Writing Commandments: #1 Thou Shalt Spread Out Character Info

Hello, world. Quick post; I greet you exasperated and a little irritated and desperately needing to rant. Or, if not rant, at least try to keep this sort of thing from happening again. Why? I've just returned from reading approximately 700 words at once of character personality explanation and background.

Some disclaimer. To give some credit to this writer, he's writing an entirely different style than where I'm heading towards. This book hits around 200k, if I did my math right. I don't even know how you write books that long. Meanwhile, this "commandment" is going towards folks planning on 100k tops. However, this sorta thing is a good example of what not to do for the word-count-conscious people out there. Because you can easily crank down this page (and the page after it I didn't post) to a few sentences, spread out here and there. There should be quite a few pages worth of character development in your own private documents, and then your story should have reflections of that in little sections throughout the book, like this:

Today I'll be bragging on the Raven Boys Series, which I love for the character development.

There are a few ways to reveal character attributes, without shoving it at the reader. You know, showing versus telling.

        1. Dialogue/style of talking (someday I'll do a post on dialogue, too, once I figure out dialogue)

• For example, in the Raven Boys series, Gansey's background can be found in the way he talks, which Stiefvater puts a little light on through the text as well.

• On the opposite spectrum, we can see Ronan's talking exhibits a much different kind of character.



 2. Style of dressing

• Such as, let's follow Blue:








3. Environment
• Next, Gansey and Adam <3

If you read any of them, read this one...
...basically this is the post where I shove my favorite book down your throats. xD

That was a lot of pictured text, I know. Overall, characters are awesome, so remember to not leave them lonely and spend lots of time with them. Develop them more privately than you'll need publicly and spread out the information on them throughout the book. Hope this was helpful and good luck writing!

What's the hardest part about writing/developing characters for you? What are some other ways to reveal character traits? What book, to you, has the best characters? What other advice would you give on characters? Comments are lovely so comment away!