Note: You can listen to this lesson or read it — the content is the same.
What Comes First? Character or Premise?
Do you start your story with a great character or a great premise? It can work either way!
Character First:
Some writers start with a strong, compelling character. They hear the character’s voice in their head, they clearly picture the character and their world and their situation. They want to develop a story around this character.
If you are writing character-first, ask yourself:
What does this character most desperately want and why?
What is getting in the way of them achieving their goal?
What steps are they going to take to get what they want?
That will start the wheels of the story turning.
Premise First:
Other writers (like me!) start with a compelling premise (often a “what if” scenario) then create characters to fit the premise.
If you are writing premise-first, ask yourself:
What type of person would fit this story best?
Who needs this adventure or lesson the most?
Who would have the biggest emotional journey in this situation?
Who would change the most through this experience?
What type of character have we not seen before in this particular situation?
That will help you create characters to go with your idea.
Weakness, Need, & Desire
Every main character (MC) should have an interior weakness and need, as well as an exterior desire.
Weakness and Need (Interior): At the beginning of the story, your MC has some sort of weakness that is holding them back from living their best life. The character needs to confront this weakness and change in some way in order to live a better life or become a better person. The need can be psychological (affects/hurts the self), or moral (affects/hurts others), but either way the MC is probably not aware of their need.
Desire (Exterior): At the beginning of the story, your MC also has something they want -- a goal. They are aware of this goal. (It may or may not be something they actually want or need, but it is what they THINK they want or need.) It is what makes the MC act and what propels the story forward.
Example 1: Fault Lines by Emily Itami (adult fiction, published 2022)
Mizuki has lost her sense of self after quitting her job as a lounge singer to become a stay-at-home mom. She is teetering on the edge of depression and is holding inside a mounting pile of resentment towards her oblivious, workaholic husband. These are her weaknesses.
She wants to have an affair with a rich, successful restaurant mogul (exterior desire), but what she really needs is to confront the problems in her marriage, restore her self-confidence, and find excitement and vibrance in her chosen life.
Example 2: Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson (MG fiction, published 1977)
Jess is afraid of what other people think of him and afraid to show emotion. These are his weaknesses.
He combats these fears with the exterior desire to be named the fastest kid in the fifth grade. He thinks this distinction will gain him the respect of the other kids at school, and, hopefully, make his father proud. That is Jess’s deep-down need: love and acknowledgement from his father. Ironically, when Jess breaks down emotionally (when he confronts his own weakness) over the death of his friend, he gets the love and respect from his father that he’s needed all along.
*Note: These ideas of weakness, need, and desire has been adapted from John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller. A great book, and I highly recommend it!
You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, well, you might find…
Daniel David Wallace (who offers a free course on The Character First Story) summarizes the idea of weakness and need by saying:
“A character is morally flawed in some way. At the start of the story, she desperately desires something and struggles to get it, facing increased set-backs. But as she struggles, the evidence accumulates that what she really needs is something more important than getting the thing she desires. Her moral need is what is really at stake.”
4 Ways a Story Might End
(This is also courtesy of Daniel David Wallace)
MC gets the thing she wants but fails to realize her need.
MC realizes the need, changes as a person, and uses her newfound better nature to get the thing she wants.
MC realizes the need, gives up the search for the thing she thought she wanted, and ends up happier for it.
MC realizes the moral need, gives up the thing she wanted, and suffers for it.
Specificity is key to character
Consider ways to make your characters less stereotypical and more specific.
Recently I wrote a scene in which two characters visit a psychic. I had a stereotypical image of a psychic in my mind: a middle-aged woman with a scarf on her head, wearing a flowing outfit and surrounded by candles and crystals. I did NOT want the psychic in my scene to be that stereotype. So I had readings with two psychics, and I watched several TV shows about psychics. The first psychic I saw was in her thirties, wore a t-shirt, and had a funky, asymmetrical haircut. I liked this image of a more modern, hipster psychic, so the psychic in my story has a sleeve of tattoos, wears a vintage Star Wars t-shirt, and has hair that looks like it was cut by Edward Scissorhands. The specificity is what (I hope) will make her more real to readers.
Think of specific details that will make your characters come alive to the readers, and try not to fall back on stereotypes. Remember that real people (and thus the characters you want to write) are complicated and quirky.
Assignment 1: Character Questions
Start to answer the following questions about your main character. You can also answer these questions for any of the other important characters — love interest, villain, best friend, etc. If you can’t answer all of the questions now, that’s perfectly okay. You can always come back to this list later after you’ve started writing scenes and gotten to know your characters better.
Note: I have provided these questions as a pdf below.
What is the character’s interior weakness and need? How will the character confront their weaknesses in the story?
What is the character’s exterior desire or goal? What actions or decisions will they make to get what they want?
What are the character’s strengths? How will these come into play in the story?
What are the character’s motivations? WHY do they want what they want?
Describe the character’s physical appearance and health. (Another idea: search magazines or online to find a photo of someone who looks the way you imagine your character to look. Save this image somewhere to refer to later.)
What are the character’s core values and beliefs? What is their overall attitude about life?
Describe the character’s status (socioeconomic, political, etc.) and abilities. Where do they fit in society (or in their school or in their social world)? What are they good at doing?
Describe the character’s behavior and way of speaking/acting.
What was the character’s childhood like? Does their past have something to do with their current desires and motivations?
What does the character like and dislike? What causes them to feel strong emotions?
What are the important relationships in your character’s life? How do they interact with these people?
How would the character describe themselves to others? How would others describe them?
Assignment 2: Character Monologues
Part 1:
Your main character is going to change over the course of the novel. Write a stream-of-consciousness monologue, diary entry, email, or letter from the POV (point-of-view) of your protagonist at the beginning of the novel. Within this monologue you might explore your MC’s values, beliefs, and attitudes towards life. You might reveal the character’s weakness through what they say (even though they themselves are not aware of the weakness or aware that it’s a problem.) And/or you may want to write about an event that has happened in the MC’s past and how it is affecting them now.
Part 2:
NOW, write another monologue, email, diary entry, or letter from the POV of your protagonist at the END of the novel. How have they (and/or their circumstances) changed? How has their outlook on life changed? If you’d like, you can write about the climatic event of your novel and how the main character feels about it.
And, of course, you can write these monologues for other important characters in your novel as well!
Assignment 3: Compare Your Characters
It might be helpful to compare your main characters. For example, how does the MC and the villain/love interest/best friend differ in their world views, their appearances, their motivations, etc.
Compare your characters across these parameters:
weakness and need
desire and motivation
core values, beliefs, and overall attitude about life
physical appearance, health
power, status, abilities
behavior, way of speaking/acting
how each interacts with the central problem/theme of the story
Feeling fancy? You could even create a spreadsheet or chart with this information!
Assignment 4: Write a few pages
Write a few more pages of your novel, remembering that this is an exploratory draft and these pages might not make it into the final version. You can continue writing from where you left off in the last lesson, or write a new scene.
As you write, get to know your characters a little better. Let them talk to each other; pay attention to how they interact. Listen to your characters as they express themselves on the page. Learn about them by writing about them.
Final Thoughts
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, don’t worry. You don’t have to know all the answers to these character questions now. Answer as much as you can, let these questions marinate, and move on. Writing scenes is one of the best ways to get to know your characters.
Questions or comments? I’m all ears!
Go here for Lesson 3 on Setting & World-Building (this lesson is for paid subscribers only.)
Getting Started on Your Novel 2