The Power of Character Outlines
in Fiction Writing
By Mary Kole
Mary Kole is a former literary agent, freelance editor, writing teacher, author of Writing Irresistible Kidlit, and IP developer for major publishers, with over a decade in the publishing industry.
If you’ve never tried character outlines for your longform fiction writing, you might be missing out. When you sit down to write a novel, one of the most difficult tasks is creating characters that readers will care about and remember. It can be hard just to craft a compelling protagonist—let alone an entire supporting cast. To make the process smoother, consider creating character outlines for each of your primary and secondary characters, including the antagonist. They don’t have to be as comprehensive as an entire plot outline, but it might really help your craft to take this step. Here’s how to write character outlines that can help make your writing process much simpler.
What are Character Outlines?
Character outlines are documents which outline all the important information about the characters you are writing about, including their progression over the course of the story. This includes physical attributes, backstory, their objective, motivation, and character need, as well as other personality traits, and more. The goal of making character outlines is to make sure all your characters have enough detail that they feel real and alive in the story. You also want to check that they are going somewhere, or progressing in some way. Your character doesn’t have to have a complete 180 epiphany to be worthwhile (in fact, this doesn’t seem authentic to readers), but they should have some kind of trajectory (unless you’re writing an anti-hero). Writing character outlines for each of your fictional people will allow you to track whether everyone has enough to do.
The Benefits of Creating Character Outlines
Creating robust character outlines ensures that all of your characters are unique and readers can tell them apart based on their personalities, moods, goals, or speech habits. Character outlines also help keep track of all the small details about each character that you don’t want to overlook as you write the story, which creates continuity throughout your book and helps keep things consistent between chapters or sections. Finally, character outlines can be very useful when revising or self-editing your novel–you won’t face any trouble keeping track of minor plot points or relationships between characters when all of these things are noted down in one place.
And the best news is, if you decide to make a change to a character or plot, you can revise your outline and see how those changes might impact everything else by trying your ideas out in a ten- or twenty-page document, rather than an entire novel. Character outlines can really save you a lot of heartache, and can become a living document that you write from, adjust, and revise as you draft.
How to Create Character Outlines
To start, answer some essential questions about each major character in your novel, such as age, physical characteristics (like hair, clothes, and build), job, or hobbies, and important information about their family of origin. Then get into their personality: Are they outgoing or bashful? Do they have any quirky or odd habits that make them stand out and can maybe be used to create a subplot in your story? Finally, be sure to spend a lot of time on what makes them tick. What they want, what their stakes are if they get it or don’t get it, and why they want it. Be sure to also develop shortcomings or vulnerabilities—these are, after all, what make fictional characters seem more human.
Last of all, think about where the character fits in with the general arc of the story itself—how do they advance the plot? Character outlines can nicely dovetail with the tool of a novel outline, which I encourage every writer to attempt at least once.
Creating convincing characters takes effort and dedication, but it doesn't have to be daunting if you take advantage of tools such as character outlines. By breaking down all the layers of each individual, you can make sure everyone is fully fleshed out before you sit down to write. You might also find unexpected similarities and connections within your character outlines, which will only bring richness and resonance to your story. Thorough characterization is key when creating compelling stories and making sure readers are engrossed in the events that unfold. It all starts with character, and character starts with character outlines.
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