Once you’ve completed the general context of your character — culture, location, time period, and occupation — you must now explore specificity within those elements. This is where a character stops being a type and starts becoming a person.
First Step: Mine the Micro Details
General context works at the macro scale. Specific context demands the micro. Begin by grounding physical attributes and personality traits in someone you actually know — or combine details from several people into a composite. Maybe your mother has a specific laugh. Maybe your best friend has a nervous tic that would be perfect for your protagonist. These small, observed details are what make a character feel lived-in rather than constructed.
Your knowledge base extends beyond the people in your life. If you’re a surfer and the Kauai coast feels like home, your intimate understanding of that culture — its rhythms, its values, its specific joys — adds texture to any character who inhabits that world. Especially one who loses her left arm to a shark attack and must decide what her identity means without the one thing that defined her.
What you know also comes from what you’ve absorbed. Imagine a protagonist set in 1865 — a former Confederate soldier seeking vengeance and redemption along the Union Pacific Railroad’s westward expansion. He probably has a sturdy build, a beard, long unkempt hair, a fondness for whiskey. Historical books, photographs, literature, other films — all of it feeds the image. Let those sources inform how you build him.
Second Step: Physical Description and Personality Core
In the second stage of specific research, clarify your character’s attributes across two areas: physical description and personality core.
Physical description includes everything from facial features to mannerisms. Consider height, build, and any distinguishing physical traits. Posture — how does she carry herself? Attractiveness, deformity, visible difference. How does he feel about his own body — confident, insecure, indifferent? Is she a minority navigating competing identities?
Physicality is never decoration. It affects occupation, lifestyle, self-image, and how the world responds to your character. Steve Martin’s big-nosed fire chief in Roxanne — a modern Cyrano de Bergerac — is defined as much by his nose as by his wit. The physical fact shapes everything else.
Once you know what your character looks like, you’re ready for the deeper work: who they are at their core.