Question: What is it about a novel that hooks readers? Answer: The characters. Maybe you answered plot instead. A strong plot is necessary, but it always comes down to how the plot influences the main characters and the main characters influence the plot. Character and plot development work in tandem. And the more developed they both are, the better. But character development is primary. Readers want—make that expect—to relate to characters or, at the very least, be curious about what’s going to happen to them. They live the story through the characters.

Most authors apply traditional roles for the protagonist and antagonist, make both as human as possible—no all-bad villains or all-good protagonists, please—but stay with that basic mold. In The Starks Trilogy, I diverged from this protagonist-versus-antagonist method and used another one also allowed: I gave my main character, Frederick Starks, a number of antagonists to contend with, but made him his own worst enemy, putting him in the position of fulfilling both roles. Readers of book one, When the Serpent Bites, who stated in reviews that they didn’t like him, still found him fascinating, still wanted to know what crazy thing was going to happen to him next or crazy thing he’d do, and how his convoluted, often traumatic and sometimes tragic experience was going to get resolved by the end of each book and especially by the end of the third one. Through the union of Starks’s complex (human) personality and the plot, readers rode on a wicked, and sometimes emotional, roller coaster.

This kind of ride for readers has all to do with how authors develop their main characters. They have to decide when, where, how, or if, a character will grow, struggle, or falter as s/he relates to each event, both the nicer ones and the not-so-nice. No character should ever appear as a cardboard cutout who’s missing a realistic personality. However, rather than an information dump about the main characters, it’s better if the author reveals snippets and bits about them through a show-not-tell approach over the stretch of the plot, though sometimes it’s more effective to tell, but not often and not overlong.

A key way to develop characters is to give them conflict. This includes at the levels of physical, emotional, mental, psychological, and even spiritual. And all resolutions do not necessarily immediately follow their appearance in the plot. Since I had three books to write for the trilogy, I had to give readers surprises about Starks (and several other characters) in each book, and had to keep readers guessing and feeling along the way, right to the last sentence of the final book.

Characters in a novel reveal themselves through what they say as well as what they do. To achieve this, authors need to know their characters, as though each is a real person. In fact, it may help to identify a real person or persons—and although not copied exactly—borrow certain behaviors or mannerisms. But know them the author must, because readers will not appreciate a protagonist, or even antagonist, who acts out of character. If an author has developed a character well enough, readers will know if this happens. Characters must stay true to themselves, no matter what’s going on, even in the few-and-far-between quiet times. However, readers enjoy when you occasionally let a character surprise or even shock them. Even if your main characters grow or regress in the story, they still need to be themselves while doing it. If their personality gets altered in a significant way, the author needs to include a darn good reason for it.

Every character is a product of what they think, what they do, even what they eat, drink, and wear—just like us. They have behaviors they demonstrate when in public and, often, others when in private settings. They have external and internal aspects to themselves and in their lives. These drive the plot. The more important to the story a character is, the more developed s/he has to be for the reader. Lesser characters, and ones that make a cameo appearance, don’t require the same depth, just enough for readers to get an accurate sense of them. In the Trilogy, even when only a few basics were provided about minor characters, readers stated they were real to them. This was more than just about such a character’s physical appearance. Their realness was conveyed through their dialogue and actions or reactions.

Most authors create character profile sketches that include every physical aspect of main characters from age to weight, even how they wear their hair. They also include body language, peculiarities (if any), motives, values, fears, their past, gestures, an event that molded the character either as a child or adult, education, friends, enemies, ambitions, strong and weak character traits, philosophy, and on and on, even what their homes look like. However, this fleshed-out character profile is for the author to get the character firmly in mind, not to include every last detail in the story. The point is to know the character(s) so well, that what is significant about them emerges organically as the story progresses. Again, the more significant the character, the more thorough the profile.

While crafting the Trilogy, there were occasions when a return to the past was needed, in order to show how Starks became the man he is or to reveal something about another character, particularly, his wife, Kayla, who also received a character profile. Her character was developed in certain way, which caused one reader to state she hoped this woman wasn’t based on someone I knew.

I’ll never tell.

Nesly Clerge

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