Characters are the life blood of fiction. A good character description can make a piece of writing come alive. The characters I create have to have some basis in reality. I focus on the way they talk, walk, dress or something they like or hate. I create them from people I encounter I the real world. Writers always draw from what they know. The Writing Loft thought it might be worth a look at the process of how writers get this is done, the building of a believable character.
The easiest way to start building a character is by describing his appearance. By using people we know or have met, we can start to construct out character’s look. Do you want a nerdy, skinny bookworm or do you need a rough and tumble football player?
Remember, a character doesn’t have to match your real life model in every way. Sometimes a single aspect of a real person is the first building block you’ll need. Copying the look of a real person is easy. But it’s more fun to tweak that model and ultimately build someone from scratch.
Imagine your main character as a clean slate. First, is the character man or woman? Let’s start with a man. He is a clean slate. What will he look like? Will he be tall or short? Will he be clean-shaven or have a beard? Long hair or short hair? What about a limp? Tattoos? Scars?
Now our character needs to be dressed. Our indistinguishable male from anywhere in the world needs clothes that match the character’s image. Will he wear a business suit or overalls? Will he be shod in sneakers, sandals or wingtips?
Take a look at Sherlock Holmes and his trademark deerstalker cap and curved pipe. By comparison, his sidekick Dr. John Watson is practically nondescript. Remember Superman and his red cape (which never seemed to get in the way while fighting the bad guys). It seems clothes often DO make the man!
Physical description is good, but sometimes we don’t get much in this department from writers. And often there is a reason for that. By downplaying physical attributes the reader’s mind will fill in the blanks if it’s a story worth following. And with everyone filling in the blanks, the characters become more real and more personal to each individual reader. We are not burdened with thinking about the scar the author placed on the top male character for no apparent reason. You have the freedom to see the men and women as you want to see them.
However, the illusion of a character’s appearance is often destroyed when a book is made into a movie or television show.
From here we our steps in building a character can branch out in accents, likes and dislikes in food, climate, and books.
I’ve always found the places where characters live to be intriguing. Consider the American dust bowl described by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath. Compare that to mystery writer Stuart Woods’ character Stone Barrington who hangs out in the upper New York East Side restaurants. And then there is Batman and his secret cave!
Can you create a believable character from an unshaven man in overalls who chews tobacco and carries a knife with a rusty blade who offers analytical assessments about world affairs? It’s possible, but as a writer, you will have to take time to build that character properly.
After developing the look, we can delve into our character’s mind – what does he think? If your story’s primary character, a hard charging businessman, is modeled after your Wall Street cousin, maybe we could make the character a woman? Think of the changes you can make now in building this character. In this instance, it’s the mindset you want to duplicate.
Climbing into the mind of another person is tough enough. However, when you have to create the mind of another person, things get a little tricky. Do you want your character to be moralistic? That has to be demonstrated. You’ll need to build scenes where he is faced with difficult choices and struggles to follow the right path. Then there is the age-old question, “What is the right path?”
In adventure/mystery stories your character may be called upon to do something heinous, such as kill another human being. Can you justify that in your story? Will the community of your character be satisfied that his action was justified?
All of these questions are part of the character building process. And they can all start with deciding how he will look. Will he be tall or short, wearing sneakers or wingtips!
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