How To Add More Depth To Your Characters

One of my favorite techniques for building a fictional character is also the most fun. Before I tell you what is it, I'll tell you how I learned it.

I wrote my first three books by starting with a good premise. It seemed enough, and although I'd heard of using an outline or storyboard, I wondered if they were too limiting.

But after I wrote myself into more than one corner in book three, I sought out "Prescription for Plotting" by Carolyn Greene, a sister member of Virginia Romance Writers. Her kit included worksheets to help you develop your plot, characters, events and turning points.

The take-away that has stayed with me is definitely Carolyn's tools for fleshing out your characters. You get a worksheet with boxes to fill in which describe your character's attributes, physical features, personality traits, favorite foods, pet, birth place, flaws, etc. I hadn't considered what "car" my hero would drive, especially when he was a Viking. But, ah! I researched more about his ship and it became a key element in my story. I learned that his favorite color was blue. (Same as most men.) And he loves to drink mead.

Like most research you'll do, you'll only use some of it. The one element I do include is that fun technique I mentioned: a character tic.

Go online and you'll find lists of character tic examples, but don't just have your heroine twirl her hair, tap her foot, or use a cute expletive. (And while I'm on the subject, please NEVER have your character bite her lip or chew on her lip. It's laughably overused.)

Instead, have your character's tic come from an event in their past, their profession, a deep need, or emotional wound. For instance:

She limps a bit on rainy days from the car accident when she was a child.
He jumps when he hears a distant siren.
She reaches for her stethoscope even when she's not wearing it.
He finger combs his hair, worried that the scar might show.
She pulls the hood of her cape low.

What are your favorite techniques for building your characters?

Witness Amber and Konnar's Heart-Warming Kiss

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She rose quickly to meet his already descending mouth, and when her lips joined his, the floodgates of fear, longing and desire burst, and she poured herself into him. He received her, crushing her near with a groan, and she sensed in his kiss the weary journey that had brought him to this reunion. But his passion seemed rekindled with vigor as he supped upon her mouth, kissed her eyes and forehead, then pressed his cheek against hers. Dear God, he was so warm, so wanted, so needed.

Discover This Revealing Truth of Konnar's Heart

Amber stirred softly and Konnar pulled her closer, also adjusting his body to find comfort enough to let sleep overtake him on the hard floor. It would do no harm and much good allowing her to be so near, for her protection. And if he enjoyed holding Amber just a little for its own sweet sake, he could do so as she slept, and she would not know to use it against him.

Such moments of respite would be needed in the days and weeks to come, as they now entered Wessex, as Vikings on Saxon land. He would hold these moments in his memory long after he delivered her to King Alfred and returned to his life without her.

The Maiden Seer - Konnar Debates Amber About Her Gift of Foretelling

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Konnar reached out and pulled off her veil. Her fillet remained, crowning her with the fine band of bright silver. “Unmarried women do not cover their heads. While you are in my keep, you will not wear a hustrulinet.” He seemed to study the thick strand of hair he held in his hand as he let his fingers slide along its length. Amber shivered, watched him contemplate the ribbon of hair as if he made plans. 

She batted his hand away, drawing back from him “You said I will not find the key to your undoing, but I already have. I see how you use your physical might to intimidate, but it has not always been enough, has it, to keep those you love safe?” Used to provoke him, she based a ploy on the brief reading of runes on the prow. She watched to see if he would take the bait, and was not surprised when he did.

Konnar grabbed her by the arm with a jerk. A muscle rippled along his jaw. “I have always taken care of my own!” The volume of his defensive tone incited his crew to look up from their various activities. His eyes narrowed at Amber and fell to the slight upturn at the corners of her mouth. Loosening his grip, Konnar sat back, looked more composed. “You think yourself too clever. Is this how you go about telling your prophecies? You observe someone for a time, then make a statement to draw them out? The world is full of false seers. Perhaps you are one.”

“Yet I struck a cord, I think. It frightens people to look inside themselves and you are no different.” She spoke boldly, but grimaced slightly, fearing his reaction.

Konnar scoffed and stood up, casting a dark shadow over Amber. “Perhaps those who seek your counsel on behalf of petty issues have much to fear. I have never assented to that sort of vanity.”

“Or perhaps it is as I have said, you would not bear to see your own black heart. Or worse, you would not even recognize the wrongs you have committed. Your counsel is the ax hewn between the shoulder blades or to separate a man’s rib from his breastbone while he yet lives. Raven wings you call it?” Amber’s eyes burned with unshed tears. “I have spent a lifetime listening to tales of your doing, Konnar. I have lived them in my, my ...” Dreams. She caught herself from self-betrayal.

“You accuse and condemn me for the acts of a hundred others. If I judged other nuns by your example, I should think them all seidhkonas with a bent for doing murder. Yet I doubt that is the case.”  

Loveweaver - LLyrica Has Woven a Lovespell into the Braid of Slayde's Tunic

“Hand it up,” Slayde said, suddenly towering over Llyrica. “You look to be through with the tunica. Now we will find you passage on through to East Anglia. Immediately upon landing, with any luck. Prepare to gather your things.”

Across Llyrica’s lap lay Slayde’s new garment, sewn on the four-hour journey along the inner coast of Sheppey. Found in her bundles, the piece of black was woven of imported Mediterranean yarn, spun finely from long wool fibers. This, combined with Soso’s talents, had rendered a cloth possessed of a dark sheen, smooth surface and soft hand. Llyrica added her knowledge of fit, small stitches and the braid, fresh from her tablet loom, to fashion a garment both elegant and enviable. No one would see, though, the song she wove within, a lovespell that would bind her to the StoneHeart. It had worked for Mother when she wove Father’s cloak of violet, indigo and harvest gold. Now Llyrica held her breath, wondering if her talents as Songweaver gave the power to direct her fate.

Slayde Continues to Deny His Attraction to Llyrica

       “I have learned that a woman will use her soft curves, tender touches and sweet voice to drive a man to do her bidding. Just as you think to do now.” Slayde flung her linen shroud aside, and caught her up in his arms to pull her against him. A black lock of his hair fell unto his brow. “And these silks you wear. Know it will not work on me, vixen.”

She drew a deep breath when he indicated no knowledge of her crimes. But her awareness that the sleepwalker dwelt beneath StoneHeart’s clothes and weapons quickened her pulse in the most tantalizing places. “A mishap brought me here for sure. But I have no notion to what you now refer. I merely sit here, in my everyday garments, in your house and weave. If I have insulted you again by teaching Elfric something other than what you and your father deem proper for a man to know, I pray your pardon.”

“I may grant it if the other boys do not bloody his nose when they find he has been at a female craft.” He crushed her closer until impulse dictated she slip her arms around his waist. The thick muscles of his back tightened under her splayed fingers.

“That is an odd fear of yours, I think, that you will appear as less than a man. But it is an unfounded fear given the size of your  ... when I see evidence of your  ...” Her face heated. “Your height and large hands and shadowed jaw and chin.”

His mouth twitched almost imperceptibly in one corner. “I was taught to be a man and so should Elfric. Our father is gone, so I am in his stead. Every boy needs a father to raise him thus, or a man to take the father’s place.”

On her brother’s behalf, Llyrica felt keenly this lack of father. If Haesten had been a different man, she would not be cast alone on foreign turf in search of him, or under an obligation to avenge her mother’s beatings at his hand. A rare tear glazed each eye.

“You will neither change our arrangement, nor try and be rid of me. I have Father Byrnstan’s vow and the asylum of his church.” In a short time, she would also have a braid imbued with a lovesong.

“You give a fine example of how a woman works. You say one thing, but by the soft molding of your body, the pout on your lips and tears in your eyes, you plead for another.”

“I sat at the loom with no intention of pleading anything from you. Until you came, hauled me against you, and said you would throw me out. You then reminded me that my brother and I have been without a father. If this is an example of how a man works, then I may not praise the job that Ceolmund did in raising you.”

He straightened with new intensity, his arms muscles flexed around her, his chest, abdomen and thighs turned to stone. His manpart pressed so hard against her that Llyrica felt it throb. “This is how a man works, vixen. This is how I work.”

The Maiden Seer by Tracy Ann Miller - Amber Sees Just How Dangerous Konnar Can Be

       A vein bulged on Konnar’s neck, a tear moistened the corner of his eye. “I swear, mouse, that my hand will no longer be stayed if you are not silent.”

She had always found success in wielding words as weapons, and even now, scores of explanations scuttled through her brain, a hundred excuses, and a thousand denials. But in the face of Konnar’s unyielding stance and the fact that he had not slashed her throat, she opted to heed his warning. So she remained shivering on the ground as the skies turned from gray white to dusky gray, watching Konnar standing as if turned to stone, and she would wait, neither moving nor speaking. 

With distant eyes, hiding the working of his mind, he appeared prepared to tower over her indefinitely. Amber could not guess his thoughts. He was, after all, a stranger, though an intimate one ... yea ... tall and broad and handsome. She had spied in him a measure of promise for tenderness, and a willingness to find redemption from his violent past. He possessed the potential to protect and to love, which was evident in his pain over the women who had left his life. But what else did she know of him? That he was too dangerous, too volatile and that he had seemed tempted to kill her? That in spite of the gray-green bliss she found in his eyes, or the wonders he wrought upon her flesh with his hands and mouth, he was still a Viking, her enemy?

It defied logic, common sense, and even her history of listening to troubles of others. It defied even lucid thinking. And yet ...

I was so near to loving him. I would have loved him.  And dearly so, for sure. There had not come a worse time to discover it, nor a more disastrous time or more heartbreaking, for there was nothing to be done about it ... now, nor later, nor ever.  It was not to be. He had killed it.

The Maiden Seer - Amber Has a Vison

       Konnar’s heated grip shook her from her plunge into nightmare, and she found herself staring into the face of a man in need of forgiveness. The cold glare of his eyes hinted at more than his words, but any talent Amber had to further read them was overwhelmed by his physical might. She swallowed hard and saw Konnar’s men watching curiously at the other end of the ship. Her mouth had gone dry as straw, barely able to form a word. Yet she pushed a little further.

“I have not seen those things by your hands, but others like yours. I know why you have brought me with you, and I will see to it that I am of no use to you. Whatever are your hellish plans will go on without my help. May my gift of foretelling see only hindrances in your path.”

Konnar released her, spilling her into a half sprawl on the deck next to the tent, and his shadow loomed forebodingly over her. “With each moment that passes, my doubt in your ability to see the future increases. You have described aptly what the Danes have done, but perhaps these are tales of skalds that have filled your mind and made it unsound. Aside from knowing the name of my knorr, you have indicated little that would recommend you as a prophetess.”

“I am not a traveling performer with a repertoire of tricks for you amusement. And since I am not, then take me home. Prove my estimation of you wrong and redeem yourself.”

“You will not go home,” he said firmly, but quieter. “Other plans have been made for you.”

The crush of his words induced her to affect a plea. “Then have mercy! If I am not to home, then am I bound to travel in ignorance to my destination and my fate? Please tell me where  ...”

As Amber blinked up at Konnar, with the bright sky haloing his shadowed form, a distant speck suddenly appeared above his head. Visoring her brow with one hand, she tried to focus on it, to determine what it was. The sight rendered her mute as she now fixated on the object in the sky, seeing it move one way, then dip, then circle. Her thoughts cleared of bloody Viking battles and the dreams from which she sought escape. The vision pressed into her mind, choked out reality and made her forget her captivity.

Rising, Amber watched the speck, scarcely aware of Konnar as he stepped back when he saw her looking up. Her hand fell to her sack of runes and reached inside. Wrapping her fingers around one block, she held it within. The meaning of this rare omen revealed itself in part, and though she had just moments before told Konnar she would not help him, she was compelled to share this vision with him.

“A little bird.” She stared at the sky. “Lost.”  Pointing up, she turned to Konnar, wondering if he also could see it.

The vision might have been hers alone, but she watched her words strike Konnar, causing him to grimace and inhale sharply. The unyielding glare of his eyes now sparked with a hint of light, of hope not dared.

She recognized the unmistakable sign that she had opened a raw wound in the Viking, a pain she could use against him. But for now, in a deep, soothing voice, Amber reassured him.

“The child is not dead. She lives.”

The Maiden Seer - Amber's Dark Dream Leads Her into Danger

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      Dear Father, he was a Viking! Torchlight burned in his eyes, bronzed the skin of his clean shaven face and neck, and wheat-gold hair touched the top of his shoulders. The indigo cloak he wore swept across his chest, held at his right shoulder with an ornate brooch of silver. Beneath the drape of wool, showed his embroidered tunic, and at his side, a sword, its hilt embellished in runes and the hammer of Thor. His raiments indicated wealth and an eclectic, worldly mode of dress.

She gaped in awe of him, perceived his consternation at the sight of her dressed in just her thin wool undergown. A shiver ran through her as he eyed her hair, where it tousled in thick ropes along her arms and down her back. In spite of her fear, from the depths of her faith her courage continued to spout.

“There are no riches here. Your heathen kind has been here before and taken it all. Have you returned to raze even the timber dwellings?”

“I seek the Maiden Seer, not a squeaking mouse. Step aside. Where is the prophetess? Is she in this room?” Raising the torch higher, he stepped closer to within a couple of feet of her, a towering presence. His light and attention fell on the nuns huddled in a corner behind Amber. Beyond him, Amber saw the man’s cohorts just outside the door, hands on their hilts at the ready for opposition. She feared for the abbess and the monks who remained elsewhere in the complex. Her men-at-arms, encamped down the hillside, might be summoned with a just a shout, yet she hesitated to provoke bloodshed if it could be prevented.

“Truly!” she maintained, looking up at his looming frame. Panic threatened to overcome her as the heat of his torch warmed her face. “I am the one. I foresaw you as an iron oak and knew you would come.”

The Viking lowered the flame, which cast his eyes in unearthly gold. He drew back briefly and a flicker of dismay crossed his face, a subtle expression for Amber to detect and judge. Through hundreds of readings she knew had hit her mark in the Viking.

Grabbing her by the arm, he jerked her closer to him, prompting screams from the nuns in the corner. He smelled of smoke, leather and the faint scent of eucalyptus.

“Iron oak?” he said gruffly, more statement than question.

“Sisters, be at ease.” Looking up at the Viking, she tried not to grimace under the vise grip of his huge hand. “Yea, an iron oak. Are you the one?” He may need proof from her, but she also needed it of him, lest she lose her nerve to proceed.

He narrowed his eyes in response, and flexed his jaw with an almost imperceptible nod. “You cast the runes?”

“Aye. And since you have found me, cease this menace.  If you have come to take what little is here, then do your worst. We are all prepared to die. We know where we will be after death. Do you?” Amber pulled at her arm as she spoke the much-too-brave words, felt little prepared to die, and tried to forget the oft-told stories of the terrible Danes. She held on though, to her interpretation of her dream, determined to see it through.

“No one will die, mouse. At least not yet.” He let go of her, urging her backward. “Get your things! If you have foreseen my coming as you claim, then you also know you are coming with me.”