How to Flesh Out Flat Characters With Just 4 Questions

Nov 7, 2023

Discover how to flesh out flat characters and create a cast your readers will fall in love with. Learn the 4 essential questions to answer for richly-developed characters. Find out how to give side characters unique and memorable personalities. Explore the importance of delving into the backstory of side characters and understanding their decision-making process. Learn how to bring flat characters to life with goals, motivations, and interactions with other characters.

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Episode notes

Introduction

00:00 • 2min

Creating Well-Developed Characters with Minimum Questions

02:08 • 2min

Developing Flat Characters With Four Questions

04:31 • 2min

Understanding the Backstory of Side Characters

06:55 • 6min

Understanding the Decision-Making Process of Kristi and Introducing the Fourth Question in Character Development

12:47 • 2min

Developing Side Characters: Creating Depth and Conflict

14:43 • 4min

Turning Flat Characters into 3D People: A Minimum Viable Character Development Guide

19:10 • 2min

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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