In this post, we share 10 top tips on how to write a three-dimensional character to help you with writing characters in your novel.
1. Write the character’s backstory.
How it helps
Our histories define us. Knowing what a character has experienced will help define their morals and values. Backstories can also help to define the character’s relationships and how they might react to certain situations.
How to include it
Write your character’s history up to the first page of your story. How old are they? Where were they born? What was their family life like? What were some of the notable events of their childhood and teenage years? Are they married? Do they have kids? Are there any deaths in their life that impacted them?
If their job is important to your story (like if you’re writing a detective fiction or crime story), write out what experience pushed them to that career.
2. Create a full physical picture, including tics or habits.
How it helps
Whether we like it or not, how we look can impact our life experiences. A person’s physical attributes can make them distinctive, like if they have scars or are exceptionally beautiful. Their physicality can also make them invisible, which might be useful in a horror or detective story. Defining how you physically see a character will help you define how the rest of the story world sees them, too.
How to include it
Rather than just write out your character’s physical traits, try to depict them visually, too. You can do this through drawing or using printed photos as part of a character collage. Actually seeing how all the traits look together will also show you whether your character looks realistic or not.
3. Give them dreams, hopes, and aspirations.
How it helps
Every person has something they want. It is often said that this ‘need to achieve’ is what defines us as humans. These dreams are usually crafted in our childhood years, based on some defining experience or person in our youth. In stories, these aspirations are the driving force behind nearly every action the character commits: from their career choice to where they live to who they love. Knowing what a character wants will help you define why they perform certain actions.
How to include it
Look at your character’s backstory. What were they lacking as a child that they might want now? Decide how those events will drive your character’s actions in the story.
Were they overlooked or ignored as a child? Then make your character seek fame and admiration.
Were they poor? Then make your character want to become successful so they never have to struggle again.
Once you have a list of dreams and desires your character wants, choose which ones to include in your story. Don’t ignore the others; they might be useful as the plot develops.
4. Give them vices and bad habits.
How it helps
We all have ‘guilty pleasures.’ These can be as dangerous as drugs or extreme sports, or they can be as benign as watching bad reality TV. Whatever the vice, these bad habits and guilty pleasures add nuance to a character’s personality and help to make them three-dimensional.
How to include it
Choose a vice or bad habit that’s not too cliché. You want to choose a guilty pleasure that’s both interesting, relevant, and different than the norm. You also want a bad habit or guilty pleasure that makes sense for the character’s backstory and could even cause a minor conflict.
For example, the smoking, bourbon-drinking detective is overplayed and too one-dimensional. Instead, have a detective who is only drinks Earl Grey tea with honey. Maybe the detective runs out of honey or Earl Grey and won’t go on a stakeout until they get some more.
Use the vice to make the character—and story—interesting, not cliché.
5. Don’t make them ‘all good’ or ‘all bad.’
How it helps
Stories need complexity, which comes in the form of a character who struggles with their own morals and values. A hero who always does what’s good isn’t very interesting because the reader can predict exactly what they’ll do every time, nor is a villain who always does the evil thing because it’s evil. Three-dimensional characters need to be unpredictable, which means showing them make decisions that don’t always fit their role as ‘hero’ or ‘villain.’
How to include it
When you are planning the plot of your story, choose points where your character has a difficult choice to make. Use the backstory, motivations, and vices you’ve already written out to explore why this choice is so difficult.
Have them do things in service to their greater motivations that aren’t particularly fitting to their character. Maybe the hero tortures or kidnaps someone in order to stop the villain. Maybe the villain builds schools in their hometown and is only just a villain to the hero.
6. Establish how they will change throughout the story.
How it helps
The ability to learn and change is what makes a character come to life. Without that change, the character, and the story overall, wouldn’t be very interesting to read. Whatever that change is needs to be realistic to the character and their history for it to be believable to the reader.
How to include it
When planning the conflict for your story, be sure to include what the character is fighting within themselves. What events does your character face that highlight the character’s inner demons or insecurities?
Decide which events will force the character to change their view of themselves or their society. Your resolution should be about how your character’s new outlook changes the way they act moving forward.
7. Provide moments where they can act ‘out of character.’
How it helps
People can surprise us with their actions by doing things we would never predict. This creates intrigue for the reader as it adds depth to the character. The reader keeps reading to find out why they’ve acted that way and what else they might do.
How to include it
This is more than just making not all good or all bad. This is about creating moments of complete randomness, at least to the outside observer.
Identify moments in the story where you’ve set it up so it’s ‘obvious’ which decision your character will choose. As long as it doesn’t complicate the plot too much, have your character make a completely different choice that, until that point, they never would have considered.
8. Establish their important familial or social relationships.
How it helps
Humans are social beings, which means that we are not only drawn to others but often defined by them. This is especially true of our families and the impact of their upbringing on our personalities. The same is true for a three-dimensional character: the people they choose to associate with or have to associate with will reveal what kind of person they are.
How to include it
Write a list of the important people in your character’s life and define two things: what makes them important and whether the character interacts with them anymore. Then, explore why the character does or does not interact with the characters and how that might impact the way they perceive other characters or themselves.
9. Decide how other people view them.
How it helps
Characters respond to the way other characters treat them. A three-dimensional character will act a different way to people who admire them than they would to people who despise them. Readers expect this because humans do this, so a realistic character should change their actions to fit the situation, too.
How to include it
Look at the people your character will interact with in the story. Decide how those characters feel about your three-dimensional character and what actions they will do to show that.
Then, for each of those actions, decide how your three-dimensional character will act. Will they match those feelings and actions? Or will they do something to try and change the characters’ minds?
10. Draw from who you know.
How it helps
Real people are already three-dimensional, so they make great templates for characters if you’re struggling to come up with an original one. They already have backstories and relationships, neuroses and aspirations. You just have to decide which of these people is the right mold for the character.
How to include it
Write down everything you know about this person, including their inner motivations, complexes, and worst fears. If the person is willing, you could even interview them to fill in all the blanks you don’t know. If you can’t interview them, then fill the blanks in with your own answers, making sure the answers match the tone and plot of your story.
Once you have a full picture, change only those physical or personality traits that don’t match your story. For example, if the real person you are using is childless, but your character has three children, write that into the character’s backstory. Use what you know about the rest of their personality to imagine what they would be like as a parent and add that to your character description.