Hello.. I've formed the mc already (her friend) they escaped someplace dangerous together and are now living together but I can't seem to form her friend.. They're both crystal children but with different abilities.. Tyrell is very intuitive, and will be able to control the elements.. she hardheaded, strong, sarcastic but a bit naive being only 16. Her friend I want to be the opposite in some ways.. writing this I got the idea if her having the ability to see auras and maybe be a bit more quiet.. other than that I don't know.. I'd like to figure out her life, personality, attitude, story, basic.. I'm not asking for help on all that just a jump start.. I think I like her being more quiet because I imagine Tyrell as more chatty. Jasymne is 19.. she's a student, doesn't work unlike Tyrell. One quirk could be she clicks any pen in her vicinity.
I know it's not a universally loved approach, but honestly, if this was me, I'd just start writing. Let the personality arise organically out of the needs of the plot/the interactions with other characters. You can go back when you're done and smooth out/adapt and inconsistencies, but trying to imagine the details of a character when that character is just sort of floating in space, without any setting/interactions/actions? It seems way more difficult than it needs to be.
Alright. Thank you.. I'll try that. I'm finding it hard to write right now so I'm working out my characters ßvackgrounds first.. I know what I want to write but sometimes I don't know how to form it so I'm seeing if developing my characters first will be better
I tend to be exactly the opposite as @BayView: brute force, trial-and-error. I pick something at random, I see how some of my earlier ideas change now that they have to interact with this new idea, and I play with it for a while before deciding whether I like it or not (and if not, I take apart what exactly I don't like about the idea so that I have a head start in coming up with the next one.) One of my protagonists (a post-traumatic serial killer) was a gear-head for weeks before I realized that she only had a passing, casual interest in muscle cars (rather than mechanical engineering being one of the purest joys of her life), but realizing that she's a military history nerd with very strong opinions about Sid Meier's Civilization series was almost as amazing a discovery as realizing that she was a serial killer in the first place (that wasn't part of my original plan either )
Yes I've had ideas that I've not liked and that have changed as well.. I'd like for Jasymne to compliment Tyrell because I think I want her to be her secondary antagonist since they shared a horrible experience together.. and she will have powers just like Tyrell that's why they were experimented on but Tyrell I'm making the mc.. I'd just like them to compliment each other
That's okay. You need to know you main plot points and work your way through them. They will come to you as you think about the next step. What is the incinting incident, the everything is lost moment, the climax, the ending? You can write an outline, it helps a lot. Don't forget that the first draft is for your eyes only. You can write and discover the story as you go and then go back to fix plotholes, make it complex and interesting later.
Do you ever look at long lists of character traits? This one has 236 positive, 112 neutral, and 292 negative traits to choose from Though my personal favorite is far more straightforward: Spoiler: I talk about this a LOT here MyersBriggs Personality: More asocial than social: I for Introvert More social than asocial: E for Extravert More theoretical than practical: N for iNtuitor More practical than theoretical: S for Sensor More insensitive than sensitive: T for Thinker More sensitive than insensitive: F for Feeler More disorganized than organized: P for Perceiver More organized than disorganized: J for Judger These multiply out to 16 different combinations: I myself am INTP, for asocial, theoretical, insensitive, and disorganized. Dungeons and Dragons Alignment: Extremely authoritarian: Lawful Neither extremely authoritarian nor antiauthoritarian: Neutral Extremely antiauthoritarian: Chaotic Likewise, though more intuitively: Good, Neutral, Evil These make 9 possibilities, with Neutral Neutral / Double Neutral / True Neutral in the middle. I myself am Chaotic Neutral: don't like being told what to do, neither a saint nor a sociopath. A lot of people say that MyersBriggs doesn't work because you can't sum up a person's entire nature in just 4 letters, and you would need 7.4 billion types to accurately reflect how everybody in the world is different than everybody else, and that Alignment is even worse because you're forcing billions of people into just 9 boxes instead of 16. First of all, that's not the point MyersBriggs measures some information about a person, it does not measure other information, and if you like the information that MyersBriggs uses, then you use MyersBriggs, and if you don't like the information, then you don't. A stethoscope is not useless because it measures a person's heart rate but not their brainwaves, rather a stethoscope is useful when you want to know somebody's heart rate Same for Alignment, and the best part is that when you use them together, you have 144 boxes instead of just 9 or 16, and these are 144 boxes that you can instantly tell apart (unlike Zodiac signs, which make no sense whatsoever). I'm a Chaotic Neutral INTP. If somebody else was a Chaotic Neutral ENFJ, then I would know instantly that we were both antiauthoritarian, neither saints nor sociopaths, and that we both loved abstract ideas, but that I was asocial, insensitive, and disorganized, whereas the other person was social, sensitive, and organized. Now for the trial and error The main character of my Urban Fantasy work-in-progress (WIP) was originally supposed to be a Neutral Evil INTP: asocial, abstracting, insensitive, and disorganized like me, but sociopathic and more willing to be told what to do. I later realized that she was more interesting if I rewrote her as being a Neutral Evil ISTJ instead: still asocial, insensitive, ruthless, and ambivalent about authority, but now practical and organized instead of theoretical and disorganized. Do any of these sets of personality traits seem useful to you?
My trick to creating characters for stories is to borrow personalities from people I know. Perhaps there is a character of interest in a favorite movie or TV show you can model after?
Thank you to all who've replied and given advice I'll try some the next time I'm creating characters and as I do look at my plot and scenes and see if that helps create something.. Have a nice day everyone!
Everyone has their own method. More often than not, other people are not going to imagine characters for another author that clicks with the author's ideas because other people are not immersed in the story they've not yet read. My characters grew as I wrote them, they weren't clearly formed from the beginning. They talked to each other in my head as I took walks in the woods and that helped me form more realistic dialogue. Write around the character that isn't developed yet, putting in place holders. Outlined sections or paragraphs worked for me. The more you write the story, the more it comes into focus.
I am new to critiquing other people's work.. but in character development.. i find they can take on a life of there own at times. You dont need to come up with a full back story, full history of the character before starting writing, i agree with GingerCoffee, they grow as you write and as the story develops. Where you may think a certain character may be going, can some times go another way, in the process of the story. Yes its good to have a name, what the character is like, relationships with others.. a little bit of where they are from... i find taking notes on a character as you write them, is good.. its amazing what the imagination comes up with as you write the story.
Since you're creating this character to be the MC's friend, one of your priorities should be figuring out why they are friends. What do they have in common? How do their differences complement each other, making them both better? What are their differences that are incompatible, and how do they work around them? What do they really like about each other? Then figure out what sort of dialogue you want to write between them. Do they banter? Are they playful? Do they give each other crap (if yes, just make sure it's not too much crap, and not anything seriously hurtful.)? Are they perpetually honest and vulnerable? From there, hopefully other traits will start to emerge.
