What should you do when a character’s personality drifts as you write? Utsudo believes characters usually fall apart because their settings weren’t clear at the start—even the author wasn’t sure of their personality. The fix is to spend more time defining them until they live in your head like a close friend whose likes, dislikes and background you know well. You can also write down each character’s backstory and how their personality changes, then find your own method by writing and revising more.

Translated from Utsudo’s original Chinese column.

Anyone who reads, or even writes, novels knows that characters are one of the most important elements of a story. If the characters are well written and your other skills aren’t too far behind—say, the prose isn’t so bad it’s unreadable—the work is already most of the way to success.

But writing characters well isn’t easy, especially for beginners.

Why do characters change personality as you write?

You’ve probably had this experience: a character starts out with a certain personality, and with little explanation in the plot, the kind character shows up next time as a schemer. You flip back wondering what you missed, but comparing with before only makes it more jarring—you even wonder if the author mixed up the names.

I made this mistake a few times early on too. It mostly happened with minor characters, but discovering it during revision still broke me out in a cold sweat. Luckily they didn’t have many scenes, so it was quick to fix.

Sometimes, because a character’s setting isn’t clear enough, you get a feeling as you write that something’s off—either something’s missing or something’s extra. Usually a few rounds of revision fix it. The real trouble is when it happens to a main character.

The impact of a main character falling apart

Main characters appear often and can heavily influence the plot. If one goes wrong, you can imagine how painful writing and revising will be afterward. Just thinking about it gives me a stomachache Orz

Avoid broken characters: define them clearly first

So let’s talk about solving this. Why does a character’s personality change as you write? Because the setting wasn’t clear from the start. If even you, the author, aren’t sure what they’re like, of course their personality will keep shifting—unless they’re designed with multiple personalities (x

To avoid this, spend more time confirming your character settings. Let the character live in your head first, like a close friend: what they love, what they hate, what striking traits they have. That should help.

I’ve also heard of writers who, before starting a story, work out every scene, character and setting in detail—for example, writing a character’s backstory: what happened behind them, why their personality changed, their likes and dislikes, even zodiac sign and blood type—all to make the character’s image clearer.

I’m sure that method is very useful, but I’m lazy, so I prefer training in my head. After a while I got used to it and skipped that step.

Of course, what works differs from person to person. You’ll probably need to write and revise more to gradually find your own method. I’m offering these ideas for anyone who needs them, and hope they help a little.

Notes from the online manuscript-reading event (Dec 4)

FAQ

Further reading

• Previous: Hey! I Heard You’re a Writer on Ghost Island #107: Which Point of View Is Best for Writing?
• Start from the beginning: Hey! I Heard You’re a Writer on Ghost Island #01: Utsudo’s Debut — A Road to the Dream Covered in Frost
• Utsudo’s books

About the author

Utsudo is a Taiwanese light novelist and novelist VTuber with more than ten years in the industry and 40 commercially published print books. Her novel 《遺失的情書》 received a 2022 Ministry of Culture youth creative award. The 《嘿！聽說妳在鬼島當作家》 series records her experiences as a novelist in Taiwan.