Characters - Good or Bad we need them

 

When most people talk about character they mean the subtle inherent differences between us all, the good, the bad, the caring, and our personality traits.

 

When writers talk about character we mean the people who populate our stories, as I’ve mentioned in other blogs, characters carry off the maiden or become the cunning serial killer. 

The strangest thing to remember about our characters, love them or hate them, it’s that characters are not real people. Although, they may come from real life studies, they are much larger than real people (Kate Grenville –The Writing Book).

 

War of the Worlds

As a writer you’ll want your readers too sympathise with a particular character or despise another, as the story progresses, you may want to reverse those roles as in romance writing, the villain can be a hidden hero. 

Characters need to be surprising, to keep your readers interested, you will need to build on their strengths and take advantage of their weaknesses. You'll use different character development for different genres or styles, your story may be character driven, or it may be landscape or situational driven, in each case the writer will choose the characters that will suit each scenario.

 

You may have heard that characters need to be drawn from real life. No, say I, they don’t. Real life people often don’t work well in fiction. As a writer you are in the enviable position to draw whatever you like from real life, or totally leave it out. 

Real people are a great basis to start from, and then make the rest up; you could even draw from several people, and mould them into one. You may know some fascinating people, but just transferring them whole into your story is no guarantee that they will be fascinating in fiction, because as always, fiction is stranger than fact, and it’s that strangeness that gets us to read. Reading is our escape hatch from reality. 

Book Titles

 As I keep saying, and I’ll keep saying it, read, read, read. Think to yourself about the characters you’ve loved to read, who have made you cry, laugh out loud, made you indignant or rage against the storm, these are the traits you want to instil in your characters. You want your Readers to be still thinking about them long after they finish your story.

 

‘Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.’ Frankenstein - Mary Shelly

 

You will need to let your Reader get to know your characters, describe and explain them in detail; there is a pleasure in getting to know them, just as in life, in making new friends.  

Don’t forget when describing your characters, you need to show intellectual respect for your Reader, the old adage ‘show don’t tell,’ is very relevant in character building. 

It can be intriguing for the Reader to find out the facts for themselves. Last but not least your characters need to consistent, I don’t mean boringly so, but there needs to be a certain amount of consistency or your Readers will just be frustrated with the process. 

Inconsistency is fine, if it serves a purpose within the framework of your story, but in most cases being consistent is the way to go. 

Imagination

The easiest way to kill a story is if the Reader has to keep recapping/re-reading the story because it’s not consistent and doesn’t gel with the story line.

How do you develop your own Character. What are your ideas.