Character Development

Most of my writing time over the past few days has been swallowed up with revamping one of the characters in the story, and figuring out the direction I want to take with it. I was trying to blast through more of the novel, where the character really comes into her own, and is fully revealed to the reader, when I became stuck. I realized that there were at least half a dozen directions I could take her story, and each one affects the overall direction of the story later on.

So, yesterday and today, I began mapping out those paths on paper, and decided I needed to find the most supporting path I could. I knew who the character was, but I didn't fully understand how her role fit into the story past a certain point. Then it dawned on me that often times the best bits of a story, are the ones you don't expect.

With a new direction in mind now, I am once again starting to make headway towards the end of the book.
One of the things that helped me to figure out what was missing with this character, was the following exercise:

Answer the following questions about the character you are currently focused on developing:

Who
   Who is this character?
Where
   Where did/does this character come from?
What
   What is this character's purpose to the story? What is it doing?
Why
   Why is this character doing what they are doing?
How
   How will this character do what they need to do? How will it accomplish its overall goal?

The other thing I had to remind myself, is that this is a supporting character, and not to get sidetracked too much from the main vein of the story with her. It was necessary to have a section that focused just on advancing her presence and meaning to the overall novel however, and thus the quandary came.

Sadly, I do not have a snippet to share today, but will hopefully have one tomorrow.