Writing and junk.
Stop thinking about the character first. Yes, of course you want an awesome main character who is going to drive the plot through the whole novel, and you’re bound to have ideas for what your characters may be like, but you need the plot to put them in. Think about that, and then think about how this awesome character of yours is going to be affected by what happens. Character development is another very important factor. If your character doesn’t change, then the story is going to fail from the start, they need to be heading towards something, growing as a person. Next you should write down a lot of things. Normal things, but things which would affect your character, and how they would affect them. The key to making something interesting is taking things that happen all the time and looking at them from your own perspective. Fiction is interesting because it gives you insight into another person’s thoughts and feelings, you see the world from a different angle, and they hold your hand and lead you though a story. The main character should under no circumstances be based on you. Ideally they should be as different as you can make them, because you will still come through in your feelings, ideas, etc. The character will inevitably have elements of you anyway, there’s no need to try and make them more like you. Plot is crucial. It should have twists and turns, things should be unexpected. Not only can you use things like keeping information from the main character which the reader knows, you can also invert this, keep information from the reader while the main character knows, let them tell the reader about it later. What makes writing interesting is perspective, I can’t stress this enough. If the main character is broken up with, how does that affect them? What are their feelings? It may be an element which you’ve seen a thousand times, but it can still be interesting, because what the reader didn’t see those other thousand times is you. You are individual, you are different, you are interesting.
So what’s going to happen in your story? Easy things to think about is events. Events people know about. Wars, terrorist attacks, anything, something you can explain in your own way. Better still, take an event which is known about and put a completely different spin on it. Add elements which were “hidden”, make the cause different, the motivations. Or you can make your own giant fictional event. Something huge which affects a lot of people, and then your character’s reaction to this is what connects the reader to the story.
Another key is that someone will always be able to relate to your character. People share ideas and feelings sometimes.
Also, your wonderful main character doesn’t have to be write all the time. A whole story could be based on the fact that they do something morally ambiguous. Or once the reader knows the character, let them screw up, let the reader be confused, wonder why they did this, even though they thought they knew them. It’s having your own feelings tugged at which makes you want to keep reading something. You have to make the reader feel something. Obviously, you can’t do this if they don’t care about the character, so making them someone who the reader can relate to and feel for is another incredibly important part of writing, and not always easy. Making them human is key. People relate to other people. If you character just sounds like a robot spouting out lines like they’re from a textbook, they aren’t going to be believable, and they aren’t going to be interesting. What you need to think about, even if you don’t write it down, is elements which may not even be included in your story. Who is this person? Why are they like they are? What are their motivations? Their drives? What do they need in life? And if they’re working towards those goals, how do they think they can get to them? Most importantly, the character needs to be themselves. You should understand them completely. If you don’t, then there’s going to be a big empty space where their personality should be, which is far from ideal when someone is going to be driving your plot.
Aside from your main plot, there should also be sub-plots. Lots of them. However big or small, there should be other things which affect your character apart from the main events of the novel. These can be to do with their work, their personal life, their friends, family. As mentioned earlier, your characters reaction to the everyday things is what makes you feel for them. If the reader loves a character, when they’re sad, the reader is going to be sad for them, if they’re happy, the reader is going to be, you guessed it, happy for them. Another part of writing which is often forgotten about is the fact that you don’t need to describe every little thing. It takes imagination to feel the story that you’re reading. If the reader is filling in the gaps (of course, the gaps shouldn’t be too big, and obviously not in the plot itself, but that’s for another bit), then they are going to feel more connected with the story and more emotionally involved.
Another thing to think about is your passive voice. If you’re going to do a first person novel especially, the voice of your main character will need not to be a drawl that gets boring after 3 pages, they will need to convey feelings, emotions, all the parts of their personality which you will not need to talk about (see previous point about filling in the gaps for yourself as a reader) assuming they are shown through the way they speak and the things they say. For example, if your character is intelligent, you write intelligently. Use unusual words sometimes, make them sound thoughtful. At no point should you have to say; ‘I am intelligent.’ Especially for this example, it makes the character sound arrogant, which may not be part of their personality, but always it will ruin the mood.
Atmosphere should be considered when you first start writing. If you are writing well, it will come across through the character’s feelings, but obviously certain words and triggers will make it sound more mysterious/sad/excited, or whatever feeling you want to come through.
This seems like a lot to think about, I know. It is, but you have a few things in your favour. For a start, your first write doesn’t have to be perfect. As long as your story is told, your lexical choices, grammar and other such details can be corrected on an edit. Plus, once your plot is completely in your head, writing it out is the easy part. If worst comes to worst, you can always have someone read it for you to check that everything makes sense. Characters will come naturally once you know them yourself, and other elements, presenting characters, showing their personality, etc., will flow smoother once you stop worrying about it.
In conclusion, writing is an art, but wonderful pieces start with a line drawing. The trick is to know where you’re going before you start.
