I kind of answered htis before I think but in all honesty your character is believeable when YOU can invision actually going out and meeting your character. Your character may be a vampire or witch or something but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be "real." To make my characters i picture my first meeting with them, how would I ract to meeting a person to looks like this, talks like this, holds such and such. And how would they react to meeting me. How would they move in certain situations. Basically you use your everyday experiences to figure out what qualities your character would have and how those qualities and even morals would affect how they react.
My main characters are me, myself and I. Supporting characters include family, friends & clients. Credibility flows naturally from honesty. I hate judgment. That would be my number one pet peeve. This is very liberating. Disposing of fear of judgment gives you the freedom to be truthful, to be real. Being real is being human.
For a character to be believable, they must have failings, carry their history and their damage with them - and they must be in a situation where they are in danger of failing - badly!
I don't create my characters. They talk to me. They insist on certain things and if I try too hard to restrict or guide their direction, they either get the sulks and refuse to speak to me - or they make loud rude noises until I stop.
The character needs to 'be real' - not perfect but floored and growing. I look at real people around me and create mine with a combination, keeping them true to their character traits.
A character has to be someone we can identify with, even if it is in fantasy form.
A character needs to be described to us in a physical and mental(emotional) way, that we know what the character looks like in our mind. We know its attributes(both good and bad), physically and non physically. A character has to have a past, something that has bought it to where it is at the moment. A character can be enthraling in so many different ways, it just depends on what we are writing about at the time.
For me a character should be both believable in the context of his, her or its race, period, species and setting AND unusual and individual within that context.
Here are some examples of how I, (or we...) create such characters.
Jack Russell is a Jack Russell terrier. He lives iwith his bachelor owner, Sarge, who is a policeman, in a country town. He understands English but doesn't speak it, and he uses his general canine and specific Jack Russell characteristics to solve his own cases. Apart from his understanding of human language, Jack has the physical capabilities of a dog. He is at once a typical terrier and a one-off personality.
Trump, his daughter, who narrates the Pet Vet series, is younger, female, and kindlier. Jack's overriding characteristic is dtermination to solve his cases, while Trump's prime directive is to help her person, the vet Dr Jeanie, and the animal patients.
Aelfthryth and Harry, two of the protagonists of Replay, are Saxon teenagers from the period of the Norman conquest. They have the background, education and preoccupations of their period and setting. They have been betrothed since childhood. After a hasty marriage, they are tossed into time, and they surface at intervals through the next 1300 years, during which time they must fit in with their new personae and environment. Aeflthryth is the stronger character, because in their current (21st Century) incarnations, she is human and Harry is a schnauzer dog.
Allyso Tormblood (Candle Iron) is a very small fourteen-year-old who lives with her bachelor uncle in Castle Torm in the country of McAnerin. Because of her size, Allyso has been underestimated for years, but when the castle in beseiged she is the only one both small enough AND mature enough to escape through the well-way. Thus her weakness becomes her strength.
Tell Clancy (Trinity Street) is an ordinary fifteen-year-old. She measures herself against her fragile friend Camena, who is a genius. Because of this, Tell underestimates her own worth and talents, but when she and Camena are kidnapped into the future, it is Tell who has the strength to survive.
ShuMar (Shadowdancers) is a soft-hearted young Valourn (acrobatic dancer) who has been focussed since childhood on his calling. He believes the best of everyone, and when events prove this no longer possible, he falls into guilt and despair. His physical dexterity and strength cannot save him, but perhaps helping someone else find her feet can.
Many of the characters I (or we) create are talented, wonderful people who underestimate themselves, but others are bumptious, confident personalities who fall hard and must struggle to climb back up their personal mountains.   | | |
I think for a character to be believable they have to have good qualities but they must also have flaws. If they are able to do everything & accomplish everything by themselves, they become to fantastical and unbelievable. The Character has to fail sometimes which shows that they are human. I guess it also depends on the type of character you are creating, they need to follow the simple logic of who/what they are. Even robots have flaws, as they were built by Humans who are also flawed.
I Adjust myself especially my charecter to fit to the situation and to understand the ideas of others around me
I beleive the characters flaws are far more interesting and far more reveling than his good attributes.
Death brings form, question brings life, suffering bring me joy
My characters, no matter how odd or bizarre are I think, always believable because they are either real people who I know or have met, or an amalgam of several of these people or they are based on my own peculiarities or foibles ... the most believable characters are always the real ones.
For a main character to be believable that character must be flawed in some ways and probably incompetent in some ways, because that is the way real people either are or believe themselves to be. Proust aside, I think the best main characters are not self-absorbed but are focused on the people around them and interacting with those people. As for secondary characters I'm fond of characters that have eccentricities and peculiarities, which may or may not make them believable but do make them enormously entertaining. I particularly love some of the outlandish characters created by Charles Dickens and Geoffrey Farnol. Believable of not, these characters are the ones who continue to live in my mind after the cover is closed on the book.
I base my characters on someone real, or a hybrid of real people. It is much more believable if you can describe your characters with that intimate knowledge. Having said that I have invented creatures in my books but I suspect they have some connection to reality somewhere in my life in the most part. Though I have had dreams that have lead to an idea for a book that had no apparent relevance to my real life. There has also been many occasions when I could not tell you where the idea, character or story line came from. I have heard this said before; 'It's almost like you have a direct conduit to some esoteric, cosmic library of creativity that from time to time you can tap into.' I don't say this with the arrogance of the chosen artistic few, I believe this conduit, if you like, is open to anyone willing to be open to it.
Given the circumstances and the context, any character can be believable: from talking snails to grandmothers who morph into flying broomsticks. I have written stories with characters that include an alien lizard who is converted from the ritual of eating its own parents to the Roman Catholic Church; a suicidal fallen-out-of-love student who slowly transforms into a bull and then led to the slaughterhouse; a character named Giulio who appears in a dozen or more stories and not once does he have the same characteristics or traits; and a character who is godlike in his ability to manipulate other characters.
Flaws. All people are flawed. That's what makes them interesting. Even superheroes have weaknesses and defects that make it possible for others to identify with them. In developing a character, it is critical for him or her to be real enough to engage the reader and make them care, either favorably or otherwise. |
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