When you’re reworking your first or second draft, you’ll likely be making some changes relating to your characters and their characterisation (how they come across on the page).
If you didn’t quite nail your characters’ personalities or
their character arcs during the first draft … that’s totally normal!
Even if you spent time getting to know your characters before you began writing, your idea of them probably shifted a little (or maybe even a lot) during the writing process.
Perhaps a character who was
once timid became unexpectedly bold, or a character who initially seemed like a total jerk had a tender side. Maybe the relationship between two characters shifted, too: they might have started out hostile but slowly become more friendly, and you want to nudge that dynamic one way or the other.
Getting characters right can be difficult, and a lot of writing advice out there around
characters can be fairly general.
Perhaps you’ve been told to consider “whether the characters convince” (Lynne Bryan) or that you
should “create a multi-dimensional, round character with recognizable personality traits and quirks” (MasterClass).
This advice is fine as far as it goes … but you might find it helps to
have some practical ways to make tweaks to your characterisation as you redraft.
Here are a few ideas and techniques that can help:
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