Hot take: skipping outlined character sheets is lazy writing

I keep seeing people post character intros with zero backstory or motivation, just a name and a look. That might work for a short story, but you can't build a novel around a cardboard cutout. My last fiction workshop had 12 people critique a piece where the main character had no clear reason for their choices, and it fell flat every time. Are we overthinking it when we write 3 pages of notes per character, or is the bare minimum approach actually making for better stories?

3 comments

3 Comments

jamie_adams1mo ago

Totally agree with you on that. I spent two days outlining a character once and still had to scrap half of it because none of the backstory actually made her feel real on the page.

jadej501mo ago

But is it really about the amount of notes you take or more about what actually makes it into the final draft? Like I've seen people with three pages of backstory but none of it shows up on the page so the character still feels flat. Doesn't the end result matter more than the process?

jamesf291mo ago

Three pages of backstory and none of it shows up? Thats wild to me. @jamie_adams you must have been so pissed scrapping half that outline. I've done the same thing though, wrote a whole paragraph about how a character lost their dog as a kid and then realized it literally never came up again in any scene so what was even the point.