What is required for a character to be believable? How do you create yours?
Research and the ability to make your characters to come to life on the paper.
They create themselves in my mind. Sometimes I feel like a stenographer recording scenes and dialogue from the movie in my mind.
A voice must be believable. If you have a great character, the story could be about anything and the readers will trust you.
For a character to be believable they need to be realistic and someone the reader can connect with on some level. I recently received a review from an author on Amazon and he wrote about two things that he liked most about my book. He said, "The main character was a masterpiece. Unlike with so many books these days, she was neither overdone, nor stereotyped. We saw enough inner dialogue to really understand her, but not enough to weigh down the book." This is exactly what I was going for when I wrote it. I wanted everyone to get to know her but not all at once, so as the story progressed I offered little bits and pieces about her life here and there. I was pleased with the way it turned out.
Holes. No one is all bad or all good. People are conflicted. I look for their inner conflicts, and the holes in their personality.
Characters of any elemental place in a piece MUST be three-dimensional; I want to know their physical likes/dislikes/quirks as much as their mental and emotional likes/dislikes/quirks; I must either fall in love with them altogether, or hate them with every ounce of my soul. My creation of them relies heavily upon these definitions.
Believability is very important to me. I’m not writing fantasy so, I assume my readers expect me to load my stories with believable police characters, authentic details and realistic scenes.
Characters, dialogue, and action should never be over the top, but rather just short of that peak to be credible. I try to base all my police officers on people I knew. Sometimes they’re composites of two or three people. This helps me keep them all within the professional boundaries of what I know to be true.
Bad guys are fun and provide more latitude. I’ve arrested or just dealt with so many people whose behavior really did go over the top. So, I’m confident anything I drum up for my villains is acceptable.
Good dialogue goes a long way toward the believability of a character. It’s essential for each character to have a unique voice. I need to picture a character and come to terms on how they should speak before I can write them. A street cop can’t sound like a girl scout. Chief Sam Jenkins is sixty years old and spent most of his adult life in New York. It’s only logical that he speaks differently than PO Junior Huskey who’s twenty-nine and a native of east Tennessee.
I began writing with the idea fiction would provide me with more freedom than real life. Many times I’d look back at police work and say, “If only I said…” or “If I did . . . things would have turned out better.” An eraser allowed me to have my main character get everything right. Then an editor told me, “Hey, quit making your character perfect. Perfect characters are boring. They’re not real.”
I learned that heroes should be flawed. No one’s perfect. They should have traits that make a reader grit their teeth and wonder why such a cool, smart guy would make a foolish mistake. The answer is simple: They’re human and may be under stress or just looking the wrong way. Human is believable.
How many times haven’t we seen Philip Marlowe or Jim Rockford enter a building without backup to watch what the criminals are doing? They knew better. We didn’t want them to put themselves in danger. They inevitably get caught and knocked on the head. The author created tension and readers like tension. They squeeze their eyes shut and love to see their buddies screw up, only to break free and emerge triumphantly. The A Team did it every week for years. It’s easy to identify with someone who isn’t perfect.
So, I gave my protagonist a few flaws. Read his stories and you’ll be able to pick them out.   | | |
My characters are based on real people, or myself. I feel it's impossible for a writer to create a main character and not inject parts of their own personality. In other words, pieces of me are in all of my main characters. I can't go wrong with that because I know myself and how I would react or should react in any situation.
Characters are not required to be believable! They ought to occupy the space they do. That is all.
To be believeable a character must have....character. I let the story and the reaction to a situation dictate the character of my characters.
I think to be believable a character needs to have real feelings, something people can relate to even if it's science fiction. I usually create a character with my personality but adding something different it would be funny to the readers if they don't know me to find out how I really am through what I write. I have to admmit only a few people read my work but the most of them liked it so in this moment of my life it's ok that way.
My characters come from everywhere. I people watch. I might see someone that intrigues me and invent an entire life for them. Miss Emily Meeks in my first novel Secrets was based on a lady I saw in a restaurant one morning. Jake Robins in Out of the Flames was loosely based on my step-grandson.
Characters need flaws. They are not perfect. They have to be human. They need to be confused and impulsive like real people. They have to stay in character and not do things that the character would not do. You want your readers to feel they know the characters like they know their friends.
There are a lot of things required, but I think the most important aspect is a believable motive for the character's actions. A main character can't be heroic just because he's your main character. A villain can't be evil simply because he's the villain. They both must have believable reasons driving their storylines.
A good example would be the whole "Light side vs dark side" aspect of Star Wars. Now, while I am a fan of the series, I do have small problems with it. The Sith believed that anger, hatred, and treachery was the "right" philosophy to have. That doesn't make any sense to me. A great villain has to honestly believe that he is the GOOD guy.
The character has to be someone that the reader aspires to, but who is not so far off from the way that the reader sees themself that the character is not believable. Different readers attach to different characters and there is really no way to make all characters believable to all readers.
I think it's healthy to base a character on real people - or take something that has happened to somebody and base a character around that - because you never truly know anybody fully, including yourself.
If your character is based in reality and has realistic traits and reactions to the world, then you're on your way.
Dick King Smith wrote a book about an island full of cats, and they were as believable as some of the human characters I've read in some books!
Simply that it is, and would be believable to the average individual. If you are above average, or below average your perception of the character is what gives them personality.
If the rest of the book is believable and then the character is 'superhuman', the character gets flushed. I've just lost you. You probably don't believe a thing I've said after that. And I shouldn't even be writing, I should find another career.
I'm not going to try and sucker a book, or an article past a reader. The thing is either truth, or a accurate depiction of truth or I don't write it. I don't assume you will make the same steps of logic that I may. If it requires a leap then I tell the reader to consider . . .
I'm sharing a story with my readers. I'm not telling them a tall-tale. |
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