Learn to describe the world around your characters with skill and you will add layers of depth to your story. You won't have to rely on the amateur’s method of 'telling' to get across how your character is feeling and thinking about everything, because it will be evident from your rich descriptions.

Reflect the mood

So don't just describe your surroundings for what they are, stuff them with propaganda.

A country garden can be cast as cheerful and airy or sinister and dark, depending on what your character is going through and their mood.

Be specific and use evocative words - Don't just say there was a bird call. Was it a cheerful greeting or a shrill warning? Don't just say the woods were dark, were they speckled with cool, relieving shade or dense with heavy shadow?

Stick to what your Point of View character can see

Even if you're in the third person you should only see whatyour character sees, and tell it from their point of view. The better you can do this the more real your character and story will feel. 

For example, your character:

•  can't see something that's around the corner
• doesn't know what other people are thinking
• will see things through their world view – or as I like to put it: to a man with a hammer, everything looks like an nail. For example, if your main character is an accountant, they might view a fight in terms of how much the damage will cost. A Hell's Angel will think it's funny, and a little girl will see the same fight as giants tearing each other apart and have nightmares about it for months. It's not just a fight, it's a hundred things to a hundred people. Be sure you know who your person is. 

Use the five senses

Don't worry about prose for a minute, just make list. In each situation, what can your character:

• See
• Smell
• Taste
• Touch
•  Hear

Once you have these things you can either knit them together into a single descriptive paragraph to set the scene, or sprinkle them throughout the scene.

Use a picture

Tells a thousand words and all that. Thank whoever it is you might thank for these things that you are lucky enough to live in an era where millions and millions of images are available for you to browse at a moment's notice on the Internet. Centuries of pictures at your fingertips. Moments of history captured by the deft fingers of expert photographers, the essence of great leaders echoed in the brushstrokes of master painters, grand landscapes portrayed in breathtaking art, and crappy photo snaps of cringeworthy chavs. It's all there.

And life is always a thousand times richer than anything you can imagine, so take advantage of it. If you need to describe a rainy cobbled street in ancient Japan, hunt for a photo that is the closest approximation. Sometimes you might need several pictures, and none will get it exactly, but each will add threads and beads to your tapestry that you might never have found inside your own head.

Go there

Even better than looking at a photo is looking at the real thing. Many leading authors will go to the places they are talking about (as well as talking to the people who do what they're writing about, or even better, having experience of doing it themselves - such as being a detective or being in war). If you have the time, you should do this too. The power of allowing your senses to experience the night forest / battleship / penthouse suite cannot be overstated. Often it won't be practical, but if you get the chance, consider it a great prize.

If you'd like more help writing your novel, find out what makes The Novel Factory so effective.

How do you name your characters? Do you just pluck something out of the air? Do you use an automated character name generator?

Here are a few ideas for coming up with meaningful, original names for your characters...

Look up baby name meanings

It's very simple to find a baby naming site, enter in a leading trait of your character and then browse the list to see if any of them suit. Of course, this tends to work more for goodies than baddies, as names with negative connotations are much more rare. Can't think why.

Foreign words

Why not enter some of the character traits into Google translate and see what some foreign words look like as names. You may need to try a few synonyms to get the right thing, and obviously the language itself needs to sound appropriate.

Scientific names

Like the infamous Katniss, names of plants and even rare animals can bring depth and meaning to your character and even add layers to their history.

Maps

Maps are full of weird and wonderful names, especially the small places around the outskirts of the cities or deep into the counrtyside.

How do you choose names for your characters? Do you think it's important to get the right name, or that it doesn't really matter? Do you have any other ideas for discovering interesting names?

Picking the right names for your characters can make a big difference to the feel of your story.

There are some names from literature which are unique and feel imprinted on our memories, such as Heathcliff, Hannibal, Simba and even Cinderella. Would these names immediately bring to mind a single entity if they were Jack, Peter, Mohammed or Claire?

Here are a few tips to help you find the perfect fit name:

Reflect the character's personality in the name

You can be obvious about this (surnames like Moody, Love, Nice and Right all exist in real life), but you may want to be a bit more subtle. This is a lot easier if your character is from a foreign country. It's great fun to use a meaning of name website (these are often in the guise of baby name websites, even though adults have names too) and search for a trait you feel is strong in your character. This is much harder when it comes to villains, because there are far fewer names around that deliberately invoke negative characteristics. If there aren't any real names, then make one up.

Make sure they aren't too similar

There's nothing more frustrating for a reader than getting mixed up between characters and having to go back and reread to check who really did what. Use first letters, length and contours to make sure the names are instantly visibly distinguishable.

Research the era and location

If your book is set in a particular time or place, then make sure you do your research and not accidentally use an innappropriate name - for example a Chinese name instead of a Japanese one, or a name that didn't exist in that period.

Or, if you're really not having any luck, then give up and use a character name generator.

If you want more help in developing characters, seeing the story from their point of view and general novel writing advice - then click here.

When you're creating characters for a novel, it's a good idea to pin down their history in as much detail as possible.

For the most part none of this information will actually be directly shared with your readers, but the very knowing of it will make your character seem much more solid when you write about their actions and dialogue.

Personally, I like to push myself into going into as much detail as possible by breaking it down into the following sections:

• Baby
• Toddler
• Child
• Teenager
• 20 - 30
• 30 - 40
• 40 -50
• 50 - 60
• Etc - up the age that they are, obviously.

You may feel this is overkill, but creating characters that feel like real people is one of the hardest parts of writing a novel, and when you take the time to get to know your characters in this much depth, they begin to take on a life of their own.

For example, when thinking about the childhood of your main character, you note down that they once fell into a bush of stinging nettles, and now they hate walking through the woods. The stinging nettle story may never come up, but if your character is forced to walk through a forest, they might react nervously. On the other hand, another main character, who spent their childhood climbing trees and being active, relishes the walk through the woods.

Of course, you could have created this conflict and contrast from thin air - i.e. just decided with your godlike powers that one of them likes the woods and the other doesn't - but knowing why just makes it feel more solid, and that will show in subtle ways in the prose.

Furthermore, as you're forced to think about each stage, you'll get a better grip of their career trajectory (or whatever) and you'll get to know more about the peripheral people and influences in their lives, such as their first boss, the guy that sits next to them in the office, their first crush on that Russian. It forces us to justify the elements of their lives - such as why they live in a two bedroom apartment. Does that actually fit with their parentage and current earnings?

Another advantage of this is that you'll find incidents occur to you that really will end up informing their behaviour throughout your book, and some of them may even make it as scenes - but be careful of including a scene from their childhood just because you've become emotionally attached to how awesome is.

Even worse, don't even think about giving a low down of the history of the character in chapter one.

Knowing your character's history is your business, just like knowing your own. Elements of it will naturally come up in conversation with people at appropriate moments, but you wouldn't meet someone and immediately tell them your life story. Keep it subtle and your characters will come across as real people with full lives independent of this particular story that they're currently taking part in.