We are all very used to the types of writing one is required to master throughout school and in everyday circumstances; from essay writing and letters to stories and articles. However many of my students find that they are suddenly completely at sea when they try to write a full-length story or novel, and the most common problem that seems to arise is how to write a realistic, living, breathing character.

Character is the central, essential life blood of a novel or story, because if the reader doesn't believe in, empathise with and truly care about your characters then your story cannot be a success, no matter how well written it may be or how exciting its plot. Character is what really drives storytelling and narrative; it is the thing that keeps us coming back to a good book again and again and also what prevents us from being able to put it down. That elusive, wonderful feeling that you have found a true friend or kindred spirit in a novel is priceless, and causing that feeling in your readers is the ultimate aim of all authors.

Of course the entire process of imagining a character and bringing them to life would be far too long and complex to detail here, but here are some of my top tips for getting started and helping your character to develop realistically. I hope you find them useful!

Background

One of the most common mistakes writers make with characters is jumping right in to what they are like right now, in the story as it is being written, instead of working out how they have got there and what has made them who they are.

Even if your novel or story is set entirely in the present, before you start writing you must begin by brainstorming the most important aspects of their past. If you only know the aspects of your character that you reveal in the novel, the reader will subconsciously be able to tell that they are just an invention. Imagine your character as a friend or a person you know – you don't think of them as simply a person in the moment, instead you know them to be a product of everything you have seen and heard about them in both the present and the past.

So ask yourself as many questions as you can possibly come up with about your character – where were they born? What is their family situation? Which major events in their past have made them who they are? Have they been educated? What is their world view and why is it that way? Try to really get to know them until you feel like you understand them completely.

This will inevitably give a much fuller and more rounded picture of your character when you begin to write; even if the background information you have decided upon isn't actually included in the text.

Speech

The way that a character speaks is a big part of convincing the reader of their reality, as it is your opportunity to set their personality aside from the narrator or author's and it is here that the reader often subconsciously decides whether or not they believe in the character as a separate entity. You must ensure that your character does not speak with the same inflections, style and characteristics with which you have written the narrative sections of the text, or the reader will immediately associate them with the author and see them as your creation.

In deciding how a character speaks you must consider the influences and experiences you decided upon during the 'background' section. Would your character have been well enough educated to always get their grammar right? What area of the country are they from? Do they speak with an accent? It might be helpful to remember that, a character's opinion of themselves is often most evident in the way in which they choose to speak.

Remember that a character's speech is not decided by such basic aspects as whether they have a specific accent, but also the words and vocabulary they choose to use and the length and complexity of their sentences. All these aspects add to the overall, rounded view of them as a real person in the eyes of the reader.

Character motive

Perhaps above all else, it is absolutely essential that you know the exact driving motive of your character in order to create them realistically. Everything a character says, does and thinks should be driven by, and linked back to, their overall motive. What does you character want? Why are they in your story or novel? What are they looking for, searching for, wanting, missing, needing?

It is very important to fix an absolute, clear idea of your main character's driving motive in your mind before you begin to write because knowing it will inform your writing more than you even realise, creating a realistic sense of a genuine individual.

The next stage will be to break down your character's motives into smaller, individual objectives for each scene or chapter. For example, the driving motive of your character could be love of another character, but in a certain scene, they might need to persuade another character to let them into a locked building to lead to their target. For that scene, their objective would be to persuade and convince that character, and this should come across in everything that they do, think or say.

By making your characters' overall motive and driving force clear, you truly bring them to life as a real person with real aims, goals, thoughts and feelings. You will find that this has an enormous impact on the intensity and success of your novel.