skill fabrication and phantasy are built on cool idea and fascinating worlds — but those thing are only as good as the people who live around and inside them . How do you create compelling fancied character ? It ’s a Brobdingnagian challenge . But here are some tip that might make it easy .
There ’s no fluent bullet or easy formula for creating characters who live and breathe inside your head ( and hopefully other people ’s nous , too ) . If there were , we ’d all be using it and it would n’t be such a nightmare . I shinny with this all the meter — I ’ll have a story pass on an eighth or ninth potation before I take in that a major character is still fundamentally a fighting of paper , carried along through the story on the malarkey . And after days of grappling with this issue , I ’ve amount up with some thing can help me to imagine the character reference as a real , separate individual instead of a function of the secret plan or taradiddle .
Note : this essay is adapted from a miniskirt - lecture I give atClarion Westa span weeks ago . Thanks to everyone there who asked questions and gave feedback on it . ( And this is a good place to plug Clarion West , which is an awe-inspiring written material program that you should all support and apply to . I had such an incredible experience there , and feel privileged to string up out with the next generation of psyche - blowing SF writers . )
So here are some ideas and lead that might make your characters total to life more easy :
1) Character Is Action
This is the maxim that I ’ve essentially tried to live by for the past few year , and I kind of desire to get it made into a streamer that I can cling over my computing machine . Your characters can be witty and jabber interesting philosophies , and have cool name and awing fashion horse sense — but in the end , they are what they do . We judge hoi polloi by their actions ( with the caveat that talking to can be an action , too . ) So when you ’re coming up with graphic symbol to inhabit your world , do n’t think of eccentric of mass or cool ideas — taste to think in terms of citizenry who do hooey . And if your fiber are just ride around rant witty one - liners for page after page , but not getting off their butts and doing something , then they ’re probably not such interesting characters after all . ( And yes , even if you ’re writing a drawing - elbow room novel in which conversation is the main issue , that conversation should still involve people interacting in mode that move the story forward . )
2) Surprising Acts
And following on from that — the most compelling reference are often the one who do something unexpected . And when you first make a character , you require a “ hook ” to get yourself concerned in them — because a lot of creating a character is in reality make yourself curious about him / her . You , the writer , have to want to lie with more about this person , and then you’re able to make your reader want to know more , too . So one way to do that is to imagine a fictitious character who does something completely wild and belong off the map , something that nobody else would ever do . And then prove to imagine what would motivate someone to behave that way , and what sort of mortal does that variety of matter .
3) Weird Contradictions
4) One Detail Can Be Your Way In
If it ’s a lifelike enough item . Especially for a supporting fictitious character , a individual striking detail ( like a jewel that this person wears , or an odd substance abuse they have ) can make them sting in your head . But even for your chief quality , a single interesting detail about her or his appearance , or a habit of speech ( a catch - phrase ? ) can make them a lot more lifelike to you . In a lot of path , this is like trying to recollect someone you used to know years ago — anything that bring them into focusing in your head word is helpful .
5) But Save The Extra Details For The Rewrites
When I was depart out as a fable author , I was in a workshop where someone pass on out “ character creation sheets ” they ’d printed out from somewhere . These were n’t like D&D fibre sheets — there was no place for alinement or dexterity or whatever — but instead were just accumulation of inside information that would hopefully add up to a three - dimensional theatrical role . pet colour , childhood pet , favorite medicine , etc . The one time I prove to fill out that sheet for a part , I lost stake in her before I fix midway through . It was too much clutter , and made me get bogged down in examine to forge material that I was n’t that interested in . On the other hand , one trick I ’ve found really utile is to go back , in the ninth or tenth draft , and seminal fluid in more hooey like the character ’s gustatory perception in euphony , eat habits , sample in decorations — once the fictional character is already living and ventilation and the story is already write and polished , I often obtain adding stuff like that in just adds an surplus layer of reality to the whole thing .
6) A Compelling World, And Someone At Odds With It
So you ’ve already done some gangbuster worldbuilding , and create a setting that ’s a living , external respiration shoes — and now the temptation is to fill it with masses who fit utterly with it . After all , the earthly concern is so entrancing , your characters should be an extension of it , right ? Maybe not . Oftentimes , the most interesting character is the one who stick out from the world , or is at right hand - angles to it . In a world of cloud - Johann Gottfried von Herder , spell about the person who ’s sensitised to vapor . Your protagonist does n’t have to be a societal outcast , or someone who defies the society ’s norms and value — although that sure does n’t hurt — but writing about someone who has a unequaled relationship to your universe is a good manner to make fictional people with some life to them .
7) Yoda Was Wrong About Anger
captivate emotion on the varlet can be really hard . There ’s an constituent of act in composition — you have to “ hear ” your characters in your nous , but you also have to “ portray ” what they ’re thinking and feeling . Sometimes , it ’s actually helpful to behave out the scene ( in the privacy of your own base ) until it feels lifelike and dead on target . But most writers are not keen role player , and accessing emotions on command can be a intimately impossible project . Which is why wrath is a godsend — everybody can get furious , and everybody has things that inspire ire pretty easily . And anger is a knock-down emotion that can propel your character to do a lot of things . But also , anger can transform into other emotion really easily . Yoda was wrong : ire conduct to protectiveness . Anger run to joy . angriness leads to forgiveness . Anger can well turn into humor , in fact . If you could get in hint with your anger , you could incur the manner that it turns into other strong emotion .
8) Your Character’s Desire Can Be Extraneous
As a general rule , an interesting character is someone who wants something — people who do n’t want anything tend to be apathetic , and it ’s a lot hard to make audience interested in an apathetic fictitious character . ( It ’s totally realizable , but at least be consciously cognisant that you ’re doing that , and seek to make it exploit . ) But what your character wants does n’t postulate to be the chief peak of the floor — if your story is about someone being attacked by gargantuan carnivorous mushroom , your independent character may want something more than just to avoid being consume . mayhap your part is hear to make it to her wedding on prison term , and the giant mushrooms are just forbid her from getting to the church on time . That ’s a crude object lesson — but if your story is about accomplishing one particular task , conceive have your supporter want something separate from that task . This will make him / her abide out and experience less like a walk plot machine .
9) Write An Origin Story, Even If You Don’t Use It
Not just where your character come from , or who they used to be — but an actual report . It does n’t have to be more than a paragraph or two . Write the story of how your primary character dropped out of gamy school , ten years before your story begin . Or the fib of how your supporter first realized they were different . Sometimes writing a brief , snappy tale of how the character hear something or dealt with something , that turned them into the person they were at the start of your story , can give you a powerful little nugget to keep in your back pocket . I almost never include these “ stemma stories ” in the actual finished story , but they aid me see who this somebody is now , by imagining how they got here .
10) Work AGAINST The Flow Of The Plot Or Story
This kind of tie in to point # 8 . If your character is going from A to B to C , following the precise step they need to take to get through the plot of land you ’ve put out for them , then they ’re probably not actually having a life of their own . Your character should wander off the track — and yield tending to points where a material person would n’t necessarily just walk flat into danger , or make the decision that will move the plot forward . Often meter , when your plot is go away too smoothly , it ’s not just because you have n’t introduced enough complication — it ’s also because your eccentric are n’t really bring in their own decisions . Real the great unwashed will have their own agendas and qualms , and they wo n’t just go where you need them to go . ( And then , once your fiber have completely screwed up the nice way of life you laid out for them , that ’s when your worldbuilding kicks in and prevents them from just doing whatever they feel like . )
range viaMcClaverty , Ussatule , jovike , Leo BoudreauandHillebrandon Flickr .
Booksfree advicewriting advice
Daily Newsletter
Get the best tech , scientific discipline , and finish tidings in your inbox daily .
News from the future , delivered to your present tense .
You May Also Like
