I’ll fess up and say I’ve avoided teaching about character, because, well, it’s complicated. And everyone has their own process. So I have to ask myself: How do I write character? Because I do write it. But how? What’s my internal process?

Let’s start with the main character. The process is basically the same for all the secondary characters.

First of all, after thinking and planning out my story, I get a sense just through my imagining, what the main character looks like. (And of course, whether male or female. For this study, I’ll go with female.) I nail down the basics: height, weight, hair. Then I give her a name. This is subject to change as I get to know her and what the story demands. In fact, all my first assumptions about my characters are subject to change— and they usually do… in more senses than one, because that’s what a Character Arc is.