The Character Tree
Creating characters is hard. You’re basically making an entire whole person out of air, out of the thoughts in your mind. And as fun as it can be sometimes, it’s also hard.
It’s especially hard to make sure all of your characters are unique, and not just slightly different versions of each other.
There’s lots of funmethods. Everything from super-detailed 20+ page character biographies to cut-and-paste character vision board collages to just diving in and seeing where the characters lead you.
They all work to some extent, but they are also all flawed. The character biography can force you to commit to details that you might not yet know about your character. The collages can be overly superficial. Diving in without a clue can end up with your character leading you into a dead end or, worse, a contradiction.
Try all the methods that you like, but one method always works. It’s called the Character Tree. And it’s about to make your character development so much easier!
Character Tree
First of all, the character tree uses a human body metaphor. Why isn’t it called the character body instead? Who knows. Someone else made it up. Just go with it…
Starting at the ground and working your way up, these are the things you need to know about your characters in…
