Zero To Book: Cast Your Characters

Hey there!

Welcome back to the Zero to Book series!

In our last post, we expanded the 5 points of our Story Core into a first draft high-level outline for our story using the 15 "Save The Cat" beats. Now that you have a bird's eye view of your plot, it's time to zoom in and start fleshing out the details—beginning with your characters.

Well-developed characters will help you:

• Write realistic dialogue

• Weave them into your plot outline

• Anticipate how they’ll react in any situation

When your characters are fully fleshed out, they almost become real people that exist in your mind.

And when you set them loose in the framework of your story, all you have to do is follow their lead and document what unfolds. The actual writing becomes more like uncovering the story your characters are telling than struggling to impose a story on them. So while it takes work upfront, developing your characters before you dive into writing scenes will grease the creative wheels and help you write a better story with less frustration.

The time spent up front pays off exponentially in the drafting phase.

Cast Your Characters

Every story needs a variety of characters

But picking the right characters can be hard. You want characters that are unique, have a clear purpose, and fit into your story well. The right characters will make your story come alive, keep readers hooked, and make writing easier by giving you clear character goals and conflicts to work with.

To help you get started, we've broken it down into three easy steps. By following these steps, you'll be able to choose a well-rounded cast that sets you up to write a great story.

Let’s dive in.

Step 1: Build Your Character List

In this step, we are going to choose 3-5 Main Characters and 5-8 Supporting Characters to include in your story.

• Main characters include your protagonist, antagonist, and other key players whose story arcs span the entire book. In Harry Potter, this would be Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Voldemort. You already defined 3 main characters (protagonist, antagonist, and ally) in your Story Core!

• Supporting characters play an important role but have minimal character arcs of their own. Think Neville Longbottom, Draco Malfoy, and Hagrid.

Here’s a prompt to get you started:

I am writing a {Sub-Genre} story using the Plot Archetype: 

{Plot Archetype}

And here is my Story Core:

{Copy/Paste Story Core Including The 15 Story Beats}

Please create a list of 3-5 Main Characters, and 5-8 supporting characters. 

Give each character: 

- A Name 
- 1-2 sentences of description about what they look like. 
- 1 "contradiction" about their personality that makes them interesting. 
- 1 thing they want (so we can follow their progress in the story toward this goal of theirs)

The AI will generate a list of supporting and main characters.

If you need additional inspiration, check out The Character Creation Toolbox which outlines common character archetypes in various genres.

Let’s keep going.

Step 2: Answer The Proust Questionnaire

Now for the fun part—getting to know your characters!

Just like a journalist, you're going to interview each character you brainstormed using a set of questions. This will help reveal their motivations, fears, quirks and voice.

And to do this, we are going to use The Proust Questionnaire.