You Need To Create A Character Study For Your Children's Picture Book. Here's Why.

Do you know who your main characters are? Where are they from? Why should your readers care about them?

Writing a story can be an exciting achievement. From developing a solid story idea to sending it off for formatting and printing, you are probably ready to share it with the world.  However, if someone asks you, “What is your story about?” could you answer them without telling the entire story? That’s where a character study comes into play.

A character study is a simple breakdown of your character’s qualities and traits in relation to your story, such as your character’s name, age, appearance, likes, dislikes, etc. It’s a list that allows you to “see” the character you’ve created.

Now, you’re probably thinking that you may not need to know the traits of your character in detail in order to explain to someone what your story is about. Consider this: Since your main character is usually the focus of the story, your explanation of your story will most likely center around your main character. Therefore, creating a character study would be extremely helpful in sharing what your story is all about.

Here's an example of the character study of Sasha in the children’s picture book, Scary, Scary Sasha:

Name	Sasha
Age	7
Appearance	Short, dark skinned, with ponytails; apparel: colorful short-sleeve shirt and leggings
Relationship with Others	She gets along with everyone, except her little brother Dylan; she doesn’t tolerate bullies
Personality / Likes & Dislikes	She likes cereal and enjoys playing with her toys; she dislikes spider webs, bullies, and bugs in her food
Strengths & Weaknesses	She’s not afraid to face big obstacles. She’s afraid of bugs.
Accomplishments	Climbing tall trees, riding big roller coasters, and standing up to a bully
Goals	To pick vegetables from the garden while facing the bugs she’s afraid of

As you can see, the character study for Scary, Scary Sasha is quite simple and clear, but more categories can be added to your character study to provide more details for your character.

Creating A Character Study Helps You…

✓ Get To Know Who You Are Writing About You need to know who your characters are and why they are important to your story. What can they offer to your readers? What are their issues and concerns?

✓ Generate Possible Story Ideas

Usually, the main character has some sort of flaw and/or goal or conflict they are experiencing. (In fact, it’s always best for the main character to have a flaw or conflict. That’s what makes your story, a story. For more information on that, check out this blog.) When a character study is created, you can analyze it and get a panoramic view of the main character’s traits and see which ones stand out. From there, you can use your creativity and choose traits to develop a solid story idea.

✓ Write the Plot and Other Details of Your Story

When you know everything about your character, you can write the story based on the traits of your main character in the character study. For example, in Scary, Scary Sasha, she’s not afraid of anything except bugs. Fear is her weakness, which is one of the traits in the character study. So, throughout the story, you see her tough side, but her fear of bugs is quickly unlocked, and the plot builds up to show the development of that trait.  

✓ Write Book Summaries, Jacket Copy, Sales Copy, and Query Letters 

As mentioned earlier, the story often centers around the character. Because of this, book summaries, jacket copy, sales copy, query letters, etc. need to do the same and show who the main character is and how the main character’s actions and/or emotions impact the story. These types of copy should be constructed to “hook” potential readers and agents; therefore, it’s super important to know your main character and their specific traits listed in the character study to write descriptive copy that’s engaging and entertaining.

Characters studies aren’t just for main characters. They can be created for any character in your story that makes an impact.

For a character study worksheet/template, visit Birds-Love.com and check out the How To Create Characters, Conflicts, Plots & Settings Quick Guide.