NaNoWriMo: How to Stay True to Your Characters

Characters are at the center of every novel and one of the main reason's why readers are able to connect and relate to the story. The characters become like a writer’s best friend, and they know all of their secrets and quirks like the back of their hand. But sometimes characters can do things that we don’t expect, especially during NaNoWriMo when large amounts of words are being written, and there’s nothing worse than an inconsistent character. If you find yourself starting to stray from the true nature of your character, check out these tips on how get your characters back to their true selves.

Get Inside Their Heads

The easiest way to get your character back on track is to get inside their head. Mibba itself has a few resources to do this, including The Character Development Game for individual characters and Character Interactions if you have a large amount of characters. There are also blogs such as this one on Tumblr, which includes questions that give you a lot of detail about the character. You’ll be back in the mindset of your character in no time!

Take a Step Back

Just like a real life relationship, sometimes you need to take a break from your relationship with your characters in order to strengthen it. If you find yourself getting inconsistent while writing your character, take a break from the story and come back to it. Even if you just work on something else for a little while, you may come back and find yourself refreshed and ready to reconnect with that character.

Make a List!

Sometimes it helps to have a list of character traits in front of you to look at while you’re writing. Take some time to make a list of all of the important (or small!) traits your character has and keep them beside you whenever you write the character. If you find yourself making the character do something that doesn’t fall within those traits that you wrote down, you know that the character might start being inconsistent and you may need to do some re-writing.

Characters can be difficult to write, but by doing a few simple things, you can keep them for being inconsistent and make them relatable for all of your readers!

Special thanks to nearly witches. and silent hearts. for editing!