Audiences love a great plot twist, a thrilling action sequence, or a quiet revelation, but without real character development they will start to lose interest.
Change is central to all things. We turn to story to experience characters facing insurmountable obstacles as they discover new truths about themselves and the world.
In this article, I’ll walk you through the key aspects of character development, uncover how to create it, and give you a Story Weapon to help you transform your protagonist into the hero hiding within.
To build meaningful character development, a writer must construct a profound internal tension between a protagonist’s conscious, external “want” and their unconscious, primal “need.” As the external plot tests their flawed worldview, the character is forced to abandon their false beliefs, reframe their approach to their desires, and make difficult, surprising choices that reveal their true nature to the reader.
Wants and needs
Every story begins with the protagonist’s call to adventure. So, what makes your protagonist unable to resist the call, even if they refuse it at first? It’s not just their “want” that propels them forward but their “need,” which is the meaning they make out of their want and that keeps them going.
Their want is conscious, while their need is primal, something unconscious, buried so deep that your protagonist is barely aware of it. Their want is connected to a false belief they hold about themselves or the world, such as: “When I escape, then I will be free.”
Notice that while the want is to escape, the need is primal . . . to experience freedom.
Here’s another example: “When I get the promotion, then I will be validated.”
Notice how seeking a promotion is a conscious want, while the desire to be validated tends to be unconscious.
Let’s take an example from literature in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Rodion Raskolnikov longs for greatness and is embarrassed by his poverty. He feels it to be an unnecessary barrier between himself and the glory that he might enjoy.
In the first part of the story, Raskolnikov’s unconscious desire is to rise above his station. That desire gives him the conscious justification to steal from a pawnbroker. Any evil he commits, he reasons, is outweighed by the good he’ll do later. When he kills the old pawnbroker and her half-sister, that want is quickly replaced by another one: to avoid punishment. But these wants don’t explain his actions in the rest of the story. They don’t explain his consternation when someone else confesses to the crimes, nor his relief when someone’s on to him. Raskolnikov’s deep need is in opposition to his want. While his conscious goal is to get away with murder so he can be “free,” in order to experience true freedom he must be willing to take responsibility for his crime. Let’s unpack why.
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.”
– Helen Keller
The primal desire
So, why does Raskolnikov need to get caught in order to be free? The universe has conspired to deliver him every murderer’s dream: no witnesses and someone else willingly taking the fall. It’s like he’s being mocked on a cosmic level.
Though Raskolnikov’s desire to be free keeps him from confessing, his need to experience true freedom is stronger. The need to be caught or punished in some way comes from his understanding of the world itself. Were he to escape unpunished, it would suggest the world is immoral and even perverse. It can’t be so. Raskolnikov’s comfort and pleasure vanish. He’s both afraid of being caught and insulted when thought to be innocent. It’s enough to drive him mad. In other words, the plot of Crime and Punishment explores whether or not Raskolnikov will be free, but the theme of the story is about reframing what freedom means.
If all that happens in your story is that your protagonist gets what they want, your reader will be disappointed. We must experience the reframing — how their outward want actually prevents them from achieving their inward need, thus forcing them to surrender the meaning they make out of that want in order to find their need within.
For example, in Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov ultimately finds freedom, not by getting away with murder, but by taking responsibility for his crime. The “why” of the need is always deeper than the “why” of the want.
Your protagonist’s primal desire (be it freedom, connection, meaning, purpose, success, or something else) never changes. Their approach to getting it, however, is constantly changing in every scene. In fact, this is how your protagonist’s dilemma gets dramatized.
We may seek success in order to be respected, but in our journey to be successful we might take shortcuts that cause us to lose integrity, thus disrespecting ourselves. Through the story, we may discover that true success can only be achieved by reframing our desire for it, so we can start respecting ourselves.
How they chase it
The last piece to explore is how your character pursues their wants and their needs. The choices they make dramatize who they are to the reader much more than any exposition or description. If they use their strength, that tells us something. If they turn to their wits or their charm, we’ve got a different character altogether.
For Raskolnikov, his actions paint him as both a sympathetic and dislikable figure. He chooses to murder. Furthermore, his cowardice, arrogance, and avoidance of the law only make him more nervous and frightened. Still, Raskolnikov’s capacity to love and his sense of justice connect us to his humanity. He chooses to turn himself in at the end. He chooses punishment to absolve himself of his suffering.
Your story weapon: Let your characters surprise you
This doesn’t mean you should dive into your rough draft without a plan. It’s helpful (and highly recommended) to have some kind of outline before you begin, so you have a sense of how your characters are going to develop. The advantage of exploring your character’s development prior to writing your first draft is that it helps move you beyond your idea of the character, to the truth of the character.
We all have blind spots as human beings. And as writers, our blind spots often reveal themselves in terms of how we see our characters. I frequently work with writers who are hit with an idea for their character that surprises them, and their first response is, “Oh, my character would never do that.”
If you find yourself saying this—Stop!
Think of drama as characters behaving uncharacteristically. Remember that your characters exist in relation to their circumstances. While your protagonist might be a nun who has never committed a crime, circumstances might conspire for her to rob a bank in order to save the orphanage.
Rather than saying to your wild idea, “Oh, that could never happen,” remember that your job is not to negate, but to explore reasons to support why it might happen.
When your characters feel you’re paying them attention and there’s a world to explore, you’ll find moments where there’s another choice available. There might be a relationship that you didn’t think would work until you wrote a specific scene. Perhaps there’s a moment for the thief to choose honor or the officer to choose thievery. These are moments when characters break out from being archetypes and become well-rounded, dynamic figures.
These surprising moments are virtually impossible to plan, which is why you have to plan everything else.
When you sense a character pulling in a different direction, take the detour. It could be a dead end, but even that’s helpful. It could also be a moment of pure magic, where your conscious mind meets your subconscious wild side. These moments of alchemy are opportunities to explore powerful character development.
FREE STORY DILEMMA GUIDE: Every great story begins with a dilemma. If your plot feels unfocused or your tension falls flat, this FREE Dilemma Guide will help you identify, explore, and sharpen your protagonist’s central dilemma to reveal the most dynamic version of your story.
