The Secret to Creating Unforgettable Characters (Even When Writing Fast)
Creating compelling characters while writing fast can feel like a contradiction.
How do you build depth and complexity without getting lost in endless brainstorming or backstory rabbit holes? If you’re used to taking your time to flesh out every detail before writing, the idea of fast-drafting characters might seem impossible—like trying to bake a cake without measuring the ingredients. But here’s the thing: you don’t need to know everything about your characters before you start. You just need to know what matters most.
A lot of writers fall into the trap of thinking character depth comes from long, detailed prep work. And sure, some stories might need that. But for many writers, spending too much time upfront can actually backfire, making the drafting process feel more rigid than inspired. The truth is, characters reveal themselves best on the page, in motion, through their choices and interactions.
So when you’re drafting quickly, the goal isn’t to create a perfectly layered, fully developed character before you write. It’s to lock in a few essential elements—their motivations, their flaws, the way they move through the world—so you have a solid foundation. Everything else? That can come later, through revision, through discovery, through the natural process of letting your characters surprise you.
If fast-drafting has ever made you feel like your characters come out flat, stick with me. There’s a way to build depth without slowing down, and it starts with knowing where to focus.
Start with Motivation
If you’ve ever started writing a story and felt like your main character was just kind of… there, floating through scenes without a real sense of direction, chances are you hadn’t nailed down their motivation yet. Motivation is what gives characters purpose. It’s what drives them to make choices, take risks, and push through obstacles. And when you’re fast-drafting, having a clear sense of what your character wants vs. what they need can be the difference between a story that moves forward and one that stalls out before it even gets going.
A character’s want is usually their conscious goal—the thing they think will make their life better. Maybe they want a promotion, or to get revenge, or to win someone’s heart. It’s specific, tangible, and often external. But what they need is deeper. It’s the emotional truth they have to confront, the internal shift that will lead to real growth. A character might want to prove they don’t need anyone, but they need to learn how to trust. They might want to become rich and powerful, but they need to understand that success without connection feels hollow. The tension between these two things is where the heart of a story lives.
If you’re fast-drafting and don’t want to get bogged down in detailed character sheets, here are a few quick exercises to help you define motivation on the fly:
The Simple Sentence Test – Fill in the blanks: [Character name] wants ____ because ____ but needs ____.
The Mirror Moment – Imagine your character looking in a mirror near the climax of your story. What truth are they finally ready to face?
The Worst-Case Scenario – What situation would force your character to confront their need head-on?
Starting with motivation keeps your writing focused, even when you’re moving fast. It gives your character a reason to act, react, and evolve—and that’s what makes a story compelling, no matter how quickly it’s written.
Give Them a Flaw
Perfect characters are boring. There, I said it. A character who always makes the right choices, never struggles, and coasts through life without breaking a sweat isn’t just unrealistic—they’re forgettable. Readers don’t connect with perfection. They connect with flaws, with characters who make mistakes, wrestle with doubts, and sometimes get in their own way.
A well-developed flaw isn’t just a random quirk; it’s something that shapes a character’s decisions, relationships, and internal struggles. It creates conflict, and conflict is what makes stories compelling. A character who is too proud to ask for help might lose something important because of it. Someone with trust issues might push away the very person they need most. These kinds of flaws don’t just make a character feel real—they raise the emotional stakes of the story.
Some of the most compelling characters in fiction are deeply flawed. Think about Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice—Elizabeth’s quick judgments and Darcy’s pride nearly cost them their shot at happiness. Or Breaking Bad’s Walter White, whose ego and desperation for control lead him down a dark path. These flaws matter because they force the characters to confront themselves, change (or refuse to), and create tension that keeps us invested.
If you’re fast-drafting and don’t want to spend forever perfecting your character’s flaws, try this:
Ask what they fear most. Fear and flaws are often connected. If your character fears failure, they might overcompensate by being controlling. If they fear rejection, they might keep people at arm’s length.
Think about how they self-sabotage. What’s the one thing they do that makes their life harder, even when they don’t realize it?
Make their flaw create conflict. If their biggest weakness never challenges them or affects the plot, it’s just a fun fact, not a real flaw.
At the end of the day, flaws are what make characters human. They don’t have to be likable, but they do have to be interesting. Give them something to struggle against—something real, something messy—and watch them come to life on the page.
Use the Five Senses
One of the quickest ways to make a character feel real is to anchor them in their body and their world. It’s easy to focus on what a character says or does, but what do they feel? What do they notice? What lingers in their mind long after a moment has passed? Sensory details—what they see, hear, taste, touch, and smell—turn flat descriptions into something vivid, something that makes a reader feel like they’re right there, living in the character’s skin.
But here’s the tricky part: too much sensory detail can slow a scene down. You don’t need a paragraph describing the way sunlight filters through a window unless it actually matters to the character in that moment. The goal is to weave these details in naturally—through physicality, small habits, and quick, meaningful observations. Instead of saying a character is nervous, maybe they keep adjusting their sleeve or rolling a loose thread between their fingers. Instead of explaining that they grew up near the ocean, show how they instinctively inhale deeply when they smell salt in the air. These small details do a lot of heavy lifting without dragging the pacing down.
If you’re fast-drafting and don’t want to get bogged down with description, try this: drop in a sensory placeholder. Write something like [character notices a smell that reminds them of childhood] or [the way their skin reacts to the cold] and keep moving. When you come back to revise, you can flesh out those moments with richer, more intentional details.
Sensory details don’t have to be over the top to be effective. A single sharp smell, a lingering taste, the way fabric feels against their skin—those little things can make a character feel grounded and human in ways that dialogue and action alone can’t.
Backstory Without the Info Dump
Backstory is tricky. On one hand, it’s what makes a character feel real—their history, their wounds, the experiences that shaped them. But on the other hand, too much too soon can slow a story down, leaving readers wading through paragraphs of history when they really just want to know what happens next.
One of the biggest mistakes writers make is feeling like they have to explain everything upfront. But readers don’t need to know your character’s entire life story in chapter one. They don’t even need to know most of it, at least not right away. What they need is just enough to be intrigued, to understand a character’s choices, to feel like there’s more beneath the surface waiting to be uncovered.
The best way to weave in backstory without dragging the pacing down is to reveal it naturally—through dialogue, actions, and small, meaningful hints. A character who grew up in a strict household doesn’t need a full scene about their childhood; instead, maybe they hesitate before speaking their mind, or instinctively straighten up when someone authoritative enters the room. A painful breakup doesn’t need pages of reflection—it can show up in the way they hesitate before trusting someone new or how they avoid their favorite coffee shop because their ex introduced them to it.
If you’re fast-drafting and don’t want to get stuck in backstory quicksand, here are a few quick prompts to develop a character’s past without getting lost in it:
What’s a memory that still influences the way they make decisions today?
What’s one thing they would never admit out loud, even to their closest friend?
What’s an object they keep (or refuse to get rid of) because of its emotional significance?
Backstory works best when it feels organic, like something a reader picks up on rather than something they’re told. Drop hints. Let it unfold gradually. Trust that your character’s history will reveal itself in the moments that matter most.
This pains me to write because I’m such a geek for character development, but…you don’t need to know everything about your characters before you start writing.
That might sound counterintuitive—aren’t we supposed to know their backstory, motivations, deepest fears, and what they’d order at their favorite coffee shop? Maybe. But also, maybe not. Some characters reveal themselves in layers, and that’s okay. Fast-drafting teaches you to trust the process. You don’t have to spend weeks building an elaborate character profile before you put words on the page. Sometimes, the best way to understand a character is to write them into existence. Let them surprise you. Let them make choices you didn’t expect. Let them show you who they are, instead of trying to force them into a neatly defined box before you’ve even started.
Character depth isn’t something you have to nail down from page one. It’s something that develops naturally—through dialogue, action, and revision. The more you write, the more you’ll uncover, and what you don’t figure out in the first draft, you can always refine later.
So if you’ve been holding off on writing because you feel like you don’t know your character well enough, take this as your sign to start anyway. Let them grow on the page. Let them be messy, contradictory, and real. You can always go back and fill in the gaps, but first, you have to give them space to exist.
What’s the most important thing you figure out about your characters before you start writing?
