Your Character Doesn’t Need More Content. They Need More Life.

I ran into something with Luna this week: I kept thinking about what she should post next when some of the content making her feel the most believable was incredibly ordinary. A mirror picture. Stopping somewhere after work. Showing something she bought. Sitting in her car. Nothing particularly impressive was happening, and that was exactly why it worked.

The more of Luna’s life I built, the less I needed to manufacture content for her. She has a job, an apartment, a car, routines, favorite things, and places she goes. Those details give her something more valuable than endless concepts: normalcy.

Not every post needs new lore or a big idea. Sometimes she just needs to have a Tuesday. And once a character has enough of a life, there’s naturally something to document.

That’s why so much of my character work happens before I ever think about the feed. I want to know who they are and what belongs in their world first. The content comes later.

I created the free Character Before the Character guide for that exact starting point—figuring out the person underneath the visuals before you start creating around them.

That’s the biggest lesson I’m taking from Luna into the next character I’m building: start with the person, and let the content follow.