Lia Declan's Musings

Let’s talk honestly about character development. You’ve all read the advice: build a backstory, make a list of traits, give your character a favorite song, a scar, a complicated relationship with their father, and a meaningful birthmark that looks like an historical figure. You’ve been told to fill out personality quizzes on their behalf and write diary entries from their perspective. You’ve probably even been told to write “character bibles” before you start the book.

Here’s the truth: that’s busywork, and it’s nonsense, unless it directly relates to necessary information or backstory that will be discussed in the narrative. It feels productive, but it isn’t writing. It’s procrastination disguised as preparation. You do not need to know what your character’s favorite color is. You need to know what they want, what they’re afraid of, and what they’re willing to do to get or avoid those things. The rest is just noise.

Start With Motion, Not a Resume

You don’t meet people in real life by reading their biographies first. You meet them doing something. You see them in action: carrying groceries, arguing on the phone, crying in a parked car. The same principle applies to fiction. You don’t build a real character by listing their attributes; you build them by watching what they do.

When I start a new story, I rarely have a complete character sketch. I usually start with a situation. Someone walks into a room. Someone refuses to get out of bed. Someone gets a phone call. Then I ask what they do next.

That’s the real beginning of a character. Not the “who,” but the “what now.”

A believable character is defined by choices made under pressure. You can know nothing else about them and still understand them if you can see them make a difficult decision. Think about how we judge people in real life: not by what they say they’d do, but by what they actually do when it matters.

So, when you start building a character, skip the questionnaire. Write a scene. Put them in a small but meaningful conflict. Don’t worry about the plot yet. Just watch what they do. Their choices will tell you more about them than any checklist ever will.

Every character has to want something. It doesn’t need to be grand or noble. It can be something small and embarrassingly human: to be seen, to be left alone, to prove something, to get even. The “want” is the engine of the story.

When your story stalls, it’s usually because you’ve lost track of what your character wants. The reader should always be able to answer that question, even if the character can’t.

Here’s the rub: wants and needs are not the same thing. The “want” is what drives the plot; the “need” is what drives the arc. The “want” might be “to win the case,” but the need might be “to forgive themselves.” The tension between those two creates movement.

You don’t have to know the “need” on page one. Sometimes you discover it halfway through. But you should always know the “want.” Without it, your character just drifts from scene to scene… reacting instead of acting.

Voice Comes From Thought

A common mistake is treating “voice” as something decorative. You can’t just give your character slang and call it personality. Real voice is a product of how a person thinks… what they notice, what they ignore, how they justify their own behavior.

When you’re developing a character, spend less time on how they sound and more time on how they process the world. What do they observe first in a room: the people, the light, the exits? When they’re insulted, do they fight back or freeze? When something beautiful happens, do they describe it, embrace it, or deflect it?

Once you understand how they think, their dialogue and narration will naturally sound like them. You don’t have to force it.

Backstory Is Earned, Not Given

Writers love to front-load information. You’ll write a paragraph describing the character’s childhood, their mother’s death, their bad marriage, and their secret love of gardening before they even speak a line. That’s not character development. That’s exposition.

A reader doesn’t need to know everything about a person to care about them. In fact, the less you explain early on, the more curiosity you create.

Think of backstory like seasoning. You add it gradually, as needed, and only when it enhances the moment. Dump it all in at once, and you ruin the suspense.

You earn the right to reveal backstory when the reader has a reason to want it. A character’s past should illuminate a present decision, not serve as decoration. When the reader is already invested, that’s when you show them the scar.

Real people are inconsistent. We’re brave one day and cowardly the next. We love and resent the same person in the same breath. Fictional characters who behave the same way in every situation are not believable; they’re archetypes.

When you build a character, look for the contradictions. Make sure their strengths create their weaknesses. A fiercely independent person also struggles to ask for help. A kind person gets taken advantage of. A disciplined person is secretly afraid of losing control.

Contradiction is not hypocrisy; it’s humanity. It’s what makes readers say, “I know someone like that.”

If your character behaves the same way in every scene, you haven’t built a person; you’ve built a puppet.

Dialogue as a Test

If you’re not sure whether your character feels real, test them with dialogue. Not clever, polished, poetic dialogue, but practical, human “what would they actually say” dialogue.

Have two characters talk about something unrelated to the plot: a grocery list, a broken sink, the weather. If you can’t tell who’s speaking without dialogue tags, you don’t know them well enough yet.

Each character should have their own rhythm of speech, their own way of getting to a point. Some circle it. Some go straight through. Some never answer a question directly. That’s not something you design; it’s something you discover by writing.

And yes, most first attempts will sound wrong. Keep at it. You’ll find the natural cadence eventually, but only by hearing it out loud.

You’re not the character’s warden. You don’t control everything they do. You guide them, sure, but if they’re alive on the page, they’ll occasionally say or do something that you didn’t plan. That’s good. That’s the moment the writing starts to breathe.

When that happens, don’t panic. Don’t pull them back to the outline. Follow them for a few pages and see where they go. If it leads nowhere, that’s fine, you’ll cut it later. But if it leads somewhere unexpected and true, that’s the best kind of discovery writing.

The point is to listen to your characters. They’ll tell you who they are if you stop trying to dictate it.

Emotional Reality Over Factual Accuracy

Some writers get caught up in research. If their character is a firefighter, they’ll spend three weeks learning about hoses and ranks and oxygen tank maintenance. That’s useful, but it’s not character development; it’s logistics.

A reader doesn’t connect to the gear; they connect to the emotion. You can write a convincing firefighter without knowing how to hold a nozzle if you understand how it feels to run into danger while everyone else runs away.

Details should serve emotion, not the other way around. If you get the emotional truth right, the reader will forgive minor factual errors. If you get the emotion wrong, no amount of accuracy will save it.

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Revision Is Where the Person Emerges

The first draft is for discovering who your character might be. Revision is for confirming who they are.

In the first pass, they’ll shift constantly… tone, motivation, even basic personality. That’s fine, you’re learning them. But once the story exists, you have to go back and make sure the early pages match the person they became by the end.

Sometimes that means rewriting every early scene they’re in. Sometimes it means trimming the early “warm-up” dialogue that doesn’t fit anymore. It’s tedious work, but this is where the illusion of a consistent human being is created.

If you skip this stage, your character will feel like they’re being played by three different actors.

Everything you need to know about building real characters is out in the world. The best training a writer can do is watch people. Not just how they talk, but how they hesitate before talking. How they fidget, how they use silence, how they walk, and how they react when they walk into a utility pole while looking at their phone.

Go sit somewhere public and pay attention. Watch how people hold their phones, how they handle interruptions, how they react when they’re ignored. Realism isn’t about copying gestures; it’s about understanding the psychology behind them.

You can’t fake that from your desk. You have to study it in the wild.

Conclusion:

Good character development isn’t about filling out forms or inventing quirks. It’s about empathy, observation, and patience. It’s about writing enough scenes that the person on the page starts making choices you didn’t expect… choices that feel inevitable in hindsight.

If you’re doing it right, your characters will sometimes frustrate you. They’ll resist your plans, they’ll act out. That’s when you know they’re real.

So don’t try to master them. Don’t try to perfect them. Write them badly, write them often, and then go back and listen to what they were trying to tell you. That’s how a character is developed; not with templates, but with time and attention.

And remember: the goal isn’t to make them interesting. The goal is to make them believable.

Because once a reader believes, they’ll be interested, and they’ll follow your character anywhere.