Hey all! Finn here.
One of the more daunting tasks when it comes to writing, for me, is character creation.
In all of the books I read, all of the characters seem like real people! I always feel that I am going to mess up.
As a huge Dungeons and Dragons fan, character creation is something that I’ve had to do, a lot.
After a while, sometimes ideas start to come out the same.
Here’s how I write my characters from scratch, while keeping my characters interesting and fun to write, or play, when I make them:
I first think about what kind of dialogue I want to write or role play. Witty dialogue? Intelligent? Boring? Anxiety ridden?
What will push me out of my comfort zone, but still keep me engaged?
That, a lot of the time, gets my brain geared up and ready to go, so much so that my brain becomes a chaotic mess.
I call it the idea cascade, when all of my thoughts start to build up on top of one another. A lot of my best characters have come out of that, and sometimes a ball of nothing has come out.
The idea is to get your brain thinking.
And don’t discredit what may seem like a ball of mush at the time. I have a character who started out as a thin pompous man, and was relatively annoying. The character is still annoying, but he’s now one of the main plot points in my novel.
Here's how I add characters into an already existing story:
Recently, I needed a character that would bother one of my main characters, and cause my other heroine to fall in love.
I was absolutely stumped on how to begin.
There were too many ideas to look at at once, so I started out by looking at the main character. What was she like? What did she hate? Once I did that, it was easy to figure out how to structure the other two’s relationship.
As a growing writer, I find that characters aren’t necessarily unique because of a tragic backstory.
It’s their friendships and enemies that make you fall in love with them; what makes them seem real.
So, when creating characters, look at the environment you already have. What kind of person complements the plot? What kind of character contradicts the plot? What can you do to make your existing characters squirm?
Maybe one of your character’s has a fear of spiders, and his love interest has a pet tarantula, which he doesn’t find out about until later.
The possibilities are endless.
For more tips and tricks, try these sites:
That’s it for now.
Finn out.
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