Whether you're writing for fun or want to start your own book, characters are an essential part of any story. To get a good story or book going you have to develop good characters, but more importantly, you have to get to know the characters.
Steps
Step 1. Decide what type of story you are going to write
Is it fantasy? A historical novel? This can have a big impact on your character. Even if your character has traveled back or forward in time to get into the story universe, he or she will still be deeply entwined with old habits and confused by the differences in culture and time period.
Step 2. Decide on the background of your characters
What kind of names do they have? What do the characters look like? How old are they? What can you say about everyone's education? What kind of family does each character come from and what is that family like? How heavy is each character? What distinguishing features does each character have? Try to go as far as to picture each character exactly in your head.
- One of the basics should be whether your character has a disability or is an LGBT. If you approach these topics, you will have to be very careful with them if you have no experience with them. When creating characters with disabilities or LGBT characters, you will need to do a lot of research beforehand before writing anything that might be thoughtless or offensive.
- Make the appearance of the character make sense for the universe of the story and its habits. For example, a professional fighter will often have his or her hair tied up, otherwise it can be easily grabbed and put him or her at a disadvantage. In the real world, no one can have bright pink eyes or red or purple eyes, without specific genetic mutations (like an albino) or contact lenses; genetics just doesn't work that way. And if your story is set in a realistic world, then Alexandria's Genesis isn't real and you can't use that to justify a character's purple eyes!
Step 3. Determine the basic personality of each character
Is a character cheerful and cheerful, or melancholy and gloomy? Has the character withdrawn? Enthusiastic? Investigating? Insensitive? Come up with some basic traits of your character's personality, for a rough idea of how the character relates to your story.
It also allows you to determine your character's interests and hobbies. Is it a computer programmer? Violinist? A dancer? A writer? Chemist? mathematician?
Step 4. Dig deeper into your character's personality
Ask yourself some deeper questions about situations that can help determine a character's character, such as, "What would my character do if his mother died? What would he do if he was confronted by a relative he lost sight of a long time ago? What would he do if confronted by a bank robber? What if someone held a gun to his head?' These are the kinds of questions you should ask yourself, and write down the answers. You should now have a reasonable idea about the personality of the different characters.
Step 5. Sprinkle some negative qualities over it
If you make a character too perfect, people will find your story boring. A tall, slim, handsome, strong, honest, attentive and intelligent character soon doesn't really come across anymore. Give him or her a weakness, such as an addiction or the fact that the character is too proud. Add some complications to it!
- Make sure the weakness isn't something that would cause little or no problem in the story. For example, if the character is shy and clumsy, then these are not real flaws if it only leads to the character being driven into the arms of his lover. A real weakness could be something like, 'Karin is so shy that she can't bring herself to say what she really thinks, and this constantly gets her into trouble when her friends misbehave and she doesn't dare say anything about it. say, ' or 'Ferdinand is clumsy and this causes problems when he trips and drops a candle on a curtain of the hotel where he works, causing a fire and injuries to those around them.'
- Make sure your character doesn't have too many flaws. If a character's description goes like this, 'His parents died when he was young, traumatizing him, and his foster parents locked him in a closet when he did nothing wrong, he's ugly and socially awkward, and no one thinks nice to him, and he messes up everything he tries to do, 'then nobody will be able to put himself in your character's position and may even find him annoying and a whiner.
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Be careful with your characters' character flaws, such as drug or alcohol addiction, mental illness, or disability. More often than not, these topics are not properly covered, and the writer makes it seem like an addiction can be put aside for a while. As if mentally ill people are violent and out of control, or disabled people can't do anything by themselves and have to rely on everyone for every need they have, when this is not justified (e.g.: someone in a wheelchair who has no communication problems at all, still acting dependent preventing others from communicating). These things should be carefully researched, otherwise you may offend certain readers.
For more information about disabilities, such as mental illness, autism, etc., see wikiHow articles on developing a character with a disability
Step 6. Think about how you would talk to your character
Think about his hopes and dreams, fears and memories. You can also try to answer questions like the character, which can help you put yourself in their shoes and find a better way to see the world through your eyes.
Step 7. Write a scene with the character
If you're not sure what to write about, find an idea generator and pick the one that sounds good. Show how your character reacts to certain situations, and don't just say it. This can help you get an idea of how rounded the character is, and whether you should go back and rewrite some areas of his personality. If the character is reacting to what's going on in the story, then you're on the right track.
The difference between show and tell is that when you tell the reader about a character, there is no evidence to support it (eg, "Jenna cares about people"). When you show the reader that this is the case, there is sufficient evidence to support the claim (e.g., 'Jenna embraced the trembling, crying child and cradled the child in her arms, with the soothing words, 'It's okay No one was hurt. Everything is fine now.”). In general, it is better for your writing to show, not to tell
Tips
- Enjoy it! There's no point in making up characters if this bores you, because if it bores you, why should it fascinate other people? That's not the start of a very good story!
- Don't try to make your character good at everything - for example, your character may not be good at sword fighting, archery, rock climbing, singing, popularity, makeup, and thousands of other talents at the same time. Nobody is good at everything. Pick a few talents for your character, select which ones the character really spends a lot of time on, and then let the rest go. Just because you want your character to be great doesn't mean they have to be good at everything you can think of, because no one is good at everything.
- Search online for a character sheet. You can find it by searching for 'character creation sheet' or 'character development sheet' in your browser. These can help you develop character traits that you may not have thought of yet.
- If you have no idea what your character should look like, but you do know what their personality is, or vice versa, you can always base their appearance on their personality, or their personality on certain outward appearances of the character. For example, if the person is playing basketball, it may be tall or, for a twist of the story, may be small (and therefore difficult for him or her to get into the team, etc).
- When you write the story, the characters should write most of the story, not you. If you introduce a plot twist and you can imagine how each character reacts to it in his or her own way, rather than according to a ready-made response you've made up for them, then you're doing it right.
- Another tip you can use is that when deciding on a personality, always think about Why. For example: Karin doesn't dare to open her mouth because she's afraid someone will criticize her – okay, but why? Maybe someone has said something in the past and no one thought it was a good idea and it had a negative effect on her ability to speak up.