be time, death, trauma, and loss. These are certainly all themes explored in Mrs. Dalloway, primarily through the book's characters.
- Think about a theme you want to explore in your book. Do you want to write about love, loss, heartbreak? Do you want to write a story of redemption or courage? Try to jot down a variety of themes you would like to explore in your book. Think about how your characters could exemplify those themes.
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3
Establish a plot focused on personal journey. Every story needs a plot, even when a story is character driven. It doesn’t have to be action and adventure based, but you need to have some plot in mind before beginning your story.^{[2]
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- Having a literal journey, like a road trip, can help drive a symbolic one.
- You could also focus on how certain relationships change. If you're telling the story of a friendship, a romance, or a family relationship, how will this relationship progress? What events will occur to drive this relationship forward?
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Decide on a setting, or where your story will take place. Spend some time thinking about the relationship your characters have with that place. The relationship characters have to their home or another location is often a big aspect of their identity.^{[3]
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- Ask yourself how your characters feel about the setting of your book. Do they love the setting or do they hate it? Are they longing for escape, or looking for a way to settle down in their current location?
- Give the setting and characters an equal amount of attention. Don't skip little details about your setting just because you want to have the most focus on your characters - readers will be looking for good characters and a good setting. Remember that the setting isn't just the place where a story takes place - it can also be the time period, season, or other things relating to when your story takes place.

Method 2

Method 2 of 4:

Developing the Characters

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Create character profile worksheets to flesh out your characters. A character profile worksheet has all the information about each character including their basic background, physical description, personality attributes, and emotional characteristics. It also describes how they fit into the story and what their relationships with other characters are.^{[4]
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- You can create your own character profile worksheets, or find a framework to follow online.
- Start with the basics. Write down your character's full name and physical details like height, weight, eye color, hair color, and so on. Also, make sure to chart out basic relationship. Lists parents, siblings, friends, romantic partners, and so on.
- From here, talk about deeper issues. Lists your character wants, fears, and needs. Talk about what your character likes and dislikes. What does your character want out of life? What about him or herself does your character want to change? Also, include things like religious and political views, as these are important insights to a character's personality.
- You may find, as you begin to write, you do not include every detail in your actual book. However, knowing your character's intimately can be helpful for you as a writer. You may find you incorporate a lot of the information from your character profiles in the subtext of your work.
2
Choose a character arc that represents your character's emotional journey. A character arc is the driving force of your story in a character driven book. Your character's internal arc will be how you figure out the rising action, climax, and falling action of your story.^{[5]
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- Essentially, your character arc is how we get from Point A to Point B in your story. Let's return to the ballet dancer example. Your main character should go from obsessing over perfection and control to accepting life's ambiguities. How do you get your character to this point?
- Think of events that will shape your character. In our example, the ballet dancer's estranged father resurfaces. As your dancer cares for his ailing father, you can include flashbacks to his childhood. This can reveal an amount of chaos that was frightening. You can also use the progression of his father's illness to drive the story forward, each stage of his father's sickness forcing the ballet dancer to recognize how much of life is beyond his control.
3
Establish backstories for your main characters. A backstory is the history attached to a character. Write a brief biography for each character you create.^{[6]
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- Ask yourself things like where was the character born? What was his or her childhood like? Where did he or she go to school? What important events occurred in his or her life? This information is all vital to a character's current personality.
- Much like the information in your character profiles, it's unlikely that you'll include every detail of a character's backstory in your book. However, this information may be useful for you as a writer. You can add details subtly or bury them in the context.
4
Craft relationships between characters. Character relationships are very important to a character driven story. A relationship is often of central importance to the realizations a character has that drive his or her story arc. Focus on characters’ relationships with one another as you develop their story arcs.^{[7]
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- You may want to map out relationships between characters. Use a big sheet of construction paper to write out all your characters’ names. Draw color-coded lines between characters to represent relationships. For example, a red line can be a romantic relationship, while a blue line represents a family relationship.
- Grudges can go a long way in developing characters. A lot of tension in a character driven work comes from characters who dislike each other or have a troubled history.
- Focus on how these relationships will change. Will characters grow apart, reconcile, or develop animosity as time goes by?
5
Give your characters strong opinions. Strong opinions make for interesting, dynamic characters. Make how a character's opinion changes over time a focal point of that character's arc. Use strong opinions to foster disagreement between characters and create compelling conflict in a story.^{[8]
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- Characters with strong opinions can be very driven. This can help keep a character driven story moving. For example, the ballet dancer is of the opinion perfection and success are vital to a life well-lived. He may be dismissive of people he sees as lazy. This can create tension in his personal relationships, as his opinions may make him judgmental or overbearing.
- Strong opinions often change during the course of a story. Your climax will seem more exciting if your character is forced to abandon opinions he or she has clung to strongly throughout a work.

Method 3

Method 3 of 4:

Framing Your Story

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Select what point of view to tell the story from. The point of view in your story is the perspective from which a story is told. Common perspectives are first-person, second-person, third-person omniscient, or third-person limited.^{[9]
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- In first-person, the story is narrated by a character in the story. It's told using pronouns like "I" and "me." The advantage of this is that you get to see one character's perspective in-depth. The disadvantage is that you often see other character's from only one character's point of view. If you're using first person, you'll have to keep the tone consistent with that character. If a book is told through the point of view of a child, for example, this will be very different from a book told from the point of view of a college-educated adult.
- Second-person is when the author uses "you" or "your," telling the story as if it's happening to the reader. This can make experiences feel more personal for the reader. However, it's used somewhat infrequently in longer works. An example of this perspective is a Choose Your Own Adventure Book.
- Third-person can be limited or omniscient. A limited third-person narrator tells the story as an outsider looking in, but focuses in on the perspective and inner thoughts of one character. An omniscient third-person narrator can reveal the thoughts of any character in the book. Third-person omniscient can be particularly helpful for a character-driven book if you have a wide variety of characters.
2
Develop your characters’ voice, in other words how they talk. Create a realistic and interesting voice for your character to entertain readers with what they say. Use your character profiles to think about how your characters would sound in real life to give them each a unique voice in your story.^{[10]
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- Think about things like is the character educated or uneducated? Are they rural or from a city? Are they naive or wordly? Do they make assumptions, let their heart rule, or focus on facts?
- For example, if your character is cynical, his words may be laced with sarcasm. A well-educated character may have a highly developed dialogue, especially if he's insecure and wants to call attention to his intelligence.
- Listen to how people talk in real life. Spend some time people watching and eavesdropping on conversations. Listen for verbal “ticks”, such as how people use words the words "like" and "um" when speaking.
3
Focus on writing believable dialogue. Dialogue needs to be believable in order to keep readers invested in the story and entertained. Make sure that every dialogue you include is purposeful and moves the story forward.^{[11]
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- Read your dialogue out loud. This will help you gauge whether it sounds believable or not.
- Break up dialogue with action, so you can have characters use non-verbal cues to convey mood. A character may, for example, fidget excessively when lying or being deceitful.
4
Have your characters stop and think. Focus on your character’s internal monologue as you begin to write your book. A lot of the action in a character driven book occurs in a character's mind. Allow your characters to stop and think throughout the book to highlight what's going through their minds.^{[12]
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- If your story is told in first person, this can be particularly easy to do. You can have the character discussing what he or she is thinking as the action of the story unfolds. However, you can also get into a character's head if you're writing in third person. As a narrator, you're a somewhat omnipotent force and are able to tell your readers what your characters are thinking.
- Benign events can cause a character to stop and think. Maybe a passing school bus reminds your character of a traumatic event that occurred on his first day of school, for example. Major events can also drive introspection. Maybe your character has a breakdown after a relationship implodes, causing him to spend a night awake with his thoughts.
5
Make everyday interactions significant. Strive to make small events significant in a character driven work. Use them to show a character's relationships with others, and his or her personality, through how that character navigates day-to-day interactions.^{[13]
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- Have your character respond to small interactions he or she has with other people. This can show how your character sees the world. How these interactions change can show how a character's story arc is playing out. For example, you can include a scene where a character gets very angry when someone cuts him or her in line. This can demonstrate that your character is high strung about rules. Later, a similar interaction can take place and your character can react in a more relaxed fashion. This illustrates how this character has changed.
- You can also have everyday interactions with other characters matter. How a character reacts to being touched by a significant other can offer insight into that relationship. The way your protagonist reacts to a phone call from his mother can show you how he does or does not value family.

Method 4

Method 4 of 4:

Writing Your Book

1
Schedule time to write everyday. Writing a character driven book is like writing any book; it all comes down to taking the time to write. Set aside time each day to work on your book, even if you don’t feel like it.^{[14]
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- Writing should become a habit for you. Like working out, showering, or brushing your teeth, writing should be a daily ritual.
- Find a place to write where you feel comfortable. You can stake out a local coffee shop or clear a desk in your home. Try to keep your work area free of distractions. Leave your cell phone on silent when you write and disconnect from social media.
2
Set goals for yourself. It's hard to finish a book if you don't hold yourself to certain goals. Try to set goals for yourself as you're working on your character driven book. Have an established page or word count you strive to reach each day.^{[15]
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- It's okay to start small to avoid feeling overwhelmed. For example, in your first week try to write 300 words a day. Then, move up to 500 the next week. Keep increasing your word count in small intervals over time.
3
Revise your work. A lot of the work of writing comes in revision. Revise a section or chapter a few weeks after you finish writing it. Go through and read your work with a red pen to mark it up.^{[16]
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- Highlight small issues, like typos, as well as larger ones. For example, maybe you feel like your main character's motivation is confusing in a certain moment. Jot this down in the margin
4
Get a friend or mentor to help you revise your book. Find someone whose opinion you trust and who will give you honest feedback. Let them read drafts of your book and listen to their opinions as a reader to revise your work.^{[17]
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- It’s important to get feedback early on to make sure you are headed in the right direction with your book. You don’t want to finish the book and then have to rewrite it because you didn’t let anyone read it until the end.

Expert Q&A

Question

Does a book need a plot?

Julia Martins
BA in English, Stanford University
Julia Martins is an aspiring writer currently living in San Francisco, California. She graduated from Stanford University with a BA in English and has been published in Cornell University's Rainy Day Magazine, Stanford University's Leland Quarterly, and Bards and Sages Quarterly.

Julia Martins

BA in English, Stanford University

Expert Answer

Yes! A character driven book isn't necessarily lacking plot. Rather, the characters in a character driven book drive the plot forward – their choices, whether mundane or life-changing, are the basis for your story.
Question

What should I know about my character?

Julia Martins
BA in English, Stanford University
Julia Martins is an aspiring writer currently living in San Francisco, California. She graduated from Stanford University with a BA in English and has been published in Cornell University's Rainy Day Magazine, Stanford University's Leland Quarterly, and Bards and Sages Quarterly.

Julia Martins

BA in English, Stanford University

Expert Answer

One of the best aspects of writing a character based book is getting to know your characters. Spend some time thinking about their likes and dislikes, their aspirations and fears. Even small details like their shoe size can help you get a more accurate sense of what they're like. It's ok if you don't end up using all of the details you think up – just knowing these things about your character will help them feel more real!
Question

Can the characters be animals?

Phantasmagoria

Community Answer

Yes, you could have the characters be animals. There are many stories where the characters are animals written with human-like thought and emotions. The same writing techniques used with human characters would apply.