In a complex story in which characters are mostly human, it is advisable for the author to apply some psychology, even when not being an expert. People’s characters are defined by psychology but the knowledge of these characters is not exclusive of those who professionally practice this science. In fact, psychological studies are based on the basic knowledge of a person and go deeper into it with the use of what science knows about personality.

The writer is responsible for clearly differentiating between stories in which characters must be sprinkled with certain psychological characteristics from those which do not need them in order to be developed. This difference is generally made based on the relevance of a certain character in the story and the length of the text.  When writing short stories, psychological deepness is almost unnecessary; what becomes more important is the development of the story itself in order to exemplify a given fact. With novels, it is essential that characters are correctly defined from a psychological standpoint. The intrinsic length of novels makes it necessary for the author to deepen in all the elements, given that there is enough time and space to do so. Besides, the complexity of actions within a novel cannot be performed in most cases by simple beings only defined by a name.

1. Even though there is no such thing as a general theory of character construction, it is noted that most of the time the first element the author takes into consideration in order to create a character is the action that the he will develop in the story and the relevance he will have in it. The relationship between the main character and the rest of the characters in the story will develop later. In both of these moments some psychological features of the character appear and disappear, the same way the sculptor carves a stone. During this process a character is given a name and it is defined if he will be more or less relevant in the story.