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All stories take some planning, and there should be some thought as to which direction the story is going to go in. The most important part are the characters! If you build a team of people who jump off the page or out of the computer screen for you, most likely it’ll happen for your readers, too. Here’s the basic chart if you don’t want to go through all the details of the one previous (I suggest you do the longer one, as it’ll be more detailed, and your character will be more real.)
Full Name:
Gender:
Age:
Eye color and size:
Hair color, style, length:
Occupation:
Personality:
Family:
Figure out how many characters you’re going to start off with. If you’re writing a book where the main character, let’s call her Jem, is traveling to find the man who stole her brother, you know so far, you have three characters that need to have a chart filled out. They are Jem, Jem’s brother, and the man who stole Jem’s brother. Look at that! Three characters down! Now let’s say Jem is passing through a busy street and she comes across a tavern run by a portly man, nearly bald. You do NOT need to make charts for the lesser important characters who only appear once or twice throughout the story, of course, you can, but that’ll be precious time wasted when you could be planning out other things. If the character appears once, make note of:
Name:
Gender
Age (if applicable):
Occupation (if applicable):
Appearance:
Any lingering thoughts the main character(s) had about them:
It’s also a good idea, to plan out all the characters, and as many as possible. Using Jem’s adventure, she comes across another girl in the tavern who wants to join Jem in searching for the man, because her sister was also taken. This girl, let’s call her Tabbi, will require a chart. After you have a relationship like this where two people will be spending a lot of time together, it would be a good idea to think about both the girls’ personalities and how much they clash, or go hand in hand. If Jem is loud, whereas Tabbi is on the quiet side, there’s your clash. If both girls have a passion for wine and cheese, there’s where they go hand in hand, or compliment each other.
The more you write about a character, the easier it is to write about them in the actual story because you have it all planned out. Think of taking a trip to someplace you’ve never been before. Unfortunately, you didn’t plan and forgot a map, got lost, and the trip was a disaster. Think of what would happen if you didn’t have your characters already planned out. You’d be going in circles, scrolling back to figure out if her hair was brown, or blue, or if the portly, balding man who owned the tavern was actually the owner, or the assistant. Also, your readers might notice the mess the characters were in. In one section, a character could be described as hard working, and in the next, you could be calling her lazy. This’ll confuse the reader, and they won’t continue. But think, if you had brought that roadmap, the trip would have been a smashing hit, and would want to return again. Same goes with your story. It may seem like a lot, but with enough preparation and a general idea where the characters are headed, you’ll most likely see an improvement in your writing, and the feedback.
The chart also works for the villains, the down right dirty who’s the antagonist to your protagonist. For those who don’t know, protagonist is the main character(s), and the antagonist is the character(s) playing the role opposite your main character. It’s usually the bad guy, in the stories I’ve read and written. Villains liven up stories, because they can seem ‘real’ where the hero can seem flawless, and ‘perfect.’ Who can associate with perfect? Everyone loves writing about a villain, because their thoughts are twisted towards the “dark side” and it’s generally much more fun to write about the dark, evil stuff than rainbows and ponies.
Describing your villain, you can use the questions on this page or the one before to do the details, but you must remember to include a section about:
What turned them evil?:
Who:
Why:
Where:
When:
How:
What can be used, because a young boy can touch a tantalizing shiny marble and POW! He’s evil due to a curse placed thousands of years ago upon it, and left in an old, abandoned house where anyone can touch it. Well look at that! Most of the W’s were answered in that one sentence. Why, can be explained throughout the story. We can use Jem’s story as another example. We don’t know why her brother was kidnapped, but Jem does know it was one summer afternoon when she took her brother to the beach, and some guy was watching them rather closely with a hooked nose and fire red hair. While Jem was rolling out the towels, the man sprung, grabbing her brother and running off towards the shops.
(A/N: You can also use the questions when writing scenes. Let’s use the above scene as an example for the event of her brother being kidnapped.
Who: The guy with the hooked nose and fire red hair, Jem, Jem’s brother.
Where: The beach, during the summer.
When: Afternoon.
How: The guy grabbed the boy and ran.
Why: Will be explained once Jem corners the bad guy.)
Shed light on motives of your villain. For the kidnapper, (I think we should name him already,) Barry Queens, it could be because Jem’s family did something to his many generations ago, and he wants revenge. He could be sick and twisted, seeking revenge for what his own brother and sister did to him when he was younger, and imagines the children he takes as replacements for his siblings, locking them in a cupboard for days, just as his brother and sister did to him. Figuring this out will also help with the personality of your villain. We know he was tormented as a child, so he could be the quiet type, afraid of tight, narrow spaces, rarely speaks, obeys the rules, and has a whole childhood of anger to let loose.
You can either let this information out in bits and pieces, having Barry mutter something about a confined space and shuttering, or cursing the names of his siblings as he stalks the streets, looking for another child to let his anger loose on, or have Barry recite this whole speech of his terrible childhood right before he flees. Already, Barry is coming to life, and is springing from the page with his fire red hair, and quiet nature, but explosive anger. Be careful, and don’t make your villain stupid, and only brush upon the events that made him turn out the way he is. If Jem is talking with Barry after finding him, after traveling all over, she doesn’t want him to say “Because,” when she asks him why he did it, and runs off. It’ll leave the reader feeling empty. After a whole story of Jem pursuing Barry, and fuming and dreaming of what she’ll do to him, Barry doesn’t even say why he did it! If Barry wasn’t smart enough to cover his tracks well and go by a different name in each city he went through, he’d have been captured, and the whole story goes down the drain about three cities into the story. If Barry had left the window open to his house one night, Jem wouldn’t have had to crawl in through a very small basement window, wouldn’t have cut her hand on a shard of glass that she accidentally discovered around the edge, and wouldn’t have shouted, alerting Barry of her presence.
For every action, there is a reaction. No, this is not turning into science, or history class. But this is a great way of summing up what I hope is a helpful few pages of advice on planning characters more thoroughly.
Cause: Barry’s siblings locking him up for days in a tight, narrow space.
Effect: Barry’s fear of small spaces, and anger towards children who resemble his children.
Cause: Jem taking her brother to the beach.
Effect: Jem’s brother becomes a target for Barry.
If you plan out your story from the beginning and write it out, you have a large chunk of your story already done! All you have to do is expand upon the cities, the characters, and any events that may have been encountered while Jem and Tabbi are searching for their siblings.
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