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As I write a lot of flash fiction and short stories, I need to create a lot of characters. I do re-use some but not many compared to the numbers I’ve created in total. My characters often have one story in them, though occasionally one may play a “bit part” role in another tale.
For me, any good story of whatever length is all about what happens and, specifically, what happens to the lead character. I must know what happens to them. I must care about what happens too, even if they’re a villain and I am hoping their evil plans will fail. I also need to know whose story it is.
The advantage of the shorter forms of fiction here is because of the lower word counts involved, it does help focus the creative mind on following one to two threads over the course of the story. Easier to control and keep track of and the two threads will, naturally, feed into one another. (One will inevitably be the main thread with the other feeding into it).
So I have my character, I have an idea for the situation they’ll face, and away I go with my first draft. All writers have different starting points and I know many who have the situation and then work out the characters who would best suit those scenarios. Absolutely fine way to do it and I think writers do have to figure out which works best for them. But you still have to create the characters at some point. So what are my ways into doing this?
Working Out What You Need to Know
I need to know what my characters are capable of which is why a major route into creating characters I use a lot is to focus on traits and what can come from those. I look at the positive and negatives sides of these traits. There is always a flip side!
For example:-
Trait Honesty
Positive Side Know character is truthful.
Negative Side Could be truthful to the point of outright rudeness.
Trait Courage
Positive Side Know character is brave and will prove it.
Negative Side Other characters could consider them reckless and may be right.
Trait Patient
Positive Side Character likely to put up with a lot!
Negative Side Could character be a door mat? What would happen when their patience reaches its limits, as it must?
Just listing these things is starting to spark ideas for potential stories (and I hope it does the same for you too. I’ve had direct experience of writing to the same theme and word count as other writers for a competition. All of the winners, including me, came up with vastly different tales to the “brief” we had to write to – this was interesting).
Attitudes of Characters
Another advantage to working out the traits is you will get the likely attitudes showing up as a result. That will also give you ideas for their dialogue in terms of content and how they express themselves. The kind of language a character uses can reveal much about their background too. This is all useful!
Sometimes I have an idea for a potential character and I can “hear” a line I know they would come up with. I then look at why they’d come up with it and I can, from that, flesh out more about them. Not everything I know about a character goes into any of my tales. I need to know it. I only share with readers what they need to know, which is enough to help them picture my character accurately. Attitudes especially when shown through thoughts and dialogue can help readers picture your characters well. I get an instant idea of a character if I hear them speak the King’s English or if they are someone who comes out with slang, swear words all the time etc.
Dialogue
Linking with the above points, you can also show something more about characters by the words they use. Are they verbose? Do they go “around the houses” before making their point or are they direct to the point of offending others unnecessarily?
You can also use dialogue to show something of their attitudes towards other characters (though this is even more fun when you show the reader their internal thoughts as well and if these are in contrast to what is spoken aloud. Readers will want to find out why there is a contrast and which attitude prevails here. They may well also want to know if the other character involved gets to find out what Character A really thinks about them. Fur could fly there, so to speak!).
Situations
There are some character types who are ideal for certain situations. A pompous character, as I’ve often mentioned in workshops I’ve run, is ripe for being taken down a peg or two and some great comic stories can come from that. So therefore I would set up a situation where my pompous character is going to have an overdue fall. I could go on to then show that pompous character realise their fall wasn’t entirely undeserved so maybe there could be some positive changes to come from that so there is the possibility of a redemption story here too.
When you do know the situation first – you’ve got the scene nicely pictured (and I hope jotted down somewhere, never rely on your memory for great bits of writing, you will forget something) – consider which characters would suit it best. A situation where bravery is required can immediately be “filled” (if you think of it in terms of the right applicant for the job here) by a courageous character. More interesting still, you could have a character who doesn’t think they’re brave at all but when faced with a crisis proves to have more courage then they or anyone else thought.
When you have a situation where honesty is going to cause trouble, what would you make your honest character do? What pressure would they be under to “water things down” to avoid that trouble or do they go full pelt into being so honest trouble has to erupt? Good fun stories to be written from those thoughts, I think.
Conclusion
There is no one correct way to create a character. Indeed, I find it useful to have a mixture of ways. I find this makes things more interesting for me and it lessens the dangers of creating formulaic characters too. (Indeed whichever method I use to create characters, I want there to be something unique about them which will make them stand out and show they are “their own person”).
I do know, for me, it is the characters which make me keep reading a story or to put it down because I’m not convinced by their portrayal. So giving good thought to creating “the stars of the show” makes a great deal of sense to me. It does save a lot of rewriting later, I’ve found.
Naturally we base characters on what we know of life and human experience generally and you can take that approach even when writing sci-fi and fantasy, simply because the most incredible characters in terms of believability will seem more real to your readers if we understand their motivations. All are motivated by things like survival, love etc etc. So it makes sense that our characters reflect these things.
Happy writing!
Related Posts:-
Read interviews with Chandler’s Ford writer Allison Symes: Part 1 and Part 2.
Read blog posts by Allison Symes published on Chandler’s Ford Today.
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