Creating memorable and believable characters for your short stories or novel can be the hardest part of the writing process sometimes. It doesn’t matter how amazing your plot is or how beautifully developed your setting is, without the right characters, your readers won’t feel connected to your writing and won’t want to keep reading. So here are three ways you can create amazing, well developed characters that your readers will fall in love with:
Conduct A Character Interview
If you have a character in mind for your book, but you’re having a hard time learning more about them, consider interviewing your character! Through an interview, you’ll be able to learn in depth questions about your character that may help round them out. While not every detail you learn about your character may make it into your story, knowing more about their life, history and personality will certainly enhance your writing. My all time favorite character interview is from Writing Magic by Gail Carson Levine and there’s also a great list of questions online through the Gotham Writer’s Workshop here.
Base Your Characters On People You Know In Real Life
If you’re like me, you have some fun and eccentric people in your life. Some of them you may love, some may drive you crazy, but you definitely remember them. You don’t have to copy your main character or antagonist trait by trait from their real life counterpart, but take a couple of their quirks or mannerisms to round out your cast. Keep in mind though, that your friends and acquaintances may not love your likeness of them, so make sure you ask their permission first or change enough about your character that they aren’t obvious.
Use WritersHelpingWriters.net ‘s Character Builder
Of course, if you need to start from your character from scratch and you don’t have someone you feel comfortable basing them off of, Writers Helping Writers’s Character Builder will help you generate a well rounded and unique main character, supporting character or villain. The most incredible aspect of this tool? Once you’re finished planning, the Character Builder will create a blueprint of the character’s arc based on the information you gathered. You can check out their Character Building Tool and other resources at WritersHelpingWriters.net .