Characters are the life force of a story. Yes, dazzling locations, thrilling plot, and heartwarming themes are all well and good, but if you don’t have well-developed characters, your story will fall flat on its misshapen ass. People don’t read stories for locations (they could browse Instagram for that), nor for plot (they could skim the synopsis if that was the case). People read stories for characters they could spend some alone time with without feeling lonely.

Now that we have established the importance of characters in a story, let us look at how to build one from the ground up. As you might already suspect, there are no hard and fast rules of building a character. At least, none yet discovered, or if discovered, the discoverer has not yet shared it with the rest of the world. Here, we’ll only look at the character of Spider-Man and imagine how the process of its creation must have gone.

Imaginary Scenario of Someone Creating the Character of Spider-Man

Yesterday, my five year old nephew told me that it would be “sick” if he could shoot web from his hands like spiders. The idea of someone shooting web and slinging around the neighbourhood got stuck in my head. I started to think up what the character might be like.

First came the name: Spider-Man. Precise and concise. Then came his physique: lithe and strong. Strong as in athletically strong, not body-builder strong, because, although spiders–the likeness of Spider-Man–are strong creatures, none of them have abs like Dwayne Johnson. At least, I don’t think so.

Then I figured out couple of choices as to how someone might become Spider-Man. Maybe he is from a planet where everybody is like that. Maybe he was born with superhero powers because of a scientific experiment. Or maybe he was bit by a radioactive spider. All are promising choices, none yet selected.

Later, I started thinking about the man behind the alter ego: who he might be, what he does, what he fears, etc. This was the tricky part. Because, here, I had to transform an action figure into a living, breathing, hurting human being. Coming to this phase, the story about a man getting bit by a spider caught my eyes. Because that would mean he has to figure out how to deal with his newfound powers and responsibilities–an interesting struggle. But, if he has to learn to be a more responsible person, does it not make more sense if the man is not a man at all, but a teenager on the cusp of manhood? Why, yes! It does! And, the analogy of shooting webs, white and sticky, goes well with the whole puberty thing. So does the changing of his body (due to spider in the story, due to puberty allegorically). It all comes together.

Now, after all the thinking, we have got a full-fledged character on our hand, whose every aspect goes together like bones in a skeleton.

Ending Remarks

If you’re writing a short story or a single-issue comic, you might be able to get the job done with a generic Joe or Jane. But if it’s a novel or a multi-volume comic you’re working on, you’ll need your story to have a beating heart. You’ll need a character whose every aspect complement each other like spices in a recipe. Otherwise, the novel (or the multi-volume comic) will die before it even learns to walk.