5 Tips for Developing a New Series Character

I wrote a PI series featuring my snarky, intrepid main character, Cassandra Raines. It did well. I’m proud of it. Then I did one of those pivots everybody talks about and needed a new main character. A new book person. A stranger. According to Cass, whose voice still rattled around in my head, a presumptuous interloper.

(How to Create a Character Profile To Write Believable Characters)

For a time, not a single character came to me. It was like throwing a party and nobody showing up to partake in the charcuterie board I spent all afternoon putting together. Then I relaxed and opened my eyes and ears. I listened.

Slowly, Cass’s voice grew quieter, and a new voice emerged. Detective Harriet Foster, the interloper. Saved my bacon, too, because I had a deadline. Books are like trains. They need to pull into that station on time.

Voices. Some writers hear them, some don’t. I do. But the voice is only the start of the character-building exercise. You hear a voice, great, wonderful, but now you’ve got to do something with it. You’ve got to build it out, nurture it, layer it with important writerly stuff. Voice is only step one.

Det. Harriet Foster, the protagonist in my new police procedural series, is actually based on a real-life person. The real person isn’t a cop, I don’t even know the person personally, but there was something I noticed in the real person that stuck with me.

That something popped up as I fished around for a new main character. I took tremendous liberties, of course. I took the real and added a lot of not real, but Harriet sprang from observation, by finding interesting humans out in the world to pattern her after.

Writers are keen observers. We see something interesting that sparks an idea, and we build the rest around the spark. Do not invite a writer to your family reunion unless you want your crazy uncle Roy to end up in a book. On second thought, please, do invite me. I’ve got another book due soon.

Long story short, shifting from one set of voices to another set takes some doing. You’ve got to do that pivot thing. Some of us pivot faster than others. I’m a slow pivoter. Don’t judge.

But here are the steps I took to push back the old voices and invite the new ones in. Perhaps, these tips will work for you as you pivot away on your end.

Writers observe, we watch. As you’re feeling around for interesting characters, do not fail to step out into the world and just sit around soaking it all in. See people. Listen to them speak. I guarantee you, you will never fail to come away with something—an interesting walk, an odd inflection, a unique way someone holds their head or stands or uses their hands. Details.

These details are the golden nuggets that will transform your bare-bones character frame (female, middle-aged, Black, white, tall, short) from stick figure to three-dimensional protagonist. You will need these details to entice your reader. Stockpile them. Use them wisely. Starbucks is almost always open. When you run out of deets, go cop a squat and re-up.

You’ve got your frame. You’ve stored your details like a squirrel stores nuts for the winter. Your character has a beginning. Now you roll up your sleeves and begin to layer.

This is where you put on your thinking cap and give your character a past, a history, an emotional wound. This is where you begin to breathe air into your character’s fake lungs, where you add the anchors and the baggage.

Where did they come from? What was their childhood like? Who raised them? What tragedy did they live through? Who the heck are they when they are at home? What do they want? Why can’t they get it? What is your character’s main flaw? Their deepest regret? Their greatest sorrow? See how the pot begins to boil?

No good story can exist without conflict and tension. Without conflict nothing moves. Without tension you’ve got 300 pages of wet noodle nonsense. DO NOT end up with 300 pages of wet noodle nonsense. The pot must boil.

Your character (main, secondary, tertiary) must want something, need something, and someone, or some thing, must be there preventing them from getting it. Protagonist/Antagonist. Basic. Vital. Ramp it up. Make it worth the ride for your reader.

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You’ve got your frame. You’ve given your character some very interesting human traits, an intriguing backstory. They have something they want, something they can’t get, someone standing in their way. How do they feel about that? How are they coping with all that conflict and mess? Not well, I would imagine. Even real people falter under these circumstances.

Your reader needs to be in on your character’s inner struggle. This is all that juicy internal dialogue where your character doubts and laments and second-guesses themselves as they fight to overcome whatever impediment you’ve put before them.

What is your character thinking? How does that affect their actions? What thoughts runs on a loop in their head when they’re up at 2 a.m. and can’t sleep?

Your character has to change. Something must have been learned at the end of the book that wasn’t known at the beginning. Maybe your character learns how to forgive or how to love or learns how to rely on their own resources. Maybe your character changes only a little, just, perhaps, a half-turn of the screw instead of a whole turn, but they have to be different at the end, otherwise what the heck have we been doing for 300 pages?

So, whether you transition from one series to another, or from one book to another, the process of building new characters is much the same. Look up, look around, there are characters everywhere. Establish your frame and then meticulously add layers to it. Details, unique ones, are your greatest tool.

Give your character an arc, a journey, something they must fight against, push back on, get over, then make sure they learn something from the struggle. They should be different internally at the end of the crisis than they were when they first encountered it.

Happy writing!

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