Your Next Draft
Your Next Draft is the fiction writer's guide to developmental editing. What do you do after your first draft? How do you flesh out flat characters, fill in plot holes, and hook your readers from the first page to the last? What does editing a novel even mean? Developmental editor and book coach Alice Sudlow answers all these questions and more. Each week, she shares the editing strategies she's using with her one-on-one clients so you can put them to use in your own novel. Tune in for tips, tools, and step-by-step guides for the novel editing process.
Your Next Draft
How to Flesh Out Flat Characters With Just 4 Questions
The minimum viable character questionnaire to develop all your side characters.
How do you flesh out a flat character? Create a cast your readers will fall in love with? Make each character realistic, well-developed, and believable?
There are tons of character development questionnaires and personality tests and character sketch templates out there.
They’ll ask you everything from “What’s your character’s deepest fear?” to “What’s their hair color?” to “What toppings do they most hate on pizza?”
But you don’t need all those questions in order to create a richly-developed character. Truly, you don’t.
In this episode, I’m sharing the shortest possible character development exercise.
I call it the Minimum Viable Character Development Questionnaire. (There are more words in that title than questions in the questionnaire.)
You’ll learn:
- The 4 essential questions you need to answer to flesh out any character
- The most important element of characterization
- How to give a flat, unremarkable cast of side characters unique and memorable personalities
- And more!
Links mentioned in the episode:
- Get the Character Arc Worksheet: alicesudlow.com/characterworksheet
- Ep. 18: 2 Essential Questions to Craft a Compelling Character Arc
- Ep. 21: How to Identify Your Protagonist's Want and Need (And Why Those Matter to Your Plot)
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