My characters, to varying degrees, are living full-blown in my mind. I may make a few quick notes, but not much more than that.

However, most of my writing is in the short story and novelette areas. I have not worked on a novel and all of my books have been nonfiction. If I were to write a "War and Peace" beastie, then I'm sure I would do at least a minor outline on all of my characters.

But why do a character development? To add depth and life to your characters.

Most writers flesh out their characters to varying degrees before starting their story. Especially in a novel, this can prevent you from needing to go back and rewrite scenes because a character did something that, earlier in the story, he would never do. Or to make sure the characters are dissimilar. There's nothing more boring than having two or more characters with similar habits, attitudes or ways of speaking.

One writer I met, Elizabeth George ("Playing For The Ashes") goes into great detail for her novels. She creates a map of the area where the story is taking place, takes photographs of the area, or an area like the one she envisions and has pages of information on each character.

How they look, dress, comb their hair, their family tree, schools attended, etc. Elizabeth writes long novels and says, "Why say in one hundred words what you can say in one thousand?" So with long, detailed novels like this, an in-depth development of each character would be necessary.

When doing a character development, you will want to know as much about the main characters as you know about your family or best friend. As with your story, you should use all of your senses when describing your characters. Following are some of the things you should know about your characters.