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Hi all.
Recently, I've been asked more than once about how I go about creating my characters. I have the file in my HD, but thought it would just be easier to put it here so anyone who likes can see it rather than sending it to every individual who asks. Do feel free to argue points, suggest changes, additions, whatever.
But this is the way I go about creating characters.
Now, without further histrionics, here is my own character template.
Maggie
Character Template.
As I'm sure you already know, a good character can and does make a mediocre story good, while poor characters can destroy an otherwise good story. So what goes into creating character that readers will find not only believable but someone they can identify with?
On the surface, the answer is simple. Make them seem like real, living, breathing, people.
That isn't quite as easy as it sounds, as many people have discovered. Like anything else in writing and life in general, creating a good character is a process of stages to reach your desired goal.
First, you have to know your character, as if he or she is a long time friend, or family member. If you're at all observant you know what makes your friends and family tick, at least basically, as well as what kind of things tick them off, make them happy, hurt them, help them, excite them, sadden them.
All that and the little quirks that make them individuals. Those are things that you need to think about when crafting a character, too.
Sounds complicated, doesn't it?
Well, it is, kind of. But it's also not that hard to do if you approach it correctly.
I block out sections of the character, personality, experience, appearance, attitudes, etc. So I have something to refer to if a question comes up about just how the character will act or react in a given situation. I'll give you an example of that in a bit here.
Just remember one thing here. Characters are people and no one is perfect. Nothing irritates me more in a story than seeing a character who is absolutely perfect and without faults, dings, or warts. There is no one alive that everyone loves. That should hold true with fictional characters, too. On the other hand there is also no one that everyone hates. Even villains have to have some redeeming qualities, something that will make them more than just cardboard cutouts to fill in a spot in the story.
Okay, enough of that stuff. Following is a pretty basic setup for character creation. I'm sure that if you try this, you'll end up modifying it to fit your own personal style, and that's good.
So, without further lectures, I'll get on with the real reason for this.
Maggie
Your choice. Beautiful, ugly, average?
Height
Weight
Race
Color of eyes
Color of hair (and length and style if appropriate.)
Face
Body
Age
Health
Also, is your character happy with his/her appearance? Want to change it? Wish it was something other than what it is? Being able to actually visualize your character is the first step.
Outgoing?
Withdrawn?
Friendly?
Antagonistic?
Caring?
Indifferent?
Doesn't give a damn?
Just one of the guys or girls?
Happy, Sad, Introspective, Impulsive?
Sense of humor?
Education
Job
Growing up
Family and interpersonal relations
Travel
Hobbies
Loves or lack thereof
Work and/or school
Where he/she lives
Conditions in living and work places
Family (if in contact or even if not)
People and things that contact character daily
Places character likes to go to.
Things around and in the home
Pets
Food
Colors
Media (TV, Movies, Books, whatever.)
People
Job
Situation the character is in at start of the story
Animals (See pets from above)
Living space (furniture, decorations, artwork, neighborhood)
What does he/she want to accomplish?
What is available to help or hinder that?
How far along is he/she with that and how realistic are those goals?
What is in the way of achieving those goals?
What does the character think and feel about them?
What do people the character knows and interacts with think of them and the chances of the character achieving them?
Most importantly. How realistic are those goals?
What kind of things stand in the way of the character achieving his/her goals?
Life situation?
Income?
Education?
Another person or people?
Social mores?
How difficult will it be to face and overcome these obstacles? Are they life threatening? A story has to have conflict or it's going to boring, really boring. The conflict can be internal, external, or a combination of the two, but there has to be conflict to make a good story, right?
Supportive?
Questioning?
Against what the character wishes to do?
How long have they been friends?
Yes, everyone has enemies in one form or another whether you want to admit that or not.
In the workplace.
In the neighborhood
In the family
Among casual acquaintances
Someone the character doesn't know or know about
The question here is just how dedicated the enemy is, and to what lengths that one would go to impede or stop you character. And yes, you'll have to build the enemy too, if he/she is important to the story. A good enemy can really help make a story work.
Is the character ambivalent about what is happening?
Or all for it?
Or kicking and screaming all the way?
And who, or what is trying to prevent where the story is headed?
Or trying to help?
You'll need to adjust all this according to the situation, but there has to be something in this one.
Well, that's about all I can think of at the moment. Do feel free to add, subtract, or change things as you need to do it.
This template isn't cut and dried, after all. Characters, like people, tend to evolve, grow, and change. So do the things around them.
And don't worry, as complex as all this may seem, pretty soon you'll find that you think about things I've mentioned while first writing the character. You don't need to tell anyone what you did to build your character, or give all the details in print. In time, you'll discover that it's just there. You know your character.
And that, that, is the trick.
Maggie
Characters
I just try to make them as real as I can. Not easy, so I often use friends as templates.
I use friends, too.
After all, who do we know better? It is a good way to figure out a character.
Maggie
Food for thought
Some interesting food for thought here Maggie. Thank you for sharing it. :-)
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
Impressive
Then again, I would have expected nothing less from you, Mags.
I am not near as thorough when conjuring up my characters. In the story Persephone and I are working on, 'God Save the Queen,' we sketched out our players using a simpler template, thought in truth it was more than I usually use. We outlined the following information for our primary characters;
Physical:
Background:
Personality:
Ambitions:
Goals in the story:
Fears:
At Story’s start (Where is the character and what is the character's circumstances):
After that, I simply allow the characters to define themselves within the context of the story, much as Caitlin is currently doing.
But that's just me.
Nancy Cole
"You may be what you resolve to be."
T.J. Jackson
Thank you Nancy.
As I pointed out, I hope, a lot of those things you just extrapolate from the basic character idea. You and Seph, had the idea down well enough from what you said.
Maggie
I should probably use something like this...
For all my stories, the only "template" I really have is up here *taps forehead*
Sure, I'll occasionally write a list of character names, and for PFH I went to the trouble of a few words of description (Beck Henderson: Protagonist, Sarah Graham: Best friend, senior, Leslie: "big sister," and so on)but for the most part there's little to nothing I do to remember elements of my character's personalities and designs, as has been evidenced on the occasions when I've mixed up information on characters.
Oh! One significant exception to this is the characters I'm using in Switcheroo, but that's only because I was working on them with comic books in mind and, well, comic book characters ALWAYS have detailed backgrounds, so I've got an origin story for all the heroes and villains I plan to introduce written down.
Melanie E.
How strange.
You know, I sometimes look things up for my stories, and with each, there may be some
aspect of the story that I will put a little more thought and motivation into. Largely
for mine own amusement. It was symbolism one, poetry in another, and in my latest there
was a very little historical research. However, with characters, I never think about
them at all until they show up on the page.
Some characters may be only a foil for the actions of the protagonist, while others
require a motivation that the reader has knowledge of, so that he or she can anticipate,
help create, and generally share in the progression of the story. In almost every case,
though, there is only enough detail to tell the story... or perhaps in some specific cases,
to distract and manipulate the readers mood, to prepare for some coming turn - the comedic
interlude prior to a an inevitable sadness. The rest is, to my mind, extraneous.
I would think, that creating a spreadsheet for a character, even a main character, would
force the writer to spend too much time in tedious calculation, or careful corroboration,
with supposed facts that the reader simply does not need to know. It poses a danger that
the writer could lose enjoyment in the story, and a vitality that is better applied to the
plot.
I think, the readers provide most of these things for themselves, if and as they
need them; and, I have great faith and admiration for their ability and willingness
to do so.
Writers need only tell one story, clearly and well to be sure, and it is their duty
to provide sufficient facts to prod, guide, tease, or convince the reader into going where
they need to go. All the rest, the tricks or clever turn of phrase, will all too easily
miscarry only to distract them... to prevent them from doing their part of the job.
" Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.
Shakespeare, Henry V., prologue.
I suppose that careful planning can be good, but I'll ask only
for the 'muse of fire.'
Sarah Lynn
Oh, this isn't set it stone, after all.
Actually, I do a lot of that subconsciously as I write.
This is just to give people an idea, not tell them to follow it like a writ from above. :)
Yes, the reader does flesh out a character on their own. And that's good, it tells you that you're doing things right when they do that.
As I pointed out, do not show or tell all this stuff in your story. It isn't needed and would be detrimental to the story as a whole if you did.
This is just a way to get a feel for your characters, so they stay consistent. If you can do that without this, great. I do that all the time. But knowing your character is important, as you said. We all have different ways to do that, and far be it from me to say any approach is either right or wrong.
Basically, this post was a response to questions I've gotten over the past few years. As in "How do you do that?"
Everyone has their own approach to things and if what you do works, stay with it.
But thank you for the other viewpoint here.
Maggie
Of course, indeed, you are
Of course, indeed, you are correct.
My unworthy and impatient prose, bespattered in the most haphazard fashion
with course doggerel, appealing in all to the pallet like an abandoned
shank of cold and week old mutton, do in no way provide a means to an opinion.
There can be no comparison to the mathematical precision with which you weave
great cycles into beauteous tapestries, with all the delicate surety of detail
with which the most profound geometric axiom might guide a planet amongst the
stars. Truly, novice is far too grandiose a word for a practitioner of
word-like things, seeming random collections of letters, so mean and humble
that the pennant of discourse or dialogue might never pass her lips.
I scribble - callously to all sense and sensibility, and with great affront,
so rudely dare to ask even the common fair, for those readers so lucklessly
gathered here.
What kills me though, is that I was asked this very question as well, By a
class at the university of Mini-soda, no less. I had to admit that they, my
characters, all resulted from the plot and the story. Even though in all of
my stories, my main characters are virtually identical, it was years later that
I realized that I had indeed taken that character from a person from real life.
Pretty darned sad.
We don't talk enough about how to write often enough.
Sarah
Sarah Lynn
P.S. to Erin. That is what I do. I will put little bits down at the bottom
of the document, and even write scenes that I want to include later. It gives
me a destination to reach, and stepping stones that I can link to create a story.
Battered and Haphazard? You?
I don't think so. :)
At least not with your writing, the other stuff, I don't know about. *wink*
Maggie
Random
Myself, I make notes at the end of the story, so I can just jump to the end and there they are. They're kind of random usually, not so detailed. One thing I often do is cast the characters, like from actors, comedians, friends and whoever. Sometimes, the details in the notes actually turn into chapters.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Characters
Maggie, thanks for the template. As to how I create my characters, they all came to me in my sleep and tell me their story as I go along. I don't know if I am unique, but I don't plan my stories, I let the characters talk to me. I have to be relaxed and think of the general scenario I want then write it. I may try the template though it seems like a great idea.
I'm similar.
I do some character creation, just some simple vague outlines, then ask the character to tell me about themselves. Once I've got a fair idea of what they are like, I pick some fault in them I want to see them change, come up with a prompt to get them to change it, and the rest I've written elsewhere.
Of course, this is only if I'm writing a character-driven story. It is possible, and I have personally done it, to write a story without giving any character details AT ALL, essentially allowing your reader to become the very person that the stories events are occurring to. This style of writing is milieu-driven writing at it's most extreme end.
Abigail Drew.
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Und er lässt es gehen Alles wie es will
Dreht und seine Leiher steht ihm nimmer still..."
-Franz Schubert-
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"Die Gedanken sind frei / Sie fliegen vorbei
Kein Mensch kann sie wissen / Kein Jäger sie schießen
Mit Kugeln und Blei / Die Gedanken sind frei"
Characters
The software I use to write has a character sketch template, However I use the template once I've created a character so that I can keep track of fine details. I may have to change things up with my next story and actually flesh out the characters before I start the story...
Samantha
Questions and Thanks
I'm writing something between a short story and a novella. Do I need to visualize the appearence of my characters? Because it is pretty much unimportant for the story.
The problem is that about everything about the character will change. His experiences, his likes and dislikes. His friends and enemies are pretty much unimportant for the general plot.
his goals will change. His environment will change.
Is it important to elaborate stuff I don't really need, or can I ignore this stuff without making the character unbelievable?
I will eleborate the things that will change, but his personallity will stay the same, and the looks of all characters are mostly unimportant.
I don't really need to know how characters look. Their personality is imho way more important, but I heard some people want descriptions.
What do I do with checkovs gunmen? I will need some of these, but they should be persons even if I only need them one time to give some information. Should I use noodle events to refer to past stuff that doesn't really happen in the main plotline?
Well however, thank you Maggie for listing all this stuff, it really helps.
Beyogi