Mold that character, then sit down and interview him. Avoid the usual sterotyping and give him or her a unique quirk.

Fleshing Out Characters

The Body Physical

You’ve decided that your protagonist is going to be a male. Now you need to instill this person with a personality. He needs to have feelings, dreams and desires. And you have the creative power to mold him into whatever you want.

Will he be, tall, very short, very tall, average, stout, muscular, lean, gaunt, skinny, obese, slender, or average? Is he going to be a child, a teen, a young man, an old man or somewhere in between? What race is he and what is his ethnic background? Will he be from a new race?

Mold him and watch him take shape. Assume you’ve created a young man in his late twenties with a slender physique and shaved head. Don’t stop there. Finish molding him until he becomes someone. Color his eyes and eyebrows. Work on his features. Does his face boast chiseled features or are they softer? Is his nose slightly large or maybe it’s a bit crooked from a childhood accident when his brother ran into him. Is his face interesting, pleasant to look at, handsome, rugged, patrician, snobbish, youthful, ugly? Does he have unusual quirks like chuckling when he’s embarrassed, or blushing? Does he mumble to himself when he’s thinking? Is he sensitive, slow thinking, sharp, street smart, book smart? Does he get into trouble? Is he law-abiding? Is he loyal and polite to his family and friends. Is he rebellious? Will he fight when pushed or will he try diplomacy?

Clothes

Clothing often categorizes people. Does your character work in a business office and wear suits with ties? Is he a fireman by day who wears casual slacks and golf shirts when off duty? Is he a ranch hand who dresses in faded jeans, boots, and long-sleeved western-cut shirts? Is he a by day conservative and by night liberal who wears a rock band T-shirt, tattered jeans and sandals, or is he an athlete who wears jogging suits or shorts? Maybe he’s in the military or maybe he’s from another world and dresses in colorful jump suits or dragon leather.

Don’t forget accessories. What sort of shoes and socks will he wear? Does he wear a ring and what sort? How about a medallion, or gold chain, or earring? Does he wear a belt? Does he carry a wallet or shove his money into his pockets? Does he wear a broad sword across his back or carry a knife in his pocket, on his belt, or hidden in his boot?

Once you have him dressed in a manner that suits his status in life and his personality you have taken several major steps in fleshing out your character, but the work doesn’t stop there.

Environment

Your character needs someplace to live. Where he lives and his habits will help to mold his personality. Will he be neat and organized, a total slob, an average guy who occasionally leaves his socks and underwear scattered on the floor? Does he live in an apartment, a house, alone, with others, in a tent, in a sheep wagon, in a condo, on a houseboat, in a castle?

Back History and Psychological Issues

Interview your character now and find out where he grew up. Get him to talk about his parents, his friends, his escapades, his siblings, his school, his religion, his political beliefs, and anything else you’d like to know about him.

Ask him why he hates his oldest sister or why he and his father haven’t spoken in five years, or what he did that landed him in jail for two days when he was in college. Ask him how he managed after his mother was killed by a mugger.

What are his aspirations? Does he want to own a company someday, run his own cattle ranch, destroy the evil dragon, marry his high school sweetheart and raise a family? What motivates him and why? Does he want to find the man who murdered his mother, attend a rock concert, join the CIA, run for the Senate, write a musical score or join the priesthood?

Status Quo

We all have ideas on usual types of characters seen over and over in fiction. Misunderstood is rampant where an individual is portrayed as a mean and threatening individual, but turns out to be just the opposite. We also see this with the underdog…the meek person who comes through with an incredible courageous act to save the day. Others include the vengeful woman, the anti-hero, the hero. So, what you want to do with your newly fleshed out character is avoid making him a stereotype. Do this by giving him an added habit or quirk that doesn’t quite fit the stereotype. He could be a liberal senator who secretly listens to Rush Limbaugh, a professor who likes reading children’s books,
an opera singer who has a collection of Grateful Dead records.

Giving your character contradictory traits is a good thing. You want him to be unique. Just try not to follow the status quo when doing it.

Actions, Reactions and Feelings

Our protagonist is readying himself to help drive the plot of your story. How he acts, reacts and feels all play an important role as does his interactions with the other characters in your story. Different factors about your characters will determine their reactions. Some of these are ethnic background, education, age, environment, rebellious personality or conforming personality and even specific events in his background.

Suppose your protagonist and his best friend, a female, are accidentally bumped on a busy street. The memory of his mother’s mugging and subsequent murder flashed through his mind spurring him to grab the offender and slam him against the wall of a building, his eyes flashing with anger. She immediately grabs the protagonist's arm begging him to let the man go, insisting that it was only an accident.

It isn’t the fact that they were bumped that’s important. It’s how a little of their personalities were revealed by their reactions to the incident. By this revelation, the plot has thickened because we now know that the protagonist has a weak spot, an explosiveness that will play a role in future events. We learned that his friend is forgiving and compassionate.

Introspection

Help your readers to know what makes your protagonist tick, by allowing them to occasionally see what he is thinking. Thoughts not only help build who he is, they allow the reader to bond with him as well or at least to understand him more fully. Now your character is whole. You’ve taken all of the necessary steps to breathe life into him so that your readers will be interested enough to want to know what is going to happen to him. Will he achieve his goals? Will they want him to? Will the readers feel sad when he fails? Will they feel anger when someone does him wrong? Will they rejoice when he succeeds? Will they laugh when he’s the butt of a joke? Will they cry if he dies or will they think he deserved it?

When your readers react to your characters, you know you’ve succeeded in making them real.