Creating Characters for Creative Writing

Nothing is more fun than coming up with a story and writing it out.  Taking the idea and seeing it form on a page or on the screen before you and saying you did it.  It feels god to do something like that, but it isn’t that easy.  There are some challenges in writing that story.  Such challenges like, what will the story be about, where will it take place, and who will be in it?

That last one is absolutely evil.

I have seen that last question end many promising writers, becuase they just can’t make a character for their story.  Simple “tom” or “Sue” just don’t cut it.  Unless your character is actually named that.  A good character that is nicely developed, makes the story.

Let us look at a well known fantasy writer, Terry Brooks.  This person is well known for writing the Shannara series.  That book series is amazing, but giving who the writer is, that’s to be expected.  Every person is nicely developed.  Major villians and fllunkies that have great impact are also nicely developed.  Let us look at a character from the second book called “Elfstones of Shannara” that is known as Wil Ohsmford.  A calm quiet man who likes to heal and help people, at the start of the story.  You literally see this character grow and develope as you read through his adventure to help  an elven lady fulfill her quest.  By the end, you can’t help but almost cry for the poor guy.

There are some easy steps to flushing out a character.  Obvious one, male or female?  Then you have to start toying with their looks.  What kind of hair color, eye color, and body type.  As you go through these beginning steps, the character will start to form itself.  An example is a character i created.  His name is Kinjite.  He is an anthropormorhic cat in a different dimension.  He is dark natured, but not evil.  He spent centuries stuck in a world of demons and developed powers while in said world.  he was banished, becuase it was thought he was a sign of evil to come.  I made this character in a fan series i wrote for and people loved him, becuase he was the unsung hero that people alos hated, becuase he was so different.

Some people look at character creating as one of the hardest steps in cretive writing.  Everyone has their own ways to do it and I’m gonna share a few and share my tricks that help me.  Some of the more common ones are to draw the character on a scratch pad.  Another method is to bounce a few ideas off of friends or family members.  One of the harder ways is to start writing the story and then develope just a basic character, and flush him/her out as your write the story.  Only adding on a tiny bit as you go.  This last idea can be dangerous, becuase you might accidently screw the character up in the process of writing and lose the character idea.

My methods are simple.  I come up with a basic idea.  That is gender, race, and name.  I sit in front of my computer and listen to different music and try to picture the character in my head, using different music to try and stimulate ideas of how this character might be or react in certian situations.    I have atually created more characters this way versus any other.  Ty it, it might work for you, but I warn you now.  Yo will listen to several different kinds of music in doing so, so be open minded to most kinds of music.

Honestly though, there is no really easy answer for making story characters.  I hope some of this has given you ideas and places to look.  Don’t try to imitate exactly how a person writes, but maybe use them as guidelines and maybe get some pointers or ideas from them, but stive to find your own way.

It makes it more fun and the final product more satisfying in the end.