Is this normal?

This is going to be really long-winded, and it may flow a little oddly, since I'm writing by the seat of my pants here. Sorry about that in advance.

Okay, so three of the main characters of my current work in progress have been needing some development. These three did not grow 'organically', like most of the rest of my characters; they started life as blank slates, and only really rounded when I sat down and deliberately tried to apply characterization to them (most of my characters start out as an idea, and just grow naturally as the story takes shape). This morning, I was looking at my story and realized, much to my horror, that these three characters were, well, boring. Oh sure, they were fun, witty, and badass, but they didn't have much in the way of backstory, character development, or even motivation aside from basic thrill-seeking and their paychecks. In short, I created a trio of flat characters. Since these are main characters, they obviously needed a good fleshing-out.

The first thing I realized is that in order for these characters to work, the readers had to have a reason to care about them. To that end, the two most logical solutions would be to either put them in physical danger or give them personal problems. The former I decided against, since setting up an 'anyone can die' atmosphere seemed like a cheap way to get out of having to develop the characters (instant drama, just add mortal peril!)- and in any case goes totally against the story's lighthearted pulp tone. That's not to say that killing off a character and developing a character are mutually exclusive, but putting a character in peril only works for drama if people actually care about the character in the first place. In any case, my current plan is to have the main cast (five characters, counting the three in question) survive the story. I don't want an unambiguously happy ending, however.

Therefore, the way to go is to give them emotional and personal issues to work with. I don't want to go overboard with angst or anything, but frankly, these guys need some character traits other than badassery and weird senses of humour.

So, my problem came up when, midway through brainstorming stories, I felt an immense pang of guilt. I felt horrible for what I was doing to my characters. Not horrible as in 'I've ruined a promising character by messing up her backstory', but horrible as in 'God, I am such an asshole for doing this to her'. In other words, I wasn't seeing what I was doing as developing an interesting story, I was seeing it as ruining people's lives. Fictional people, yes, but I still felt bad about it.

I've done worse things to characters before, but I haven't felt this guilty about it before. Is this a normal thing for a writer to feel, or do I need to up my daily medication intake?

Detach yourself. You're starting to view them as your babies. I had the same problem so what did I do? I gave them someone else to interact with, tried to mix up the people they would talk to. For example, one of my more serious characters has several important conversations with a clown and that ended up fleshing out their character more. I've also had one of my female characters asking for relationship advice from a 50 ton tank but that was another matter altogether.

On one level it's fairly normal. As someone who's turned his stories darker on several levels growing up, I've felt a bit of joke-like guilt for them at times. To be honest, though, I've never felt an actual real guilt that made me want to stop writing.

I guess it depends on how much you are messing with their lives. I've always followed the belief that if you give every character a horrible, messed-up and grungy backstory, it makes the whole story seem less organic. Either way, you just need to remember that backstory is not the only way to flesh out a character. As mentioned above, interesting and/or quirky interactions can be a goldmine. Very often it's the subtle things that develop characters the most.

I had this issue when I decided to kill off the longtime off-on lover of one of my main characters— he does a whole Heroic Sacrifice thing to save her and a bunch of kids. For the longest time, I felt truly terrible for killing him off, because I rake this girl across the coals the entire freakin' story and I genuinely like his character, and it didn't seem fair to kill him. I even tried rewriting the ending so that he turns out to have been in jail, not executed for high treason, but that felt cheap and overall him dying works better for the story and her character development. I still feel like a bit of a dick, but I don't regret my decision.

I remember an interview after Deathly Hallows where JK Rowling said she was crying when she killed off several of her characters, and I know other authors have, as well. Some don't. I think an emotional connection to your characters is normal and not a bad thing— just so long as the emotional connection doesn't keep you from making nasty decisions that make the story better.

I haven't wanted to stop writing because of this (I'm so utterly terrified of my own brutal self-criticism that it takes a bloody miracle to get me to start writing), and I'm going to go ahead with these developments. It just feels oddly discomforting doing this to the characters.

As was said, backstory isn't the only way to flesh out a character, but that's just where I'm starting this time around. I like fleshing out stories and worlds more than I do characters, so this gives me an angle that I'm more comfortable with to start out with. Attacking the weak point of the problem for massive damage, if you pardon the expression.

They already have some personality, but I haven't really found their 'voices' yet. Like, I know that in 'X situation', one of them would make 'Y comment'. What I haven't done yet is discovered which of them would make the comment. I guess you could say that this is like one of those vision tests, where you see the characters as indistinct blobs and have to try out different lenses to make them appear clearer.

My only rule is not to play up the tragedy. The characters, and the story as a whole, are fairly lighthearted, and that lightheartedness is the soul of the story, if you will. If things get too bleak, then I'm writing a completely different story; a story that I don't want to tell.

I'v ehad this happen before. Generally, you need to do two things. Ask yourself if it (A) comes off as cheesy and (B) is happening to a character, it really, really shouldn't (see Hedwig's death). That being done, if your answer isn't yes and yes, man the hellup and do it anyway.

My advice as far as developing backstories is to do at least a little bit of developing your characters as children. What's some secret from their childhood - a friend, a hiding place, a bad grade, an imaginary friend - that they never shared? One really horribly embarrassing incident that they would die if anyone else found out about? And why? And what sports did they do? Did they choose, or did Mom & Dad elect for them?

And hey, you can get personalities right from that- Alice did synchronized swimming back in the day, what's the stereotype of synchronized swimmers? Meticulous, concentrated, likes plans, but also loves beauty and charm? Does that work for her? Or maybe Bob plays the tuba. A tuba player has got a very specific vibe - loud, friendly, sometimes too boisterous, but always honest. Not that I expect your characters to kick ass and take names by means of underwater somersaults and fortissimo renditions of "Oom Pa Pa," but it's a start.  ^*

And yes, it's painful to inflict wounds on your characters - there's one guy in my story I really should kill, but I've made him into The Woobie already, even though he's just a side character - I even gave him a sweet younger sister! What have I done? But I'll find a way to deal with him. It's like medicine, only for your characters.

well, this has never happened to me; but i wish it did; there seems to inply a lot of emotional involvement in your fiction and that is something that is just wow

that being said, i dont think you should let your guilt have a say. for that matter, i think you should go on despite the guilt with that characterization because something like that has to give an empotional repsonse form the reader (or so i guess, i havent read it) since it even creates one from the writer. but , as you said, it is all light-hearted, but im more into tragedy/black comedy so no experience there, sorry.

I know how it feels, except I had it for my Big Bad and his Dark Mistress. My Heroes had problems but that was because I knew that they would grow out of a lot of them. Meanwhile, the little voice in my head was begging to let my Big Bad Take Over the World, because he's the one I spent the most time developing and putting all that loving detail into (can't make a good story without a good villain).

On one side this is a positive thing: you've given your characters a personality that actually, well, lives. It makes writing them easier since you know what they will say and do. However, you now view them as actually living beings which, since we're not evil, we don't actually get joy out of torturing.

Don't let them get to you. If you feel bad about their backstory channel your emotions about it into that or another character: emotional involvement can help the writing... just so long as you don't justify Jerkass behaviour just because you feel bad about what you did to them.

Remember, a good backstory does have a little sadness: think of it as character building. If I didn't get over it, the entire human race would be enslaved to my little Big Bad. I won't even get started on what I did to his girl.

I hope my advice makes some sort of sense.