Welcome back to our series about self-editing! We’ve already covered The Basics of Self-Editing and The Structural Edit – Plot and Setting. Today is all about characters.

We’re going to cover:

• Character Development
  • Crafting unique voices
  • Writing great dialogue
• Choosing the right point of view

As the title suggests, this post breaks down those character development and POV issues we should look for while we edit our manuscripts. But it’s also a great starting point with tips we can employ before we start writing.

So, let’s get to it!

Character Development

Character development is the process of creating the skeleton for our character—a thing we can flesh out until it becomes a believable, relatable being whom our readers will love to befriend.

We do this by giving them a personality or voice, and by raising those voices through dialogue.

Voice

Characters, especially the narrators, should have unique personalities or voices.

Not only does this help the reader differentiate between multiple characters, but it also helps them relate to each character.

• History

Even if certain aspects of a character’s background won’t ever make it onto the page, crafting a viable origin story is vital to the writer.

Once we understand where the character comes from, we’ll see why they are who they are. Every choice, every relationship, and every goal is directly influenced by what happened in the past.

Creating even a basic history for every character helps us understand their motivation. I’ve seen this time and again in my writing—giving the support cast birthdays, habits, or family instantly adds flesh to those bones, and I understand how to optimally utilise that character in the story.

• Goals and Motivation

The easiest way (IMO, anyway) to ensure our characters ‘sound’ different is by setting goals for them, establishing what motivates them, and then writing their actions/reactions accordingly.

Susie wants a boyfriend. That’s a goal. Peter wants to make tacos for dinner. Goal. Meanwhile, Brian wants to end the rule of the oppressive president. Goal. Even better, Riley wants all three of these things. She has a short-term goal to start the story (taco), a mid-length goal to carry us across the halfway mark (boyfriend), and a long-term goal to keep us reading to the end (removing the president).

• Relationships

Readers learn a lot about a character based on who they hang out with or how they interact with random characters in their world. Additionally, giving a character established relationships also makes them seem more believable.

How does the character speak to the elderly or the opposite sex? How do they treat their parents and siblings? Do they cheat on their significant other? Do they drop coins into the hats of buskers? We can add another layer to each of these questions (and more) by adding an ‘and why’ to the end. The deeper we delve into why characters act the way they do, the more relatable they’ll become.

• Expertise

Even juvenile characters start the story with established skills that will influence their worldviews and thought processes.

For example. Two characters enter a boutique, drawn to the coat on the mannequin. Character A is an aspiring designer while Character B is a spy.

The designer will notice shape, fabric, colour, buttons, lines, etc. They might know how much water is used in the production of the fabric, the kind of stitch used in the seams, and how many people worked on completing the product. They can glean the cost and instantly plan multiple outfits with this garment. They’ll also know which body type would look best in the coat or might picture a friend who’d rock it.

Meanwhile, the spy might appreciate the quality of the coat, but they’ll be more concerned with where they might conceal weapons and gadgets. Will the coat help them blend in or will they stand out? How easily can they put on the coat or remove it? Where could they dump it?

Maybe the spy is only pretending to look at the coat while they’re staking out the café across the road, and they’re way less concerned with thread count and buttons than keeping their target in sight. They might also be noting security cameras, customers and employees, exit routes, and hidey holes while they’re inside the boutique.

• Hobbies, interests, pet peeves

This is an extension of expertise. A character with a background in art might always use the official paint names of colours. The kid obsessed with dinosaurs sprouts dino facts or the 90s movie geek constantly quotes from their favourite films. The army vet might note every defensible position in a setting, while the thief would scan their surroundings for escape strategies. The gardener might wage war against the deer eating their petunias, while the chef might lose their mind when a patron adds ketchup to their gourmet food.

• Opinions and passions

Those things characters stand for offer a sense of realness they wouldn’t have had otherwise. For example, if one character is a vegetarian and another a meat-eater, or one an antique car enthusiast and the other all about EVs, they might bicker at every opportunity or try to influence each other. The bonus of characters with opposing views? Instant conflict.

• Secrets

Nobody ever tells every person they meet each sordid detail from their past. We all hang on to things that only we (or a select group) know. When characters must achieve their goals while hiding a secret that can derail them, we’ll be able to give them a clearer voice (and add conflict).

• Growth

If characters end the novel with the same skillset and emotional maturity they had at the beginning, readers won’t be pleased. What’s the point of reading about someone who never changes?

• Characterisation Editing Tips:
  • Start from the end of the story and work backwards to the beginning. We often don’t have quite as strong a vision for characters in Chapter 1 as we do midway through the story. Because we’re more firmly settled in the character’s head after about five or so chapters, the following chapters are a good blueprint for how the character should behave and sound at the start.
  • Except if there’s a specific reason, our characters’ reactions, moods, likes, and dislikes can’t change every second chapter. We must ensure that any changes we’ve applied to their personalities/actions are consistent throughout the manuscript.
  • Additionally, we should consistently use the same physical descriptions for our characters. Except if Bruce is a chameleon or SFX makeup genius, he can’t be a Black, broad-shouldered jock in one chapter, and then become blond, blue-eyed, and scrawny in the next.
  • We must ensure the backstory or other information we’ve shared is consistent throughout the manuscript. It won’t do to have a big reveal in Chapter 5 and have that same reveal in Chapter 30 because we forgot (or copied and pasted) segments of the manuscript.

Dialogue

Most of the points about voice also apply here, but I want to add some thoughts on how to find unique character voices through speech patterns.

• Region

Regional speech and slang can instantly alter a character’s voice while also strengthening the reader’s sense of place.

If the character is British, for example, they might use Londoner slang with glottal t’s and swallowed h’s. A character from the southern United States might say things like ain’t and y’all. In some parts of Canada, people call soft drinks pop, while others use soda, and especially the older generations drop an eh at the end of sentences. Australians have shortened words and nicknames galore, like mozzies, utes, and dunnies.

Multilingual characters might pop in words from their home language or ‘lose’ their second language while they are upset. And vice versa! I also forget Afrikaans (my home language) words when I’m flustered (in fact, the longer we spend in Canada, the more often this happens). These characters might be fluent in English (or whatever their second language might be) but could revert to their home language while counting,  writing, gossiping, or mumbling to themselves.

In fantasy worlds, characters probably won’t use real-world slang, so words like okay or rizz, or phrases like for the win might not exist. They probably have their own set of slang or regional words, and it’s oh, so fun to come up with them.

• Class, Education, and Employment

The words characters use will tell the reader about their origins, personality, and journey.

Professional characters would probably use jargon with their colleagues, but they might use simpler words to describe their jobs at home. Some work-specific speech patterns might stick regardless of where the character finds themselves, for example, military characters might refer to everyone as sir and ma’am, while former students often continue to refer to their teachers by the name and title they used in class.

Highly educated characters might sound like Word of the Day calendars when they speak, using words or phrases that other characters might not understand. They could also struggle to explain concepts they might perceive as simple because they believe everyone understands the basics. Depending on their personalities, they might keep up their brainiac speech to belittle other characters or they might try and teach those around them.

‘Uppercrust’ speech patterns can also be used as a put-down—our clique is better than yours—just as blue-collar characters have their own set of insults for people who think they’re better than everyone else.

• Age

Characters from different generations probably won’t use the same slang, but there will also be differences in values, political beliefs, and their general way of life.

As mentioned in the section on voice, experiences flavour outlooks. This means the grizzled war veteran has seen things the high school student can’t even imagine, but that same student might have street smarts that would shock the vet. Additionally, the student who grows up in a two-parent suburban home with soccer practice, band camp, and white picket fences won’t use the same speech patterns as the teen who lives alone in a shelter.

• Swearing

Our characters might not cuss in front of small kids, their grandmothers, or religious figures. Or maybe they do, and that’s what makes them who they are.

Meanwhile, characters might not be allowed to swear in a professional capacity, but they keep up a rolling Reel of Bleep in their minds. Some characters could swear like sailors but will absolutely never blaspheme or vice versa.

Fantasy worlds might use unique words and the names of their deities for swearing. One of my favourite pastimes for coming up with new jargon for fantasy worlds is referencing old-fashioned swearing, like this article on Mental Floss.

• Humour

Some characters will turn to sarcasm, while others might have dark humour, or giggle at the silliest of things. If we give them something to laugh at or have them make jokes, they’ll gain distinctions from the rest of the cast.

It’s also worth nothing that funny characters are often readers’ favourites. There’s something innately hopeful about a character who can laugh at their failures or lighten stressful circumstances.

• The Hive-Mind

If a group of characters grow up together, or have worked together for a while, they will begin to absorb each other’s speech patterns. Inside jokes might become a single groaned word, a character’s name might turn into a verb describing failures, or they might use unique swearwords born on the day the incident count switched back to zero.

Still, each character in a unit will have glimmers of personality that shine through in their speech, even if they tend to use the same kinds of words as others.

• Pet Phrases

Everybody has a personal saying or two. Things that will distinguish us from others. I say ‘cool beans’ and ‘awesome’ a lot.

• Dialogue Editing Tips:
  • Spice up dialogue with actions. AKA avoid talking heads. If too many scenes rely on a pair of characters (or more) simply talking, we might want to throw in some doing. What the characters are doing can set the scene, and will serve a greater purpose if it advances the plot at the same time.
  • Dialogue can either slow or speed the story’s pace. Writers get to choose which parts of the story must race by, and which ones must allow the reader a moment to catch their breath. Using dialogue to do this can be super effective.
  • It’s important to remember that all dialogue, like every story element, must serve a purpose. If characters are stopping to have a chat in the middle of a bloody battle, there should be a clear reason. If there’s dialogue in the book that serves no clear purpose, it’s better to cut that segment.
  • Information can be delivered in dialogue IF it’s something natural for characters to be talking about. If not, it becomes just another info dump. Most of the time, it’s better to sprinkle information throughout the book, instead of bombarding the reader with heaps of facts they don’t immediately need.

Finally, I have a great post all about dialogue here.

Point of View

We have to consider which point of view will best serve our story.

• Will one viewpoint work, or would the tale be more interesting if we show events through multiple viewpoints?
• What about an omniscient viewpoint?
• Should we use a deep point of view or would shallower points of view create the feel we’re looking for?
• What is the genre? Will the target audience appreciate a first-person narrator, or do they expect one who tells the story in the third person?
• Would simple past tense work best with this story, or should we tell it in simple present to amp up the urgency? (I have a full post on tenses here.)

Editing Point of View:

• Identify the Viewpoint Character

The reader should always be sure who is narrating the chapter or scene.

Some authors place the name of the viewpoint character at the beginning of the chapter/scene, but we can also make it clear to the reader by pinpointing the character’s voice through mannerisms and speech patterns, by always alternating narrators in a specific pattern, or by sticking to a writing habit. For example, I always try to ensure that the first name used in a chapter is the name of the viewpoint character.

• Head Hops

As an extension of the point above, we should avoid jumping between viewpoint characters in the middle of a scene. Of course, the rules are different for omniscient viewpoints, but for the first or limited third point of view, it’s best to stick to a single viewpoint per scene and to indicate (via breaks) where the shift occurs.

• Frequent Changes in Viewpoint

Viewpoint shifts alter the pace of the story.

Too many shifts will read like watching a reel of edited-together bloopers. It’s jerky and fast-paced—something that might not suit each story.

So, we must determine whether every shift of POV is necessary, and if it advances the plot. Where possible, we can remove or combine viewpoints for better pacing (which we’ll cover in the next Structural Edit post).

• The Viewpoint Stagnates

On the other side of that coin, too few viewpoint shifts could kill the pace.

If there’s absolutely nothing happening in a specific viewpoint character’s world, readers don’t want to read about them. It’s better to jump to characters who are actively progressing the plot and catch up with the others when they’re caught in the action.

For narrators with single narrators, we should cut those chapters or scenes that slow the pace (except if we have a specific reason for a slower chapter/scene).

Have anything to add? Let’s connect in the comments! I’ll be back with another post about structural editing next week.

Until then.

Yolandie.