Characterization Success!

I've been having trouble with character. Isolationism, timidity, meekness, cowardice, etc. No, not me, my protagonist. See she needs to be withdrawn from her community as part of her journey, but she's not timid or meek, and she's even pretty reckless, but I hadn't really thought about her in such deep terms.



Determined to define her fully, once and for all, with several different character grids, I set in, but after a day's work of her scents and eye color and how she would react in different situations, I'm no closer to figuring out what makes her tick. You would think I knew her really well after working through the entire story, but I want to go deeper.

Then I visited My Book Therapy and looked up and article on creating characters! It was EXACTLY what I needed. I'm not sure who wrote the article, (maybe Susan May Warren?) but it suggested that I begin with what I do know about her personality - maybe her motivation or her fatal flaw - and start a trail of "Whys" to dig deeper. I struck GOLD! I found pain and fear and recoiled horror - the deep prime emotions from a negative personality trait. Yay! Well, not that she's hurting, but yay that I figured out that she's hurting and why.  Now her reactions to the situations can be more than just guess work, they can stem from a specific something, leading to consistency throughout the story.

I'm liking my character even more now than I did before!  At this rate, I may write her into another book!