Your Character is an Onion

You're building a character. You've got checklists - you know their favourite foods, their favourite color, their nickname, their style of clothing, their birth month and their gemstone, and all of that other funky fun stuff. You visit list after list online, and answer all of them. Your character profile is looking strong. Or, at the very least, very filled out.

But then, you sit down to write the story, and you feel a little... stumped. Your character is still a stranger to you, despite the 101 questions you've answered about them. 

Don't throw out those Q&As, though. They can still come in handy. 

As you might have guessed from the title of this article, my advice is going to be looking for hidden depths. This means peeling back your character layer by layer - like an onion. The easiest way to do this is by asking ourselves, "Why?" 

Actual photograph of your character.

 

Every single decision you make about your character - who they are and how they behave - there's a reason behind it. Ask yourself "Why?", and then ask it again. And again. 

I'd go for 3-5 layers. Just to be on the safe side. But you can take it as far as you want. 

1. Why does this character always wear black?
2. Because he's still in mourning. Why?
3. Because he never got over his wife's death. Why?
4. Because she was the only person who ever seemed to fully understand him, and now he's alone. Why?
5. Because he feels there's a barrier between him and the rest of the world. Why?
6. Because ever since he was a child, he felt out of step, and was often bullied and ridiculed. Why?
7. Because he saw things differently, and had trouble understanding what came easily to others. 

And so on, and so forth. Look at that. 7 layers in this onion, and we can keep it going.

By doing this, we uncover the deep psychological, emotional, physical, and even sociocultural reasons why someone is the way that they are. For example, in the example above, maybe the character is on the autism spectrum, but was never diagnosed. Why? Maybe because his parents weren't educated about it, or because they felt it was shameful to take their child to a specialist and instead lived in denial, or any other range of reasons. Now we're getting to some pretty deep and important factors that will play a role in how our character is, and why he is the way he is, and what he needs. 

It's not enough to say that this character just needs to find a new "quirky" love interest to replace the old one. In fact, that's a shallow understanding of the character at best, and a complete misunderstanding of the character at worst. We can avoid a character-arc clash by simply asking ourselves why. 

Just be careful not to get stuck in that circular reasoning spiral, or dead-end questioning sequences:

1. Why does this character want to help the other character?
2. Because they like helping people. Why?
3. Because helping people is the right thing. Why?
4. Because it helps people.

Everyone knows that helping people is the right thing to do. Not everyone actually does it. This is a dead-end sequence; there's nothing of value there. Avoid these kinds of dead-ends that don't do much in terms of revealing character motivation and deep-set biases, desires, and needs.  

Take those Q&As you filled out about your characters and ask yourself why they are the way they are. Maybe you'll catch something that doesn't make sense, or uncover a whole other layer to your character you didn't know they had, or even reveal an entire backstory that you had never considered. There's so much potential here. 

All you have to do is just ask Why?

The Your Character is an Onion guide is a newsletter freebie that goes into more detail on how you can accomplish this. It will offer more in-depth guidance, as well as how to deal with issues that might pop up during the process, so make sure to grab that by joining my newsletter group. 

The newsletter will be sent out end of August 2025.  

By joining my newsletter group, you will also get access to all previous newsletters and all of their free writing goodies, too, including: Book in a Year, The Flashcarding Method, Hindsight is 20/20, and The Checklisting Method for Eating Elephants.

More to come on a usually-monthly basis! 

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