I remember several times when I got very annoyed because I wanted to know how to create a character and all the internet was giving me was a ton of exercises about how to develop characters that already exist, which is totally useless to someone without a good foundation. So this is a list of some cool ways I found to create characters.

Inspiration From Real People
This is a pretty well-known way of getting inspiration for characters: taking personality traits, physical appearances, and other such information from your friends, family, and other people you meet in your real life, but, I don’t think many people think to go further; you know, you don’t just have to do people you know. It can be celebrities, characters from other stories, and even historical figures! In my current work, The Legend of the City (working title), my main character, Chandler’s, obsession with men’s fashion came from learning how Mozart enjoyed fancy, expensive clothes. And I even named one of Chandler’s relatives Wolfgang, after Mozart.

Name Meanings, Numerology, Astrological Signs, etc
If your characters already have names and/or birthdays, you can use these things to get a pretty solid foundation for a personality. I recommend doing this for side characters and extras because it’s a quick and easy way to get a personality into them so they aren’t extremely cardboardy, even in the earlier drafts. I use this one myself a lot, my book has a pretty full cast so it’s pretty helpful.

Non-People Personalities
Humans aren’t the only things with personalities that you can draw inspiration from. Animals, nature, technology, inanimate objects, and pretty much everything else has personality. I’m sure you’ve seen humanized artwork on the internet. I’ve seen artwork of human versions of things like the Firefox and Chrome logos, why couldn’t you do that with writing? Wouldn’t it be cool to say that your characters were all based on different friends’ houses or potted plants?

Trait Lists
If you have a character in your head but you’re having a hard time getting them out onto paper, going through personality trait lists online are a good way to find the right words to describe them. You can also use them to get ideas for things to add to their personality, but be sure you’re not leaving out all the bad or weird ones. You don’t want a Mary Sue or Stu.

Go Ahead and Write
If you already have a foundation and your looking to build on your character, the best way to do that – in my opinion – is to go ahead and start writing your story. The way you get to know people in real life is to spend time with them, and writing your character’s story is you spending time with them. Even if you don’t want to get going with your main project yet you can write some short stories about their life before the events of the book. That would help you get to know them and get you some backstory.

These are some of my favorite ways of creating characters. If you have some good ways of your own be sure to tell me about it in the comments (I need all the help I can get.)

Bye, RRRRAWWWWWRRRRR.

This is not a new thing, but it’s something I’ve found while looking for stuff to talk about at my writing club.

(There’s a link to the video I saw down there ↓↓↓)

The girl in the video (her name is Shaelin) is talking about exercises to develop characters that go beyond filling out a character sheet! (Though I do still think knowing facts about characters is important.)

One of the things she said was to “basically write fan fiction for your story” meaning to take your characters and put them in different situations that can be handled in a bunch of ways.

This makes complete sense if you think about it. In real life you don’t get to know people by memorizing a list of facts about them, you hang out with them, spend time with them.

Here’s an example that I did for my main character:

Stuck in Conversation:                                                                                                 This is likely to happen since he’s so social. He would not work too hard about not showing (through facial expressions) his boredom/discomfort with the conversation and would escape at the first chance he gets (even if it’s a little rude) and go talk to somebody else.

You can write an actual short story about it or do like I did and write a short description of what would happen.

Something I discovered in doing this, is that I got to know my character better in situations he’s not likely to end up in better than in the situations that he’s definitely going to get in.

I already knew that he was social, so I’ve already thought about how he would be in social situations (but I did learn that he can be a tad rude from this) but I feel like I found out more about him in this situation:

Sent to Camp:                                                                                                                    It’s not likely that he’d be at camp of his own free will, he’s not an outdoorsy person. He wouldn’t like it if his parents sent him, but he’d make friends with the people in his cabin (which might be harder to do if they’re super excited about camp) so he’d have someone to talk to. Yet he would find someone who also isn’t happy about camp and end up being good friends with them.

Here I learned he wasn’t outdoorsy and that he has a little go-with-the-flow in his attitude.

I think it’s important to put them in both kinds of situations because you can learn more about them with every situation you see them in. Here are some more examples of situations that I came up with to get you started:

• Bored at the Park
• Church
• Library
• At the Beach
• Fancy Restaurant
• Invited to Party They Know They’ll Get in Trouble for Going to.
• Riding on Bus
• Late for Meeting
• Confronted by Bully
• Seeing Friend Get Confronted by Bully
• Someone Tries to Break In
• Concert

Note: The situation doesn’t have to be realistic for the character. If the character lives in a fantasy world, has some handicap, is a certain age, or something else that would eliminate all possibilities of certain situations, you can still put them in those situations! The point is taking their personalities and asking: what if…?

That’s all I have to write about today. I hope you got something out of this post and that you don’t feel like you wasted your time reading it (and if that’s the case why are you still here?)

You can put some examples of doing this exercise for your own characters in the comments (as well as how many times you think I said “Situations” in this post.)

Bye! RRAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWRRRRRR!!!!!!!

Oh yah, here’s a link to that video: Hi! My name is Link! Click me! (please?)

Anyone can write fiction. Most people have likely written a short story in school. The question is, was it any good? The answer is, likely not.

One of the main differences between a cruddy telling of a story and a beautifully written best-selling book (at least to me and probably many other fellow authors) is re-writing.

Anyone can come up with a story and transfer it from their minds to paper (Which, in my opinion, is one of the funnest processes of writing) but a lot of the beauty in great books come from re-writing.

You may have heard the quote “Writing is re-writing” or something along the lines of that, and it’s true. Most successful authors will tell you the first drafts of their books were as cruddy as can be. Then they had a not-so-cruddy second draft, and a not-bad third draft, and a pretty good fourth draft.

The point is, if you want your story to be considered art or great literature than writing one draft and stopping is definitely not the way to go. And I don’t mean just going through it and fixing spelling mistakes and typos (though that’s good too) you have to re-word things and find the best way to say each sentence, you might need to cut some scenes out or add some in, apply character development and world building.

I feel that the importance of re-writing isn’t as pushed as much as it should be, especially to new authors who are working on their debut.

Sea of Trees, my debut novel, is something I am very proud of and happy with, but I do wish I had worked on it a bit more than I did, a little more character development, a little more world building, and a couple more drafts.

I know it seems like a lot of work, but you just need to take it one step at a time and you’ll be fine. Just be warned that you may regret it if you have a closed mind about re-writing or getting outside input when writing your first book, I can speak from experience and I can guarantee that I’ll be doing a lot more work and a few more drafts on my current project.

Comment below and give your opinion of re-writing, and if you agree or disagree with me.

That’s all I have to say today, Bye!

RRRRAAAWWRR!!!!!