How to Prepare a Character Analysis Paper

A character analysis paper is a usual assignment in your educational institution where you take a concrete character and break him/her down. Writing a character analysis paper is a serious process, and you need not postpone it until later. Therefore, every student should know how to examine a character in order to cater to his/her teacher.

Read this comprehensive guide that answers the “what is a character analysis essay” question as well as contains easy steps on how to prepare a character analysis paper.

Definition of a Character Analysis

Let’s begin acquaintance with the definition of a character analysis article. A character essay provides readers with in-depth characteristics of a concrete character. Usually, students should take characters from literature. Still, sometimes they can take characters from different art forms, for instance, cinematography. Your main goal as a writer is to tell your readers about the chosen character and his/her role in the novel. You should be objective in relation to the chosen character. Still, you are allowed to add personal opinions and preferences.

During your analysis, do not forget to take into consideration the relationships of this character with other personages, analyze the behavior of your selected personage as well as the manner of speaking and other characteristics. Before starting analysis, you should make sure you completely understand how to compose a personage analysis. 

What does Character Analysis Mean

As the name suggests, an essay on characters is examining concrete characters. Before starting the writing of a personage analysis, you should define the type of personage you are planning to analyze. If you attended your literature classes, you might remember that all characters are divided into types in accordance with their behaviors, roles, and traits in a story. 

• Major characters tell us the story. Usually, there are several main personages in a novel. Main characters, in their turn, can be divided into protagonists and antagonists.
• Protagonists are considered as good guys. The plot usually revolves around them—for instance, Othello’s character from Shakespeare’s play.
• Antagonists are considered as bad guys or villains. Such characters are in opposition to the protagonists. An example is a Wicked Queen from the story about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. 
• Minor characters assist in telling the story of the main characters. They are usually unchanging. One of the examples of minor characters is Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series of books. They help Harry Potter to beat the villain. The main character (Harry Potter) would not have succeeded without the help of minor characters.

If you do not know how to start a character analysis essay, we advise defining the type of your chosen character. This will make it easier to understand the traits and behaviors of your character.

How to Do a Character Analysis

If you want to write only powerful essays on characters, you should prepare in advance. Do not leave the writing process at the last moment. This will lead only to bad consequences.

• Begin with selecting a dynamic character. This step is applicable only if you can select the character for analysis by yourself. If a character was assigned by your teacher, you could try to ask to change a character to the desired one. The most dynamic character is not always a protagonist. You should simply make sure you have enough material for analysis. If you select a less-prominent personage, you add more difficulties in carrying out an analysis and preparing an interesting character description essay.
• If you know that you will be assigned to prepare a character summary, you can take notes while reading the story. In the situation where you already select the character for analysis, you can focus on this character during reading.  Write interesting notes about this character, his/her behaviors in some events, etc. If you do not know what personage you are planning to analyze, we advise you to read the story again quickly and concentrate on your character.
• You can create an outline. Though writing a personage analysis paper outline is not obligatory, it is absolutely useful. Many professional writers will tell you that a character essay outline is the key to success.

Though the writing of character analysis can seem complicated, it is a very interesting process. You have the possibility to examine your selected character from all aspects.

How to Write a Character Study

As a student, you may know that every essay has its own format. Character analysis paper is no exception. Below are the main elements of the personage analysis paper format.

• The introductory part. Note that your introduction should introduce your target audience to the selected character. Indicate the reasons for examining exactly this character. In this section, there is a need to add your thesis statement. Your introductory part needs to be short and meaningful. Highlight some intriguing info about your personage in order to attract the attention of your readers.
• Provide background information on the selected character. Before you begin to tell about traits of your character, include background information in one or two paragraphs. Specify the place where the character was born, tell about his/her upbringing, indicate whether he/she was raised in prestige or in poverty, etc.
• Personality traits. Now you can provide an in-depth description of the selected character. Specify whether your character is independent or shy. Provide several examples of the interaction of your selected character with other characters. These examples can help to highlight the traits of the character.
• Character growth. Every storyline has a conflict. You should not accept conflict literally in literature. There is no need to start a swordfight in order to create a conflict. Note that a conflict can be interior. Your selected character can wonder if he/she should stay at a concrete place or go to another place, tell something or stay silent.
• The conclusion. After you have provided your analysis of the selected character from his/her early ages to the end of his/her growth period, you can create a conclusion. In this section, you should summarize everything you mentioned before. Do not add new information here.

As you can see, the format of character analysis is quite similar to the standard format of any essay.

Character Analysis Outline

We have already mentioned that a character analysis outline can really assist you. Allocate some time on writing it. A well-constructed outline will help to keep your ideas and thoughts organized. Moreover, you can view an example of a character analysis outline on the Internet. You can take these examples as templates for your future character analysis.

Character Analysis Essay Outline Example

If you have some troubles with the writing process, you can also view an example of character analysis on the Internet. Thanks to modern technologies, it is not so complicated to find the desired character study example about a concrete character. You can view how other writers analyze your character. Take their character analysis essay sample as a basis for your personal character analysis.

You can use not the whole example but just the character analysis example paragraph. The main condition is not to copy-paste the entire character analysis example into your essay. This will be regarded as plagiarism. Use a character analysis sample as the template in order to look at what information should be included, take some information about a character that you may miss while reading the story, etc. 

Still Need Assistance with Your Personage Analysis Paper?

What to do even if an example character analysis essay can not help you to write an interesting character analysis. We have a solution for you. You can ask professional writers to help you with the writing process. They can compose character analyses from scratch. Also, you can ask them to provide you with an interesting and simple characterization essay example. Relying on expert writers is a proper choice when you have problems with the writing process for one reason or another.