Just curious - because this is probably my biggest struggle as a writer. Do you start with an archetype in mind? Do you come up with a bunch of personality traits and string them all together into a personality? Do you think about the archetype that could create the most conflict in your story? Do you create archetypes that are likely to butt heads or be in conflict with each other? Do you start with a clearly defined character or do you "build-as-you-go"? And - I get you may be hesitant to answer this - do you take - eh-hem - inspiration? - from real life? Perhaps you "mix and match" certain qualities/characteristics of people you know? Or do you simply start with a vague idea of who your character is and see how they develop on the page all by themselves? I imagine the answers are going to be all over the place - so just keen to see individual processes.
definitely this. It is by far the easiest way for me to write. I get stuck if I try to define things too much. It’s better for me to put a vague character in a tough situation and see what they do, then ask myself why did they do that? What in their background led to that decision? If I start knowing everything about them I lose all sense of where to go. I tried that approach for years and my writing flourished when I let it go.
It depends really, I typically get ideas for a character before the plot itself and build my plot around my MC and their internal struggle. Usually, five traits is enough to build a decent and well-rounded personality, including one or two flaws, one or two outstanding traits, and one neutral trait. For example, one of my MCs traits are intelligence, pride, intensity, orderliness and perfectionism; they're all multi-faceted in the way he interacts with given situations and others within the universe. Pride would be his biggest flaw as it prevents him from accepting aid from other characters, and admitting his own weak-points leading to discourse. Orderliness would provide him the ability to be a good planner, and by default he's the leader of the team but it also causes tension with people who are more spur-of-the-moment and he comes across as controlling. His intensity gives him a strong drive, but combined with his pride and perfectionism he does not accept failure. Basically, if you build your characters with just enough personality, and consider both the positives and negatives of each trait then they will lend graciously to your story.
I never start with archetypes, the character is there to help tell the story or tell their story, so I first see what serves that story best. I place my character in the world, in locations that will best tell that story, and look into the background and life they would have living there - because most people are shaped by their upbringing and environment. That often brings up character traits on its own (ie, my Russian soldier will have already lived a very different life than my Indian growing up in abject poverty, having to endure different things.) Often looking into their background like this brings up story ideas as well. I then look at what I want their character arc to be that helps tell the story, and what character traits will fit in best with that (ie - my indian has pure blind ambitious determination to get out of poverty, that is both her greatest strength and weakness, and her learning it as one of her weaknesses and not just a strength became her story arc.) I then look into their life and hobbies beyond the story that can help humanize them and be relatable to the reader, depending on if I want the reader to like or loath a character. (My Indian is a geek, she cant get enough of fantasy adventures, dragons and magic, and the major importance is it is still relevant to the main story, because her fantasy adventures help her think about and sort her RL problems. It's not just tacked on artificially, it must always have relevance.) So by building from their actual life up - and not archetypes - I personally feel I end up with a much more well-rounded, realistic, and believable character that has hopes, dreams, hobbies, and a personality, as well as dark points, problems, and drawbacks/failings.
They say 'character is destiny', meaning, the characters do what they do according to their traits, and those actions eventually lead to the story's conclusion. From the reader's perspective, this should be true (for a well written story). From the author's point of view, it can be the other way around. You can first decide where your story will end up, and then decide what characters you need in order to make it happen. The appropriate setting, historical period etc, can also cascade from he details of the plot. I start with the story. Once I have that roughed out, I ask, what decisions do the characters need to make for these events to happen? Then I ask, what character taints would lead them to make those particular conclusions? The I ask, what backgrounds would they need in order to develop those traits?
I always start with a very simple, one-sentence description for a character. Much like a novel prompt. The point is to outline the characters "from" and "where". EG, where they start and what's their goal. "Young, inexperienced noblewoman with ambitions in politics." Never. "Trait lists" are a big pet peeve of mine - might be due to my enjoyment of roleplaying. It severely hinders roleplay when a player is unable to part from their character's "personality trait list" and because they have "hot-headed", "blunt" and "direct" written down they answer everything with "What did you say, pal? Do you want to fight or something?!" I feel it's the same for writing; to write in-depth characters you need to consider a character's background, goals, circumstances and environment - they will give you traits for each scene, instead of some trait list. There is not one magic archetype that can create drama. What creates drama is interaction with characters. The best way to ensure that is to create each character with a defined connection to the rest. EG, you start with "The inexperienced noblewoman". Then add "The veteran soldier fleeing political enemies" and add "seeks shelter underneath the inexperienced noblewoman, hiding his past" while you also add to the noblewoman "seeks a bodyguard and warden, someone with connections she could involve in her underworld dealings". I seldom stray from the original idea - if I do, I tend to re-wrap the characters in whole and start over. Smaller details I build as I go. All over the place, and I try to ensure not one single character is a copy of a pop-culture one, or a "XY from [marvel movie], but with Z". I do take inspiration from real life. I try and give each main character a meaningful conflict; these are usually conflicts from my own life that I experienced - the ones I trust myself to write. I also tend to take individual archetypes or builds from real life that seem ripe for drama, but never full-out write RL acquaintances. Last but not least, I also take great inspiration from historical figures. I believe that's the only section where I do almost 1:1 liftovers, but usually not of very famous people. Now for my thoughts: I don't really believe in the character-sheet-writing-trait-listing-big-excel-database-character-lists kinda writing, but try and make my characters organic. I believe the most important part of a character are their anchors to the world. "Floating" characters are just as bad as one-dimensional ones - by "floating" I mean characters that lack any anchor to the world or narrative. A veteran soldier crippled in war who's sworn to do his best to represent anti-war sentiment so that his lone daughter may grow up in peace sounds like a nice character, but is a 100% floating one - This character could be a WW2 veteran in the 50s US against 'Nam, a Lannister soldier from Robert's rebellion in the Seven Kingdoms, a defector from Caesar's Legion in the Fallout universe, etc. Anchors are points where your character is rooted to the world they live in - when you create connections between characters (including conflict), you can look at these anchors. "They fought in the same war!" or "They lived in the same town" are perfect idea-starters. In general, my priority for character creation is: Background & Anchrors > Current position and environment > Connection to other characters > Goals and motivations > Character voice, quirks > Character traits and personality Largely because personality will be largely clear & cut when you have everything else set.
I like your idea of anchors. But I haven't quite wrapped my head around the concept fully. Do you mind unpacking that a bit more?
I don't think there is one way I or most writers create characters. What you start with and how you proceed from there will vary. Sometimes I start more with demographic kind of traits. Sometimes more a personality or aspects of a personality. Or a role that needs filling in the plot. Sometimes I start with a line of dialogue or scene that I thought was good, and build the character from that point. As an example my character Austin Rivers started because of a scene, my introduction for that story, where I wanted a certain amount of people in the social group and I thought it would be good to have someone that wasn't as close to the others, someone newer to the friend group. Plus, there was the gimmick/joke of his nickname (he's nicknamed Austin-From-Texas and he's from Houston, I think that's funny). And initially I wasn't sure how important he would be. But as I developed his character and his relationship to the others he became more important, because there was enough worth doing there to warrant it. And so, the friend circle became a Five Man Band, but not because I started from that archetype. I think it's nice to be aware of tropes, but it is important not to make all your decisions around them, even subverting them. I think when it comes to tropes and archetypes, you generally know you are doing a good job if it feels like those tropes and archetypes don't fully capture your character, if they feel like a somewhat distinct take on them, even a little. There's a layer of specificity beyond what tropes and archetypes cover, where individual instances differ and they may blur the categorisation system, not fitting neatly into certain boxes. Anyway, point being, I think you start from wherever you start really. And you shouldn't have just one way of doing that. If you have a good idea go with that, whatever the starting point may be.
Sure thing. Imagine every anchor as a detail about a character where you go from a concept to an explicit detail. Eg, when the "War veteran" is changed to "Vietnam war veteran". The point there is to allow the character to connect through its anchors to other characters. "War veteran" might connect with other war veterans, but a "Vietnam War Veteran" can interact with characters that had strong political opinions of the era. And, to bring some recent politics to the fray, a 'Nam veteran might have much different opinions on the Afghan war than a WW2 veteran had over Vietnam. But, back to going from a concept to explicit detail. Let's take the other example I had: "Young, inexperienced noblewoman with ambitions in politics." Change one detail and the place is already defined: "Young, inexperienced German noblewoman with ambitions in politics." Add another detail and the time is well-defined too. "Young, inexperienced German noblewoman born amidst the springtime of nations with ambitions in politics." Time to look at the ambitions and add something that clings well with the era when she was born: "Young, inexperienced German noblewoman born amidst the springtime of nations with a lack of belief in the Austrian Empire's future and a desire to change it up" And now hone in on the space to give conflict: "Young, inexperienced German noblewoman born amidst the springtime of nations with a lack of belief in the Empire's future and a desire to change it up visits the Kingdom of Hungary by pure chance" And last, add another character to craft a vague plot: "Young, inexperienced German noblewoman born amidst the springtime of nations with a lack of belief in the Empire's future and a desire to change it up visits the Kingdom of Hungary and through pure chance meets the son of Deák, who in turn leads the Hungarian political resistance against the Habsburgs." Really something pulled from the top of my head (may have been influenced by a recent visit to Prague). I hope you get the idea - each of these little additions defined the character a little more as an "active participant of the world" instead of a "vague concept". You /don't/ need any trait list because just by reading the above you can imagine her: rebellious, curious. Arrogant, or perhaps humble and lovable? Nevertheless, the top-of-the-head concept (very) vaguely presents the Empress of Austria at the time, subject of numerous biographies and a beautiful movie. The mistake most writers make is that they realise a character is one-dimensional, but instead of anchoring them, they start adding layers and layers of unanchored, floating fluff. I see this a lot in RPGs. What if this young & inexperienced noblewoman was rich? What if her alignment was chaotic good - that might drive her to do good things, no? And sympathetic too - and she'll like dogs, yes. Also, she lost her mother and father in a hunting accident. I know, she'll have brown hair, blue eyes, pale European complexion and wear bright colours.
I let characters evolve naturally. Otherwise, they run the risk of sounding cliche. <--- that can ruin a book. As an example, In Michael Rowe's Enter Night, a gay guy, a native American dude, a white trash tramp, and a nerdy horror-buff kid struggle against a bigoted sheriff's deputy as they deal with vampires in their town. The second they introduce the gay guy you're thinking 'ok here comes the homophobia arc', the indian dude 'ok here comes the racism arc', and the kid 'here comes the salem's lot nerd arc'. Shocker, the bigoted homophobic sheriff's deputy is in the closet, but by then, as the reader, you're amazed at what a distraction all the forced characters were and how little that advanced the plot. To me, either your plot is interesting and its easy to write, or it isn't. All that ^^^ above is just resorting to gimmicks to compensate and fill the pages.
I don't think you create a character, you create the story and you "write" the character. Also, it's not like if you create a character they stop changing in the story, your goal as a writer should be for the complete opposite for that to happen! They should be changing and adapting throughout the course of the story. Otherwise you have failed to bring up meaningful conflict to interest the reader. Albeit there's no way to correctly write a story, but I think what I wrote above holds up nearly every time. But either way, what I found helpful was to look at the character as an alive entity, because all great characters are. So your focus should be in trying to make them alive on the page. So how do you do this? Well apart from bringing their physical descriptions to life, you have to make their internal logic and their external actions consistent and realistic within the story. So I like to call conflict in story a "stress test", this helps me think of how to make my characters more realistic. If they survive a "stress test" their personality starts to become more solidified and I know how they will behave going forward. Add in more conflict and eventually you will start to see a clear picture of your character and how they will behave. But always keep in mind that they are alive. Every "stress test" should create micro fractures on the characters, or imbue some impurity to their original concept. You can use it to create personality shifts if the "stress test" is large enough, but be careful and mostly use it for gradual change in where you want your character at the end. Laazares does an amazing job at explaining how you would gradually start to iron out little details to make the character more anchored to your world. It also occurred to me that you could use it to conceptualise where you want your character to be at the end. A villager boy wants to become a hero. A villager boy is forced to leave his home and becomes jaded by his previous heroes. A villager boy is sent into slavery by his previous heroes and forsakes his dream to join the red guard. A villager boy that was sold into slavery by his uncle who he regarded as a hero, joins a rival faction to take out the red guard and saves his sisters life. A pretty interesting exercise and I'm stealing it from laazares now.
Continuing thoughts from my previous post, the question becomes 'how do I develop characters?' I like to think of Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones (the imp). They spend a great deal of time establishing his traits as this alcoholic brothel patron. People underestimate him when in fact he's well-read and savvy. Being an imp has toughened him up a great deal. These traits come in handy over and over later on when he faces adversity, such as the trial by combat at cloud castle and dealing with mother of dragons character in her struggles. SO, In Enter night, using 'who the character is' to drive an arc forward = risking sounding cliche. In Game of Thrones, using 'what this guy is made of inside' to advance the plot is compelling. Just my two cents worth.
so when I started designing my characters for my book, I used a mix of an archetype as well as things I cooked up on the spot, which in turn is inspired by things such as people I know in real life. For example, the old and wise sorcerer who trains the primary protagonist, is roughly based on Gandalf, and Dumbledore, in appearance. Tall, lanky, long gray hair and beard, smokes a pipe, etc. His personality, however, is solidly based on my deceased grandfather. Stern, but fair. Happy, and calm for the most part, but a fucking devil if you cross him. Another example is a character I thought up this morning that was inspired by a memory that was in turn triggered by a song that I haven't heard in years. In my personal opinion, your characters belong to you, so you should develop them the way you see fit, whether that be in a mold, done and dusted, or to set up an outline for them and let them develop themselves throughout the story. That would be the recipe I use to create and develop characters for my writing.
I've rapidly scanned the beginnings of the responses and I don't see anybody saying what occurs to me. Somebody may have already said it somewhere in their answer though, so sorry if this is repetition. You don't create a character, you must create a group of them that function together to power the conflict that is the heart of the story. Each character should relate in some way directly (or possibly indirectly) to the conflict. As a helper to the protagonist, or an opposing opinion on the central idea of the story, or a secondary antagonist or something. As you work out your conflict and any themes it suggests, and as you flesh out the story, your characters should start to become more sharply defined and flesh out as well.
Hey, there is no one set formula. I plan out characters in all different ways depending on what I'm writing. Sometimes I have a very clear idea for that character, the goal, want and purpose for example among other things and I tend to free write them if I feel confident. Other characters need more time to develop.
Most of my characters just kinda...happen. There's no Rhyme or Reason behind any of them. It always starts with a cool idea like 'girl who can turn to gemstone' Then it just kinda takes off in a random direction from there. I HAVE based my ideas on other existing things in the past though. At one time I made essentially Iron Man work with Naruto Logic and tech (I never got to use him in the RP before it died sadly)
Ive been thinking about this a lot lately. I dont really know how i create a character. I start with a scene and more so focus on the "plot". For example, one of short stories, i had this idea of the end of the world. There was this military base in sicily that was in the middle of nowhere. Looooooong barren road (occasionally goats would just chill in the road) and flat dirt for miles.... Then the base. So my story was loosly based on that drive to the base. Then i inserted a 12 year old boy watching the flat, empty landscape. Then i inserted a little brother. It just kind of grew organically, how the 12 year old interacted with his little brother in this empty landscape at the end of the world. His personality morphed with the story.
I dont think ive ever started with a character. Its always started with the setting or a Situation and then i put a "person" into it and write how they'd respond. And i take notes on the character as i write them
My characters are influenced by their environment, and the story is their environment. I do have in mind though someone with a likable personality. While personalities are innate, character is driven to change by the world around them.
I tend to start heavy on world-building. How my characters develop is driven by their interactions in the world I've created. For personalities, I tend to make composites of people I have met in real life.
I start with a simple concept and build from there. I think the best part of this method is seeing how this character evolves overtime, and seeing how much they deviate from their original incarnation. While I take inspiration from real life at times for these characters, ultimately, I like to have a vague idea of who the character is and see how they develop on the page.
I begin with the basics of the basics: Goals, motives, and conflict. Those are my three pillars of character development. They're like the primary colors: you can create every kind of character if you have these three things. As I'm doing world building, I'm thinking about these three things because I do need to make a world where this character could believably exist. Then I start to think of the character's individual character arc. This can be the same as the plot, but it doesn't have to be. The plot can involve things that are entirely external that are outside the characters' control, whereas the arc is more the internal journey your character takes because of the plot. This is where I start to build a character's personality: What kind of personality do they have to have to get from point A to point B in their journey. And this is also where I start to consider more traditional archetypes. Finally, I set nothing in stone. I don't want to become so attached to a character that I can't change things around if I need in order to tell a coherent story. I make the message more important than the individual parts that make everything up. If a character doesn't work as a lovable dork, then don't make the character a lovable dork!
That's how I do it too. I start with what I call "a cardboard cutout" and then flesh them out while coming up with their backstory and while figuring out how they interact with other characters.
