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Some writers develop incredibly detailed characters before they ever start a story.

I am not one of those writers.

I do the bare minimum necessary to create a character, then I throw them into my story and see what they do. By the time I’ve written the first draft, I know who they are and can revise accordingly.

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Although I’ve written this way for decades, I’m not sure I’d recommend it. It’s an interesting tactic, but it has left me with a lot of revising I might not have needed if I’d done a bit more character work before I started writing. Characters drive the plot, and I’m a plot-driven writer, so my process is missing a critical aspect when I think about it from that perspective.

It doesn’t take much effort to build a solid foundation for a character.

Yet there are plenty of writers like me, who ignore this side of the novel development stage. Our early characters are flat, inconsistent, and their motives don’t always make sense. It takes multiple passes through a manuscript before we find out who they truly are, and if we don’t pay attention to the final version, they might still be a hot mess.

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Luckily, science can help us craft well-developed characters with…