conformitiesrebellion:

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fictionwritingtips:

As a writer, one of your main jobs is to get your readers to believe in the illusion you’re creating in your story. Deep down, we know that characters aren’t real people, but we suspend our disbelief to really put ourselves inside a fictional world. While characters can also be layered and complex, there’s a big difference—they’re not real people.

Here are a few differences to consider when building your own characters:

Characters are simpler than real people

I know, I know. How can I say that your favorite character from your favorite book series isn’t as complex as your next door neighbor? You know a lot more about your favorite character because you’ve followed their ups and downs for like 5 books now.

But the truth is your next door neighbor has a very real and very complex life and they’ll always have more depth than any character in a fiction novel. Authors only tend to focus on certain traits of a character; ones that pertain to the story and help drive the novel forward. Adding a lot more detail could bog the story down and feel unnecessary. Like I said before, characters can be complex and layered, but we’re only experiencing a powerful illusion. This is actually helpful for writers because it helps manipulate your readers’ emotions depending on what story you’re trying to tell. You get to guide your characters and where they’re going.

You’re only sharing a slice of life

Most of the time when you’re writing about a character, you’re only sharing the most dramatic moments of their existence. There’s a reason you’re telling the story and it’s not just them living their normal day-to-day lives. There’s usually the stasis that moves on to the inciting incident that gets them away from what they’re used to. We all know that real life can be tedious and boring for the most part. I’m not saying nothing exciting happens to real people, but we do work and go to school and sleep every night…the boring parts are usually cut out of fiction (depending on your story)

Again, obviously this all depends on your story, but there’s usually some excitement that pops up in stories that doesn’t always happen to real people. We are reading about what’s most representative of your character’s life.

You never know exactly what real people are thinking

This is one of the biggest differences between characters and real people. In novels, if the writer chooses to do so, the innermost thoughts of characters can be revealed. In real life, it’s impossible for us to know what someone else is thinking. They might tell us, but we’ll never have that sort of deep insight we’d have in a work of fiction.

Use this to your advantage as a writer because it doesn’t happen in real life.  Share your protagonist’s thoughts if you think it will help develop your story.

-Kris Noel

septembercfawkes:

Unlikeable people can be a pain to write if they’re a main character. After all, our audience needs to like them enough to be around them for the course of the story. If our readers can’t stand them, they won’t want to read about them. But sometimes our protagonists are meant to be bad. They need to be bad. Heck, sometimes even the likeable people in our stories have jerk-qualities.

So how do we render their bad-qualities without driving our readers to throw our books across the room?

We turn our unlikeable people into likeable characters.

We make them such likeable characters, that the audience forgives, accepts, or overlooks that they are unlikeable people.

Here are six ways to do that.

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fictionwritingtips:

Creating a perfect character usually isn’t a good idea, so you might want to consider giving your characters a few well thought out flaws. There needs to be something internally that prevents them from reaching their goals or something that stops them from being the most wonderful/impressive person in the room.

Here are a few tips on writing character flaws:

Balance Negative/Positive

No one’s perfect, so your characters shouldn’t be either. We all have both negative and positive traits—some that drive people crazy and some that people talk about affectionately (Also, this depends on who you talk to). Maybe we have great ideas, but we never take the initiative to execute them properly. Flaws will help balance out your characters and make them feel real. This should be something beyond “I’m so awkward it’s adorable” or “I’m so pretty/handsome, but I don’t know it”.

Tie them into the plot

It’s super important that these flaws play into the plot somehow or they run the risk of falling flat for your readers. If your character is notoriously lazy or lacks motivation, how will this affect the rest of the story? Will your character have trouble snapping into action? If you don’t do something with these flaws, there’s no point in mentioning them. A great example is Ned Stark from Game of Thrones. He is loyal/honorable to a fault and it causes huge problems for him later down the line. Being honorable isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but depending on the story, it can cause a character’s downfall.

Get to know your characters

Creating great character flaws really comes down to knowing your characters on a deeper level. Some writers throw in flaws that don’t really matter because they don’t know what to do with their characters. Maybe they haven’t thought out the story enough or maybe they’re afraid readers will see their characters in a negative light. The truth is we like reading about people who are flawed because they feel real and relatable. There’s no one in the world who does the right thing all the time. Do some planning before you start penning your novel and you’ll be able to shape who your character really is and what they want.

-Kris Noel