The Character House, Pt. 1: The Character Development Tool You’ve Been Waiting For

Have you ever seen a house being built? The foundation is poured, the floor and walls are constructed, and finally, the roof is put into place. If the foundation is steady, the floor, walls, and roof can remain firm for decades.

Like houses, fictional characters consist of layers that support one another—backstory, beliefs, fears, goals, dialogue, actions, quirks, relationships, emotions, vulnerability, and personality traits.

The Character House uses the analogy of a house to help writers build rock-solid characters. This post begins a series about how to use the Character House to create characters your readers will love.

What is the Character House?

As mentioned above, the Character House compares the aspects of a character to the components of a house. Click on the underlined links to visit the corresponding post.

The basement floor represents the backstory. Just as the basement floor forms the foundation of the house, backstory plays a major role in shaping a character’s present-day actions. Within the basement, the back room represents the backstory wound—the painful past event that the character must overcome throughout the story. The basement walls represent the character’s true and false beliefs. One of these beliefs will be the Lie, the false belief at the heart of the character arc.

The first floor represents the character’s fears, internal goals, and external goals. Just as floors have multiple layers (woodwork, plaster, carpet, etc.), characters’ goals often have layers as well. Characters are usually more aware of their external goal (such as saving the world) than their internal goal (such as finding love and acceptance).

The walls of the first floor represent the character’s dialogue and actions. The walls are the most visible part of the house, but they’re always supported by the floor and basement. Likewise, a character’s visible actions and dialogue reflect the less visible motivators of backstory, beliefs, fears, and goals.

The furniture represents the character’s external traits, such as likes, dislikes, hobbies, skills, appearance, and quirks. These outward traits reveal the character’s internal self.

The residents of the house represent the character’s relationships. Just as houses are intended to provide homes for people, characters come alive when they interact with other characters.

Looking outside, the windows represent the character’s perspective of the world, including narrative voice. To those looking into the house, windows represent the character’s vulnerability—the extent of the character’s innermost self (hopes, fears, backstory, etc.) that is displayed to the world.

The home utilities (heating, cooling, electricity, water, etc.) represent the character’s emotions (positive emotions, negative emotions, and suppressed emotions). Each character will express or hide different emotions in different ways.

The roof represents the character’s personality, which comprises the sum total of the character’s typical behavior (first floor walls). For example, a character who consistently behaves in a kind way has a “kind personality.” A character who consistently complains has a “grumpy personality.”

Finally, the Character House will help you develop character arcs, which show the transformation of your character throughout your story.

Oftentimes, underdeveloped characters lack one or more pieces of the Character House. Their goals might lack a backstory reason, they might have many quirks but no goals, or they might have too much backstory and not enough action.

Why Use the Character House?

1. The Character House offers both structure and flexibility.

The Character House helps you understand how the different aspects of a character (backstory, goals, actions, etc.) interconnect in an orderly chain of cause and effect.

If you know that your character is energetic and impulsive, you can work backward to the beliefs that drive these actions and the backstory events that produced those beliefs. On the other hand, if you know that your character experienced a friend’s betrayal, you can work from the ground up to determine what beliefs, goals, and actions result from this backstory event.

You can mix and match components of the Character House. Start with your character’s backstory or beliefs or personality or quirks. Just as the same plot structure can support vastly different stories, the Character House can provide a framework for countless unique characters.

2. The Character House can help you brainstorm both new characters and existing ones.

When building new characters, you might know a few key facts about them, such as their story goal or their basic personality. Using the Character House, you can ask questions to continue exploring your characters. What internal goal motivates their external goal of saving the world? What backstory events prompted their interest in sword fighting or botany? What kind of relationships do they have with siblings and parents?

For existing characters, you can use the Character House to identify any missing or underdeveloped components. Maybe you know their backstory but not their emotional range. Maybe your characters could use more hobbies or a clearer narrative voice. The Character House can help with all these things and more!

3. The Character House can help with troubleshooting.

When you notice that something is wrong with your character, jot down what you know for each part of the Character House. The issue may result from a missing or inadequate component—a generic backstory, a lack of internal goals, inconsistent emotions, or a weak link between goal and action.

Building Characters Like Houses

The Character House can help you develop authentic characters whose traits fit together in a natural chain of cause and effect. Just as houses consist of a basement, first floor, walls, furniture, windows, and roof, characters’ backstories impact their beliefs, which influence their goals and actions.

The Character House can help you brainstorm new characters, strengthen existing characters, and troubleshoot problems. By applying this structured but flexible method, you can use the tools of brick and mortar to make your readers feel truly at home with your characters.

What are your favorite methods of character development?