Part I
I guess I'll start as close to the beginning as I can: Where do characters come from?
Characters come from all walks of life. They come from our families and friends, commercials (my favorite source), random strangers on the street, photographs on the internet, from ourselves.
I'm not a lawyer but I will say this: you can't just stick real people in your novel without their consent. Something about copyright to their own selves. I'm not too clear on this so just be careful when you use real people. I personally don't use real people (at least not consciously). For more information on this I would look it up and not trust me because I don't really know what I'm talking about.
In using other sources (non-family, non-friend, non-self) I mean you look at these people and imagine how their lives and personalities are. If you overhear bits of pieces of conversation you imagine what would bring that conversation to be.
Here's a couple of things to think about when you see strangers, commercial, photographs etc.
What are they doing? Are they attempting to make their cars do barrel rolls? What sort of people do things like this? (Thriller seekers and risk takers, that's who!)
What are they wearing? I mean seriously, who wears a coat made out of feathers? (Can I get a crazy? Maybe somebody who's making a fashion statement. Someone who wants to be unique. Or maybe they're just plain weird.)
What are they eating, ordering, buying? Maybe they only let their girlfriend order soup (*coughs* tightwad), maybe they're buying damaged goods (that's another tightwad or maybe they're poor).
Where are they? Take notice of their surrounds (where they eat, where they live, where they work etc.)
The list goes on and on and on. Be vigilant of the people around you, take notice of photographs, watch the people in commercials that are not movie trials and promos for TV shows and the such.
A final tip: keep a character library. You never know when you're going to find a character and when you do you may already be swamped with story ideas and have no place for her.
A character library is invaluable. I refer to my character library as the minor leagues. It's the place where characters develop as they await their turn to be called to the show.
Part II
Hi again.
The next step in character creation is the absolute basics.
For me, the absolute basics are gender, age, appearance, and name. Now we'll start with gender since that's the easiest one.
Are they male or female or do they have some made up gender or do they have none at all? There's really no special advice to offer you here.
Now on to age. First, does the character age over time? If so, I'd select a birthday and also I'd select the age/age range the character is for most of the book/series.
If your character stays a constant age through the story then pick an age group or specific age to give her. You may still give her a birthday if you want to, though unless this date comes up or she makes a stink about being 1 month older than her best friend it probably isn't important.
And now, the basic questions for appearance. You can copy and paste this into your word processor and answer the following questions for your characters (well actually no. Since these aren't post. Sorry!):
Species?
Nationality?
Skin color?
Hair color?
Hairstyle?
Eye color?
Height?
Weight?
And finally... what is your character's name?
Often times in fiction, you’ll wish to pick a name that “fits” the character. Also, you’ll want to pick a name appropriate for the time she was born in, the culture she was born in, and you’ll also want to consider the names of her siblings.
You may wish to also consider what the name means. You may or may not decide to name your character now. If you choose to name your character now you’ll avoid picking ‘stereotypical’ names for your character’s behavior. (Can you imagine a tomboy name Princess?) But you also might bend the personality to fit the name :p.
If you do name your character later, you’ll probably pick a more ‘fitting’ name. Which is fine. Whichever you choose remember, nothing is set in stone.
A few tips on naming characters:
Please, please do not name her Xyxlyzzzzzqghi. Names like these are not only impossible to pronounce they slow down reading.
When you do futuristic settings, remember that the names that are used today will still exist tomorrow.
Strike a balance between 'cool' and 'unique' names and common names. (I'm gonna level with you, I'm not that good at this one. I like to give my characters cool and unique names.)
If you're stuck and can't think of a name look online. There are countless resources for naming characters.
Part III
Personality is what makes a character a character.
A good place to find personalities is in the places listed in Part I. But what about creating them from scratch? If you don't want to do that you can always use an archetype.
Archetypes are bases for personality and there are tons of different sites that will give you archetypes. Just type it in and you'll probably find some. Archetypes are a good place to find roles for your characters and are good for making minor characters, they're also a good starting point for major characters.
So anyway, enough about archetypes. How do we develop personalities? I believe that characters grow from experience and with time. Simply filling out a questionnaire and answering all the questions does not mean you have a good character. When the character can answer these questions herself, that's when you have a good character!
If you know your character inside and out in such a way that they become a part of you, so much that you've actually become them. Then you have a great character.
But how do we achieve this intimate relationship with our characters? My answer: time and experience.
This isn't going to happen over night. My two oldest characters have been apart of me for almost five year (which reminds, their fifth anniversary is coming up next month :p). They have done so much changing and have been through so much that their personalities build on these experiences even if 'they never really happen.'
Let me elaborate on that last sentence. The story that these two are in is vastly different from when they were first made. So the things they experienced in the first story doesn't actually happen to them, but it helped develop their personalities.
Now I'm not saying that you should spend five years making a character, (my God has it really been that long?) I'm just saying time and experience will pay off for personalities.
Here are some tips on how to do that!
What are you doing? (Besides reading this) Think about what your character would do if she were doing what you were doing.
Play an RPG and use your character.
Draw a picture! (or seven hundred of them like I did :p) draw a nice big picture of her too, the more detailed the better! Draw her in a random scene or in a scene from your WIP.
Hold a conversation with your character or imagine a dialogue between two characters.
Think about your character as much as possible. When I'm bored or doing nothing special (or even if I'm doing something special :p) I'll be thinking about my current crop of characters and always be trying to develop them.
Write scenes about your character whether it's irrelevant to the story or not even remotely possible. She'll get more personality either way.
Fill out a questionnaire. (It's okay if you fill it out and not your character. You're going to fill it out the first time anyway.)
Keep filling out questionnaires! Try to fill it out in your characters voice! Not only is it hilarious, it really helps them develop personality and a unique way of speaking!
There's a great source of scenarios in an on-going conversation on TV Tropes.org. Type in "What would your character do?" In the search bar to get there.
Part IV
A very important tip on creating characters, one of the best I've ever gotten. Your characters, no matter how unimportant, needs to think they are the hero of the story.
Every action they do needs to be for themselves. When something doesn't go their way but the protagonist's goals get better, they should be upset and try to fix their problems even at the expense of the protagonist.
Every character (save extras, who are more like background rather than characters.) needs to have a goal and motivation of their own.
I've gotten many different definitions as to what goals and motivations actually are. The ones that I use are: a goal is an objective and a motivation is a reason for wanting a goal.
A character can have as many goals as they want, the more the better (there's probably an upper limit though.) But for every goal give them a good motivation to go with it so that readers will care if they achieve this goal or not.
A few tips on goals.
Keep at least a portion of them relevant to the main plot. Otherwise, your character wouldn't realistic care about what happened in the main plot.
Make the goals conflict (I'll discuss conflict in a second)
Make the goals hard. If it's too easy nobody will care.
Internal and external conflict. Novels are about characters in conflict so you must have conflict! Both internal and external.
Internal conflict is an inner struggle against yourself. Your own values and your own goals. Internal conflict gets in the way of accomplishing goals and makes the character seem human. Most people do not just make a decision and know it's right, sometimes they'll be unsure of themselves.
External conflict are other character that disagree with your character's views and goal. Nobody agrees one hundred percent of the time, and even if they do they might not agree on the right course of action.
Tips on conflict.
Create characters with opposite personalities.
What do you want your character to do? Think of reasons why'd she'd object to it. Such as moral problems she'd may encounter along the way.
Do not make one person out to be right. Things are not black and white. Make sure both sides have legitimate arguments. This will also make the problem harder to solve.
Part V
Backstory and oldstory.
What are they and what is the difference? Backstory is the character's past while oldstory is the point of time right before the story really starts. It's the story the character thinks the story is about.
A character is not just twiddling her thumbs waiting for something big and important to happen (i.e. the plot of your story). Imagine that aliens landed in your backyard right now. What were you doing before that? Certainly not waiting for them that's for sure (unless you were then...)
So ask yourself, what is your character doing before the real story starts and how is this relevant to the plot?
This is a fairly new concept that I just learned awhile ago so I don't have much practice with it. Just thought I'd share it with you.
So now I will move onto backstory. Every character has a past, even minor ones. But minor characters should not have an elaborate past, it's just not necessary and you'll most likely be wasting your time. If you DO give a minor character an elaborate past you'll probably wind up promoting her to a major character.
A Backstory can be used for numerous things: to add depth to characters, to explain behaviors, to equip characters to handle things, to increase the stakes a character has in the main plot and much more.
Here are a few tips on making backstory:
A backstory is the story of your characters life, not something to prepare them for the events of the story... unless it actually is (I mean this seriously this time) such as if your character is a princess and is heir to the throne and has been training for the day she took the crown.
A backstory is not an excuse to develop awesome (and convenient!) skills. This does not mean characters can't have awesome skills, just make sure it makes sense.
Make your character's backstory realistic.
Keep in mind how old your character is. If she's only 7, I doubt she's seen every country in the world in person.
Your backstory can be as long and as intricate as you want to make it. Just remember that it's only backstory and the reader will not learn it all. But it's still important that you know it all.
Part VI
Probably the hardest characters to create are villains.
They are set up to fail. 99.99% of villains lose to the heroes despite the fact that they are usually bigger, badder and more experienced. There's no reason the villains should be losing this much except for the fact that their the villains (which is a terrible reason mind you.)
How do we fix this? Let the villain when battles (major and important ones too. Especially actually.) Let them kill a lot of important people (not just footsolider number #27.) but still let them lose the war. It's a start I guess.
Anyway, enough about villains' winning percentages.
How do we make villains? To start, villains, and everybody for that matter, rarely think they're evil. What ever your villain is doing she has to think that she's a good person or at least not pure evil.
If your villain is someone trying to mow down trees to build a mall she is not evil, she's just industrious. If she is trying to invade the earth because her planet is dying she is not evil either, she's just trying to save her species.
Villains, like every other character, think the story is about her and should act as such. The 'heroes' of the story are the villains of hers and she's trying to defeat them and should put her best foot forward in doing so. She shouldn't ever hold back because she's supposed to lose. That isn't fair to her, the heroes (false sense of accomplish) or your readers.
So here are some tips on making villains.
Just shoot the hero! Nobody likes death trap machines and villains who talk for twenty minutes before the hero escapes or gets rescued. I highly recommend that you never back your hero into a corner that requires the villain to total fail or act completely incompetent for the hero to escape in the first place.
The better the villain, the better the plan. Don't make the villain a super genius who makes the stupidest plans just so the hero can win.
Also, the better the villain is the more often they'll succeed. It's just a fact of life.
Villains are humans too! (unless they're not...) remember they have feelings and families and are not just evil entities (unless they are...)
Incompetence is a no-no. I'm not going to say you shouldn't ever
have incompetent villains and henchmen but it really is out of hand if nobody has any brains on the other side.
Killing no-names doesn't count for anything. The villain can cause mass destruction and megadeaths but if she never kills anybody that we the reader cares about she's not really doing anything evil. (killing loved ones that the hero cares about counts too.)
Part VII
What is your character good at? Is she an excellent spell caster, a chess grandmaster, is she the star center of the basketball team? All characters have to be good at something, right?
But don't just go around assigning random skills to people. Let your character pick. I mean, why would your character be an expert mountain climber if she was afraid of heights? Think about your character's personality, think about the sorts of things that she would like to do and would excel at.
You can fill out as many skills that your character has as you want, but remember these two thing: number 1, just because she has a skill doesn't mean she'll get to use it.
You can do one of two things (or something else you can think of). Mention it so it doesn't seem like all the skills your character has are useful. Or remove it, so you don't have information irrelevant to the story.
And number 2, keep it realistic. Nobody in the entire universe is good at everything. Nobody is capable of doing a little bit of everything. Your character may be a talented athlete or a child prodigy but somewhere doing her life she'll have to develop these skills.
Not only are characters who can do everything unrealistic readers will despise them. (You don't want your readers to hate your characters do you? Well, it's unavoidable someone somewhere will hate your characters guts. just don't let it be for this reason!)
So here are a few tips on skills.
How old is your character? Think about the things that someone her age would do and be good at.
Do not center useful skills onto one character. (see above)
Remember, most of us are not the Michael Jordan of our trade. Somebody has to be average or even bad at stuff. Nobody would care about MJ if everybody
could play as well as him.
Don't make useless characters. I mean, you can
. But if there's somebody who can't do anything at all people will just think she's pathetic.
Part VIII
Weaknesses and flaws.
Nobody is perfect. Most real people are incapable of more things than they are capable of things. This is due to the fact that there are a ton of things to be good at that you can only be but so good at a few.
This is true for characters too. Although, simply saying that your character cannot climb a mountain doesn't qualify as a weakness. Why? Because it doesn't matter. If your character has need to climb a mountain but isn't able to, then your character's weakness is meaningful.
For everything that your character can do and is good at, make sure there is something that she can't do and is bad at.
The tips for weaknesses are pretty much the same as for skills.
How old is your character? Think about the things that someone her age wouldn't be able to do and would be bad at.
Do not center weaknesses onto one character. (Especially minor characters) it's not realistic for one person to be the deadweight all the time.
Don't make useless characters. I mean, you can. But if there's somebody who can't do anything at all people will just think she's pathetic.
Now, onto character flaws.
Character flaws include weaknesses but the way I mean it is personality wise. A person who has high moral standards isn't always going to do the right thing. She isn't always going to think pure thoughts. But simply thinking impure thoughts isn't bad enough, she has to act on them.
Flaws make characters human.
There are three types of flaws. Minor, major and tragic.
Minor flaws are generally just to make the character more interesting. They are something like biting one's nails or scars. These do not really affect any of the characters.
Major flaws are not necessarily bad like the name suggest. A major flaw hinders the character in her goals. A few examples of a major flaw are blindness, amnesia and greed.
Tragic flaws is a flaw which causes an otherwise noble or exceptional character to bring about her own downfall and, often, her eventual death.
Examples of this are hubris, misplaced trust, excessive curiosity, pride and lack of self-control.
Here are a few tips on flaws.
Give every minor character at least a minor flaw.
Give every major character at least one major flaw. Give them a few minor flaws too.
Don't over-flaw villains and don't under-flaw heroes.
Do not give your character fake flaws. Something like, 'she was so beautiful it's a curse.' This is bogus and will accomplish the exact opposite of what flaws are intended to do.
Part IX
Focal characters. They can be any characters, villains, heroes, view-point characters, etc., etc.
What is a focal character exactly? A focal character is the character the audience is expected to focus the majority of their attention on. They are the center of attention and the most interesting character.
Focal characters are my favorite characters to create, and also the characters I tend to develop the most.
For me, the process of creating a focal character starts by me becoming interested in the character. I start thinking about her more than the other characters and developing her more than the other characters and then pretty soon I want her to be memorable.
I think of a more interesting and unique personality to give my focal characters and they have a tendency to steal the show and demand more air time and because I like them so much I give it to them.
Anyway, here are a few tips on focal characters.
First and foremost, unless the story is actually about her, do not give her more air time than the protagonist.
Focal characters are the characters most likely to be remembered forever. So build her legacy on something unique.
Do not give your focal character fancy names and fancy appearances. You can (especially if it's realistic within the story) but it feeds into the idea that focal characters are special.
But they're not special. They're characters like everyone else, they just tend to be more interesting.
Avoid killing/removing the focal character early on in the series/book. This will be a huge mistake.
Think of the memorable characters from fiction and characters you like and base them loosely off of these people. Look at the traits you like and the traits that make them memorable.
Remember not to just go for flashy. Give them real emotions and real wants, need, etc., etc.
Avoid favoritism. I don't know if this is true for everyone else, but my focal characters are my favorite characters and they tend to be a little spoiled.
Part X
Out of character moments.
OOC moments happen when a character defies their morals, abilities or personality for no good reason at all. A very common reason for OOC moments to occur are when the author wishes a character to do something for the purpose of the plot or another character.
OOC moments are very unacceptable and your readers will be royally pissed off at them. OOC moments could potentially lose you readers (Yes, they're that bad.) so avoid them at all cost.
Here are some tips on avoiding this oft-fatal mistake.
Ask yourself, would your character (or anybody for that matter) really do this? If the answer is no delete the section without any backups.
Does your character benefit from this action?
Let the characters run the show. You can have a plot (you should actually), but let the characters choose what they want to do and determine what happens in the story.
If you are stuck in a problem and can't solve it do the following:
- do not force a solution. What I mean by that is don't just make something work that wouldn't really.
- think of it from the characters POV, this may not solve your problem but it will probably help you avoid an OOC moment.
- don't play God. This is unrelated to OOC moments (it could be actually...). It's called a Deus ex machina
and it is basically cheating.
- keep the problem and let it be unsolvable and be one of the things the heroes fail at (unless it's not the heroes).
- remove the problem. (unless it not being there is unrealistic. i.e. the villains would've really sprung this trap. Which would qualify as an OOC moment.)
Part XI
Characterization.
This is the part, at least for me, of showing the character's behavior, description, etc. within the story. This section needs no farther introduction so I'm going to jump right to tips.
Speech patterns and word choices. You can tell a lot about a person by the way she speaks. If she is pretentious, smart or a grammar-Nazi she might use big words and proper grammar.
Description. You can do double duty with descriptions. You can use their choice of clothing to hint at their personality, (or to give off the wrong impression of a character).
Make sure to define your characters early and try not to make them too mysterious. Mystery can be fun, but if you don't know who someone truly is until the end of the novel it can be a frustrating.
Show don't tell. Telling can be easy and it's probably okay with minor characters. But it's better to show a character's personality through her actions and words because that's how you really gather information about people.
Use backstory sparingly. It's generally not a good idea to pile backstory onto your readers in the beginning or at one time. Give them a little bit and only when they need it and exactly how much they need.
When characters have an epiphany don't say it. Show her coming to this realization or if she's a/the view point character use interior monologue. A few signs that you may be telling an epiphany are:
- suddenly,...
- it dawned on her...
- then it hit her...
- she had an epiphany...
Stuff like that.
People often hide things about themselves. What is your character hiding about herself? Why is she hiding these things? How does she hide these things? Remember though, that sooner or later your characters need to show their true colors.
An extension of sorts on the previous one. (Sort of.) People often act different around different people. She might act like an angel around her parents, she might bully her little sister, and she might try to act cool around her friends.
Part XII
Intelligence.
Some characters are know-it-alls and they truly do know everything. But nobody and I do mean nobody, will ever be able to know everything. It's impossible. But even if your character has an enhanced mind and an IQ of 1042 she is not going to be intelligent in all sense of the word.
There are many types of knowledge. Medical knowledge, survival knowledge, law enforcement, etc., etc., etc.
While a character may be logical she may not quite understand people's emotions. She may be able to calculate the square root of 1,269,639,849,201,492 in 14 seconds flat (it's 35,632,006 by the way) but she may not know how a plane works.
Intelligence does not mean wise. Wise does not mean intelligent. They are two separate things and should be treated as such.
Here's a list of a few types of intelligence.
Emotional intelligence.
Specific knowledge. (Math, law, medical, etc., etc., etc.)
Logic.
Comprehension.
Wisdom.
Reasoning.
Abstract thinking.
Problem solving.
The list goes on and on.
Here's a few tips on intelligence.
Where did you get this knowledge from? A common mistake in making intelligent characters is making them child prodigies who inexplicably have a working knowledge of the universe.
And why do you have it? Backstories are commonly used to explain things. But don't just make something up so character's can do things. Make it realistic.
Don't always make smart characters right. Simply because they aren't.
Don't make them wrong just to knock them down a peg. If the character would really know something but she screws up just because she has been intolerable lately and people want to see her fail.
A photographic memory is not an excuse for being smart. Just because you remember everything doesn't mean you understand it.
Reading, glasses and asthma are smart people stereotypes. Try to stray away from these because it's been done to death already.
Remember, characters have different types of intelligent. They can be geniuses in one and bimbos in another.
Last but not least. Don't make stupid people oblivious of everything. Far too often are they portrayed as having zero intelligence and they purposefully do stupid things. (something like sawing a branch while sitting on it. >,<)
Impressum
Texte: Me
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 17.05.2012
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