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Students,

Develop three-dimensional characters. Imagine their life stories. Know more about them than you'll ever tell the reader. Go beyond the standard demographics of age, race, height, weight, and head-of-household status. Develop them into human beings:

• What do they look like?
• Where did they go to school?
• What early childhood memories affected their attitudes about adulthood?
• What are their favorite movies?
• What have they named their pets?
• Why don't they have any pets?
• What do they read?
• What are their salvation testimonies?
• When they are alone, what do they do?
• What are their besetting sins?
• What were their dreams when they where ten years old?
• Why haven't they reached them?
• What are their styles in clothes, cars, dwellings?
• What will they NOT eat under any circumstances?
• What would they kill for?
• What will get them off the couch and out the door?
• Who influences their decisions?
• How emotional are they?
• What kind of words do they use in their business, with friends, with their parents?

That's right, develop more then you'll ever tell the reader. But if you can see your characters, if you can hear them, if you can crawl into their skins, then so will your reader. You'll have plausible characters. You'll have characters that can reach others. You'll have the start of a good story or article.

Now, how are you going to show the reader these traits? How are you going to introduce the reader to your imaginary friends? How much are you going to reveal? How much will you leave for the reader's own vision? How are you going to invite the reader to get personally involved in the story?

Here are some ways to introduce your characters to your readers:

Dialogue Foils Action

Plot Events

Setting Timing

A fun game to play is to actually cast the parts. Pretend you are the casting director and this story is going to be made into a mini-series. Millions of people will watch it. you want just the right person to play each part. Now, with your knowledge of actors, actresses, characters in history, and people you know-cast the parts.

• Would your dad play the lead?
• Would Harrison Ford play the hero?
• Would your little sister make a good Melanie?
• How about your piano teacher? Would make a great Mrs. Sweetvoice?
• Do you want somebody like Walter Cronkite or Robin Willams to play the part of the Sunday School teacher?
• Would you cast your grandmother, or Helen Hayes, as the pastor's wife?
• Who would you hire to play your part in the story?
• Could the dog be Lassie, Benji, of Beethoven?
• Should you hire the Sheriff of Nottingham or Omar Sharif as the rogue?
• Errol, Arnold, or Ernest?
• Shari, Cher, or Chevy?

Worksheet #3 (page 289 in Writing to God's Glory) give you room to develop your characters. Make a separate sheet for each character. Cut pictures out of magazines that go with the character. Draw things that the character would carry, have, or want. Write down words that the character would use: "The Hero's Vocabulary."

Make your characters real.

Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.-psalms 139:16

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