Guest Post: Fictional Friends

Hey, y’all! First off, I’m sorry to post this later than usual. So, since life kinda hit hard this week, Ima interrupt this program (Thoughts on Thursdays) for some thoughts from my lovely sister! (I will still put this under the Thursday category, for anyone who’s interested in that.) Love y’all, show Isabella some love for me, and hopefully I’ll be back up and running next week! 

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 Hello, hello! 

My brain is currently fried, so rather than doing something deep and introspective, let’s talk about one of my favorite parts of the writing process: character creation! If you aren’t a writer, maybe you will take something away from this that you can apply while reading. 

Characters are why readers fall in love with a story. If your characters are shallow or too much alike, no one will cry when you kill them off, turn them evil, or force them to face their worst nightmares! But how do you create a character with depth? Well, I’m glad you asked.

You need to get to know your character inside and out, like he or she is your new best friend. There are several resources you can use to do this, but sometimes it’s helpful to first create a list of questions to ask yourself about each character. It’s important to ask deep questions. What is his/her deepest fear? What is his/her most defining flaw? What is something that changes about her/him throughout the course of the story? What is the easiest way to make him/her angry? What is his/her goal, and why? Once you know things like these, you can piece them together into a sort of emotional skeleton for your character.

Once you’ve finished with that, you can ask more shallow questions. Is your character organized, or not? What is his/her dream job, and why? What is something that easily irritates your character? What is an obstacle your character faces? Of course, there are also physical questions to answer: hair color, eye color, and etc. Physical qualities are a good way for you to make your characters distinct; for example, if you have six main characters, and they all have brown hair and green eyes, you might want to change that (unless they’re all clones, of course).

Now that you’ve answered questions, you need to breathe life into your character. One very helpful way to do this is to toss him/her into different scenarios and play out his/her reaction. This is something you can do mentally, or you can write it out if you prefer. If you can’t think of any scenarios yourself, you can always look up writing prompts and choose however many you like.

Another famous strategy is to have your character write a letter to you, or to a different character. The circumstances don’t necessarily matter, and you don’t need to concern yourself with his/her handwriting or anything like that. What you want to focus on is his/her attitude towards whomever he/she is writing to and the nuances of his/her speaking (or writing, in this case): diction, syntax, and etc. How is his/her grammar? How constructed is the letter? Does it flow well, or does it go off on wild tangents? 

One of my personal favorite ways to get to know my characters is by taking the Myers-Briggs test for each of them. This is a quick little personality quiz that divides your character (or you, if you’re taking the quiz for yourself) into one of sixteen personality types. After you’ve finished taking the test, you can read loads of information on whichever of the personalities is your result, and then apply it to your character later. Also, you might notice after taking several of them that all of your characters tend to be in the same category, or you don’t have any characters that fall into a particular category. If that is the case, you might want to spend time elaborating on the differences in your characters. I, for example, recently noticed that I don’t seem to have any characters who fit into the “Explorer” category, so I might study those personality types and try to draw parallels between them and my characters. Here’s a link to the Myers-Briggs test. 

If you’re struggling with diversity among your characters, you might consider fitting them with an imperfection or two apiece. I don’t mean a personality flaw–all characters should have multiple of those. What I mean is, for example, a scar. A scar can fit into your character’s backstory: Jonathan has scars on his wrists from being handcuffed in a prison cell for years, and every time he looks at them, he remembers how lucky he must have been to escape. Alternately, it can be something totally irrelevant to who your character is: Eliza tripped down a flight of stairs and now there’s a scar on her head.

Scars are not the only imperfections you can taint your character with, though. You can fit him/her with a stutter, or a limp, or some sort of disability. You might even try giving him/her a mental disorder, or a personality disorder. Again, these could either pertain to the character’s backstory or not. If Jonathan has PTSD from being imprisoned, he might shake at the sight of law enforcement, or have nightmares that inhibit his slumber. Eliza is just a born bipolar. She probably threw herself down those stairs in a fit of rage.

Imperfections like these not only distinguish your characters; they also make your characters feel more realistic. Don’t go crazy, though, or your characters won’t feel realistic at all. Does Eliza also have cancer and social anxiety and acrophobia and only one eye? Possible, but unlikely.  In any case, she might not function well as my protagonist in such a state.

Well, that about sums it up for now. I’m sure you can see that if I was a character writing a letter to you, it would be all over the place. 

Until our paths cross again,
Lord Vader (*cough cough*) Isabella