Short Story Writing How To Develop Strong Characters Quickly

---

When it comes to developing a strong a character quickly there are a few basic fundamental things to establish before you know you have a solid character to develop and build on. A character’s origin, beliefs and values, morals, strengths, weakness and relationships are what will ultimately determine their outlook and how they play out their story.
Origin
Adding your character background can help to know where they are going. This will help to navigate you through the story and to your end objective. Equally having an element of mystery to your character can engage your audience and hook them to find out why and more about your character. This is always fun to play with.
Values or belief
When developing a strong character a dominating trait is the character values and belief. Similar to real life, a character’s beliefs and values is a blueprint or a navigation for their outlook on life and ultimately their resolve. A characters views and decisions will come from these principles and when they are lost this will help them stay grounded.
Moral compass
There is the good, there is the bad and there is the ugly. Knowing fundamentally what your characters moral compass is naturally directed to can help to build for interesting decisions depending on what scenarios your character encounter on their journey. A strong character will always stay true to them. However, it’s always interesting when the character does what you least expect.
Strength
Knowing what your character’s strength are always is a quick way to develop a strong character and ultimately this will be what separates them from the rest of the characters in the story. Focusing on the strengths can quickly remind the audience why the character is such an important part of the story.
Weakness
Knowing your weaknesses is just as important. Knowing their Achilles heel or they risk falling as quick just as fast as they get to rise to power. Ultimately it is this weakness that adds flavour to your protagonist and is what makes them interesting.
Relationships
Considering relationships and support system and how this can add another layer of interesting sub story plots to a character. Depending on their relationship you may find that there are deeper sub-issues that can arise and that can make for another side quest.
What would they do?
After you have you have developed your character, then you should quickly be able to envision what your character would do in any situation. Whether your character decides to go for a walk or your character is thrown into a dynamic situation, you will understand how your character’s traits are intertwined into their decision and outcomes. Quickly developing a strong character for every situation.
So there you have it. Simple tips on how to develop strong characters quickly. Once you have these listed in front of you which should take no longer than an hour, you should be able to start the story.
Source by Clement Boateng

---