Whenever you are trying to develop characters for a creative writing project, anything over the size of a very short story, you're going to need to pencil out exactly who that character is before you start. As you get better and better at creative writing, or writing novels, you will be able to keep most of this in your head for the major characters, and eventually you'll get to know the characters so well in your own head, that you can make a series of books without making mistakes.
Until then however it is recommended that you have a sheet of paper with all the particulars of each character, and you can add to this as you go, but it's good to have it all written down ahead of time. One of the most important things is to have a history or background of the character. Where they came from, and what type of family they grew up in. Was it a Mormon family, was it a Catholic family, was it a farm family, or was it a family of a long line of military soldiers, and officers?
These sorts of things run deep in families, and they help define who the individual is, what they are about, and it helps predict what they might do in the future. Your characters must be believable, and there will be reasons why they do the things they do based on how they grew up, and the events in their life, and early family.
One thing I've noticed as I review other author's works is I often see the author explaining the family as the perfect Ozzie and Harriet family, or similar to the Happy Days or the Walton's. That's all fine and good, but is it believable, if you are to develop a character which is quite dynamic, or quite moody, or does something very sinister, it may not make sense that they came from the perfect family, your reader is not going to buy it. Indeed I hope you will please consider what I've said here today, and think on it as you develop your own characters for your next creative writing project.
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