My characters are based on real people and I try very hard to make them multi-dimensional. I decided at the beginning that I would use ordinary people and thus my main characters are four high school English teachers that have worked together for over twenty-five years. During a faculty scholarship fundraiser at Central High, they had performed a parody of "Dawn," a Frankie Vali and the Four Seasons song. It was, "Central, You're Too Thin For Me." Rick Podowsky and The Hefty Trio had become an instant hit, and the group's name had stuck.
Believability is in the eyes of the beholder. If you're writing a James Bond type novel for teenage boys, or a Nancy Drew type novel for teenage girls, it doesn't take much. If you're writing for an intelligent, adult audience, then your character must reflect the kind of combinations of feelings, drives, and behaviors that intelligent, adult people have come to recognize and expect in the people they deal with everyday. If your character does not think and act like a real person, to the extent that your audience is capable of perceiving and understanding that thinking and acting, then your character will not be believable. I try to think of real people that I have known, and write them as I guess they would think and act. Sometimes, I combine a few real people into a single character. Sometimes, I make one real person into two or more characters. Then I go back and read each character's thoughts and actions and hone them to what I believe would be believable.
I haven't written much fiction, sorry.
Honesty. I fight against what I don't believe. If you can look at life with an observant eye, you can write honest.
Quality imagery, a well developed character, dialogue, direction, and most of all, a well-rounded, 3-dimensional character.
I create my characters by effectively articulating the character until you would be able to imagine him/her stepping off the page into real life. You NEED to feel your character, and have a human relationship with 'it' to be certain the reader will, too.
I was fortunate I did not have to create my characters, they were real people.
So far I've only written non fiction; but I'm working on a fictional story.
A character must always be believable to the reader. Even my supermen have some flaw which brings them down to eye level. I create my characters whole cloth from a combination of different characters I have grown up with or admire for their essential purity. Their personalities are often aspects of my own, so naturally my villains are an extension of my own anxieties or personal conflicts. My heroes are also confronted with problems which they must overcome, so I give them a bit more latitude in terms of bending the rules in order to survive. All are ruled by the fact that they must give the reader something to relate to on a personal level.
Characters must start out consistent in their thinking, emotions and behavior at least at the beginning so we can have a sense of how they deal with life. Circumstances might well change the character in one or all three of these areas. Seeing a character acting in keeping with his or her preferred style of thinking and feeling makes him or her more believable to me. I usually create characters from a combination of real people I have know in circumstances found in my stories and projection of how I might act given the circumstances. I sometimes think about what kind of person might be likely to encounter the story circumstances and incorporate characteristics from others I have known.
The character has to have some human trait that is in all of us. I base them on people I know. Woman In Black, my best work is based on someone I used to work with.
Readers need to find something in the character that they recognize, either in themselves or in people they know.
I take bits and pieces of people I have known and blend them to create entirely new characters. I also keep a list of names, either unusual or meaningful, that I can use for characters.
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I think a character can be crazy, eccentric off the rails but still needs to make sense. There has to be consistency.
I create characters pulling from people around me, who I see on the street or may encounter in a book or writing of some kind. Creating them, asking what would this character do next.
I may ask a question about myself who would I be if I had taken a different life path and then I will write about that.
My character must have a brain and real life experiences. Also, the character must be in the right environment to be believable
To make a character believable you need to make the character 3D. No matter whom you are writing about, the main character, or the secondary character. You need to give them a three dimension elements. Your villain is not all bad, and your good innocent character is not all good. A flawless character is not human, just a cut board characters on white pages. Use a character chart; dump everything there as if you are interviewing them. You might not use all what you have written there, but it will form him/her in your head and you will get to know your character better to write about.
Too make him or her an active and very entertaining character, by just using what I do best-Imagination... |
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