Character development is one of the most essential parts of a story since the characters are what help the reader to navigate through the novel. From their backstories to the character’s perspective, a character provides a specific lense that cannot be provided with plot or theme alone. In addition, a character is based on who the story needs them to be and who they are in the story because their existence in the story plays a role in moving it forward.

In this blog, I want to focus on how specific questions can help play a large part in creating your character. When developing a character, it is important to keep in mind they play a pivotal role in how the story will unfold. By this I mean, based on the type of person the character is, the story will occur in a specific way due to the choices made by said character.

Where to start? Ask a million questions about the character and eliminate the answers that do not matter. Of course, not a million, but how ever many you need to unpack who the character is. When I think of character building, some of the questions I consider are:

• What was their childhood like?

• What are their aspirations in life?

• What is their current relationship status, no matter if it is familial, romantic, friendship, etc.?

• Where are they from, how does the world see the character?

• And of course: How does the character sees themselves?

All of these factors and more will form the outline of who the character is and how they will behave.

As mentioned before, some questions may not feel as important as others. To determine if a question is important, ask how does it fit into the narrative of the story. Will it make it or break it? And if it is a fun fact, will it take up too much space? Random facts are nice to have but if you spend to much time on it it’ll feel like miscellaneous information rather than a fun fact. By determining what information matters you are able to foreshadow throughout the book how it matter in the end.

Let’s dive into the character building of one of my favorite characters, King of Wakanda, T’Challa, better known as the Black Panther, played by our late beloved Chadwick Boseman. When he took on the Black Panther Chadwick made sure to bring everything to the table.For starters, we all know where T’Challa is from and his location and the history of his location played a vital role in who the character is. For instance, when considering the accent for T’Challa, Chadwick was adamant about not using a British accent. This is because Wakanda was never colonized. If the country was colonized it would more than likely possess the accent and language of the colonizer. Since it was never colonized, the country maintained their own language in addition to an authentic African accent—a Wakandan accent. This played such a vital role in who King T’Challa is because the audience was able to see the people of Wakanda maintain and create their own Black culture. If T’Challa possessed a British accent, it would go against the very thing that made the world love Wakanda.

Moving forward, let’s look at how T’Challa expresses love romantically and with family and friends. In the movie, his has a love interest, Nakia. Immediately, if you are swooning over T’Challa one would be curious on the type of lover he’d be and his relationships with others could give us a peek into that. For instance, he was obviously very close to his father as we see in Civil War and the way he wants to honor him. And as we know having both parents in the house hold with healthy rel;ationships gives most people a best chance at being open to love. T’Challa wants a relationship with Nakia however things are getting in the way but it does not stop him from being open to it. Though he is shy when he first sees her, and that is a general personality traits. So the questions that you could ask are: What is the character’s relationship like with others such as family and friends? Do the feel as though they don’t need it? Are they afraid of it? Have they ever been in love or had their heart broken? Who was their first heart break, this can be anyone.

For instance, if you are writing a romance, it is important to know the characters relationship status with everyone in their lives but their background with their parents may not be as important unless you have a specific theme to the story.

Themes will determine how to approach your character building because in certain genres not all information is useful information. A literary theme is the main idea or underlying meaning a writer explores in a novel, short story, or other literary work

Just as where the character is from location wise is important their view of the world as a whole will play a huge role in helping the reader to assess who they are as people. We cannot predict a reaction from anyone unless we know them and how they think, which can be helpful in some cases because it adds suspense. This is something that I actually have not been able to answer when it comes to King T’Challa. I truly believe it may have been answered in the second movie with him in it. Nonetheless, this is when we would really have to dig deeper. What clues do you have with how the character views the world. Take a specific event they will encounter that is not a internal conflict and reflect on how they react. Who are they concerned about? What is their initial reaction and now that I think of it King T’Challa cares a lot about everyone because he could have let Killmonger send out all the ships and guns that could’ve caused war. King T’Challa wanted to stay away from outside world dramas but he did not want to be the cause of it and by the end he wanted to help the Black people in America starting with those in Oakland where his uncle was stationed in the beginning of the movie.

From these three questions I have gathered that T’Challa cares about the world, he is loving and cares for those close to him, and he is from Wakanda a country that had never been colonized. And honestly those are huge things when it comes to creating King T’Challa. Just imagine what else I can discover with different questions or questions that dig under the surface.