Twenty Something Writers

This post was written by Pam from Reflections from a Neurotic Writer.   If you’re interested in contributing a writing tip, email twentysomethingwriters[at]gmail[dot]com.

Creating a character for any sort of story is a very important and long process. Whether your character is drawn from real life or a figment of your imagination, you need to know that person inside and out, know them as well as you know yourself. This can be hard for some people, because they don’t know where to start. Well, I’m going to help you out.

The first thing that I do is write the name of the character on an index card (preferably the large one), or create an excel spreadsheet. From there get the basics out of the way, height, weight, hair color, eye color, and age. Next, get into the nitty gritty stuff, for instance, when where they born, favorite movie, favorite color (do they wear this color a lot), did they move around a lot, favorite subject in school, their best friend, and etc. The list can go on and on. Really analyze the character, find out what makes it tick, and bring it to life. Make it feel like you can have someone ask you any question about them and you answer right away.

Now get into their family life. How many siblings do they have, do they get along, etc. If the character has a happy home, their mood should be happy right? Well, you can play with that and have something in their long past that happened in the family that is now covered up and they appear happy.

Here is an example of something that I do every time I create a new character. Sometimes I add more or delete others, it really depends on the depth of what the character needs to be.

The most important thing is to make the characters your own, let them breath, eat, sleep, and love. Let their emotions or actions get portrayed throughout your writing.