Do You Know Your Protagonist? Let's Talk Character Development.

Lesson 2 of "How to Finally Get Started on that Novel"

Mariam Chagelishvili

Lesson 2 of 8 from “How to Finally Get Started on that Novel”

If you think about your favorite novel, you’ll probably remember whatever unforgettable character from said book you connected with most. How many of us have had imaginary affairs with Jane Austen’s relentlessly problematic Mr Darcy, or thought we totally identified with J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield until we reread as adults and retroactively cringed? What these vivid characters have in common is that they are complex, with more than one personality trait, because what’s interesting about a flat, one-note character? Something else they have in common is that their secrets drive the narrative. 

Creating a character who seems to have a life off the page is one of the trickiest and yet most crucial parts of writing a novel. Sure, some novelists traffic in autofiction, using varying degrees of autobiography in their fiction. But the work is the same: you must convince the reader to care about these people.

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