What is required for a character to be believable? How do you create yours?
Perfect imperfection. My writings on relativity and the Holy Trinity show that as the Hindus and Buddhists say all is illusion. Moses said life is as a dream being told. Man's struggle with mortality and his own desires, illusions and demons and overcoming them, flawed and perfectly imperfect though he or she may be makes the story believable.
Discovery of a greater good within or without that is stronger than the illusion, mortality and flaws where good overcomes evil makes for good reading.
For a character to be believable, he or she needs to be dimensional, to have many sides. With my writing clients (I'm a fiction/memoir writing coach), and for myself, I use a characterization sheet. This three page document is used by novelists all over the world and asks a series of questions, like:
What was your characters parents like?
What religion is your character?
Who was influential in their early life?
To build a strong dimensional character, you must know them inside and out, so that when they react in a scene, they are reacting from an authentic place. I believe character drives the story.
One exercise I use in classes is this. We create two totally different characters using the characterization sheets and then create a setting and throw the two into that setting and see what happens. I used such an exercise to write a short story that was recently published in an anthology called Traps, edited by Scott Goudsward. I created an alcoholic Jewish woman in her 40s who wears black and then a young Christian blonde woman in her 20s who wears floral. I developed the backgrounds for these characters as well, to discover what motivates them. The Jewish woman was recently divorced. The Chrisian woman was trying to get away from an oppressive mother. I created a setting to put them into, an AA meeting in the basement of a Baptist church. I let the characters loose in that basement and watched the sparks fly.   | | |
for a character to be believable they have to have familiar traits I can relate to, and some odd traits to make them memorable. They must be predictable, but also able to surprise me now and again. Their behavior must be consistent and match their background.
My characters grow organically out of their national and geographic background. As I add details to their history (age, appearance, family structure, profession, education) the personality comes into view. I cast the parts in my little dramas very carefully.
A depth of personality or what you might call being lifelike with the same emotions and thinking processes that motivate people we know or meet in everyday life.
When I'm creating a character, I try to become that person--to step into their shoes and see how I'd act if I were them. This means being able to understand how a killer or victim or detective or ordinary person feels about some thing or person. In Death on Delivery, I met a character named Freda who was emotionally repressed. She fixated on a neighbor man and reached the point she thought he could actually love her. Her life was an empty round of verbal abuse from an aunt and a cousin she grew to hate because they treated her like a slave.
So to develop a character, I must understand their history and present circumstances and how they react to those around them. It's an outgrowth one might say of being a child playing dress-up or let's pretend.
I believe characters to be believable need to be like real people. I create my characters by thinking about how certain people behave. I study people a lot even when they don't know I am studying them. Just things, like how they walk, talk or present themselves to others. I pay particular attention to attributes that make them different from other people. This helps me when creating my characters. Sometimes I will sit down and just write about my character, maybe a page or two. This seems to help to bring them to life. But when it comes down to actually writing the manuscript, I write what they would do in that given situation.
They must have thoughts and feelings of their own. I don't like them to just be follow alongs or disposable characters, although I did kill off many.
A character must be true to him or her self, must behave logically when confronted with obstacles or conflict. A villain doesn't know he's a bad guy, or thinks he is doing evil, so some element of his personality or personal history drives him to do things that hurt other people. That's why it's important to have a detailed back story for each major character, and some of the minor ones, too. My characters are almost always composites of people I know, but I depend much more on their personal stories to determine how they behave.
The interplay of emotions, thoughts, and action. My characters are not always believable to many people, unless of course, they believe in talking dogs, gay squirrels, telepathic elk, or Wall Street mimes.
The creation of the characters in my stories is a secret process known only to me and a handful of Druid bagpipers.
Real emotion and real responses. They aren't robots after all.
Imagination and research
They should be as close to reality as possible. Sure they might have some sort of powers but they should also have emotions and feelings.
Most of my characters are similar to people I know. Not to the point that if anyone reads about the character they know who it is but just enough to make the character human.
I think one thing that helps make a character believable is for the character to have some history, some background, rather than just simply popping up as a flat cardboard cutout. The character should also display a range of emotions (including a sense of humor) so the reader can see that the character has some internal depth.
The two main characters in my novel, The Ezekiel Code, were pretty much developed in my mind before I began writing. I tend to "cast" my characters as if I were producing a movie. As the story takes shape, the characteristics of the characters will probably change a bit from my original idea. For example, I first modeled my main character, Zeke Banyon, after the actor, Robert DeNiro. Then I began to see him more like Alec Baldwin. Eventually Zeke came into his own as his personality grew and I got to know him better. But those were the actors that I initially "cast" for the role of Zeke Banyon. By doing this I at least had a kind of physical identity for Zeke if nothing else.
It was interesting for me as the writer to see how my own characters began to take on a personality of their own as the story progressed. Many writers will agree that when they finish writing the book they realize they have grown emotionally attached to the characters and actually miss them when it's over. In many cases, as other writers have told me, this is why they decided to continue their original story as a series or at least as a sequel so they could maintain that relationship with their beloved characters. | | |
You have to give your character a voice, meaning you have to make them unique in their own right. Make them interesting, but also make them human. Showcase their strengths, as well as their weeknesses, but in the end, make them the hero to the reader. I create my characters starting with their astrology sign. You can gain much understanding about a person following their astrological sign. Also, I study real people who have the same birthday month as my character, so I can really flesh them out and make them as real as possible.
Lots of description and little character traits that give some depth to the individual.
I try to determine the character's motivation. From that stems everything about them and why they do the things they do. I try to pattern my character after realistic human emotions, experience, and soul. The only "character chart" I've done is to keep physical descriptions consistent (especially for series writing). |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | 89 | 90 | 91 | 92 | 93 | 94 | 95 | 96 | 97 | 98 | 99 | 100 | 101 | 102 | 103 | 104 | 105 | 106 | 107 | 108 | 109 | 110 | 111 | 112 | 113 | 114 | 115 | 116 | 117 | 118 | 119 | 120 | 121 | 122 | 123 | 124 | 125 | 126 | 127 | 128 | 129 | 130 | 131 | 132 | 133 | 134 | 135 | 136 | 137 | 138 | 139 |
<< PREVIOUS NEXT >>
| |
|
99688 interviews created
INVITE YOUR FRIENDS