How to Create Fictional Characters
October 23, 2004 by J.C. Hewitt
When writing fiction, one of the greatest challenges is to come up with compelling characters that both interest the reader and fit the story. On the surface, fitting the story might seem like the lesser of the two considerations, but it really isn’t. Beyond being interesting, the character must also be the type of person who will respond to your plot. Whatever the action of your story is, it needs to matter to your characters. The reader (and you) must care about what is happening to a character and take interest in what the character will do, or will fail to do.
Most people’s inspiration for a character begins with some spark. The spark may come from anywhere. It could be a voice, a physical feature, a profession, a line of dialog, or a plot you want your character involved in. Whatever the spark is, you need to need to explore it. You should expand upon that voice, that physical feature, that dialog, that profession or that plot. Whatever the first spark of life is, expand upon it until it fully takes shape.
After you have moved beyond the original spark, you need to create a profile of your character. You should start out very simply. Is the character male or female? How old is the character? How does the character look? What kind of clothes does the character wear? Is the character generally happy, sad, angry, lonely or indifferent? These are all very basic questions, but it is surprising how often they are ignored.
Next, explore the character’s background. Is the character working, getting an education or doing something else that occupies their time? Where does the character live? What is the character’s family like? What kind of friends does the character have? What kind of things does the character own? That last question can be surprisingly informative. You can approach it from several angles. What is in the character’s home? What is in the character’s office at work? What is in the character’s pockets or purse? How many keys does that character have and to what?
Once you have put the larger pieces of the character’s personality and life together, it is a good time to pick a name. You should now know who they are and what they are like. Knowing your character increases your ability to give them a name that fits them. Names should match the character, but without being clich’. A boxer named “Punch” is a little silly, for example. Of course, a nickname may spring up that mirrors the character’s personality, but their given name should only suit the character, not stereotype them. Whole volumes can be written on naming characters alone, but suffice to say that buying a book of baby names and going through it until you find one that feels good will work.
You can try all sorts of additional ways to delve deeper into your character. Interviewing the character is a good exercise. Ask the character questions as if you are a reporter for Rolling Stone, People, the local newspaper or a magazine appropriate to your character’s background. Let the character speak. If you have already developed other characters for your story, ask them about your character. What do the other characters think about this person? Do they see the character differently than the character sees himself or herself?
Another way to explore your characters is to visualize them in their everyday world. What route do they take to work? What stations do they pick out on the radio? How do they act at a party? How do they respond to their boss or to their parents? What are their most common facial expressions? What are their hobbies? What household chores do they perform or ignore? What are their finances like? Picture the character five or ten years before the story takes place and five or ten years in the future. Where have they come from and how will the circumstances of your story change them?
Once you have explored your character in detail, you need to finish by creating a short, clear portrait of that character. What makes the character interesting, compelling and different? Try to come up with both a single sentence character description and a single paragraph character description. Each of these descriptions should vividly portray what kind of person this is. You won’t necessarily use these descriptions in your story, but it is important to have a clear portrait of your character that can guide you as you write and the story progresses.
After you have created your character, it is important to remember that they must be treated as individuals with their own needs and agendas. Allow your characters to have secrets, quirks and contradictions. Most people have a thousand little contradictions, even if their basic nature remains steadfast. Do not, however, make a character violate their basic nature just to suit the plot. If this character’s actions would change your plot too much, you need to either re-examine the plot, or create a more suitable character.
The most important advice I can give you is to respect your characters. Treat them as important people, whether you like the individual character’s personality or not. Remember that the character’s feelings and actions must reflect who they are and that the progression of the story must be important to them. What happens to them must matter. If you don’t find your character compelling and worthy of exploration, how can you expect a reader to?
I was wondering how to write out a biography.
I’m making a character for a role play chat.
She’s a sorceress. Please help.
natausha, see my reply here — John
I was reading this article, and I have a question about developing my character a bit more. I’ve used her for a couple of role-plays and also as one of the main characters for my novel.Problem is, she is kind of a Mary-Sue. Could you help her? Her name is Enigma, she’s 15, and is a shapeshifter. Thank you!
Your article thing, really helped me with my English assignment. We had to write original characters, and I got full credit for them all, Just like to say thank, and that who ever does this site, rocks my socks.
Thanks so much! I am an amateur writer and I’ve been trying to find a good way to develop characters for a long time and this is the best way I’ve seen so far! Great work and thank you so much for writing this article. It was a great help.
Hey guys, go to ELFWOOD and under TUTORIALS they have a CHARACTER ONE and it comes with a form to fill out. It is really good, it gets you thinking about your charrie!
If I had to think about all the aspects of my character, I wouldn’t be able to write a story. Although, what is recommended is not wrong, what I do is to put my character into situations and visualize how they would react to them, building the caharacter as I go along. I also do not describe main characters in depth, as I have the entire story to build character discription. I find that the way a person reacts, his or her dialogue is more important to a reader than what they look like.
Harry,
Thank you for inadvertently pointing out just how difficult it is to write perfectly. I do not have an editor other than myself for this site, so errors occasionally sneak through. While I consider myself to be a reasonably good grammarian and copy editor I do not claim to be perfect. Few people can perfectly edit their own work because they cannot see their own blind spots. It is easy to make a mistake, as you have demonstrated.
When people politely or even reasonably call errors to my attention, I do my best to correct the errors and treat their criticism with the respect they deserve. In the case of your comment, I immediately reviewed the article for errors. I did not find any grammatical errors although I did make some minor content changes. My good (though often unreliable) friend the Microsoft Word grammar checker also did not find any errors. I may easily have missed something, but unfortunately your comment did not offer any assistance in finding the alleged errors. Your comment offered only insults. My suspicion is that you dislike my writing style, but style disagreements are not the same as grammatical errors.
If, instead of writing a quick insulting post, you had been specific and helpful, I would have been happy to leave your post in. What you did was write two short insults without substantiation. I feel no obligation to honor that sort of discourse. It is unhelpful and unfriendly. I am willing to run constructive criticism, but not destructive criticism. I hope I have made my opinion clear, and I hope that in the future you try to make your criticisms constructive rather than destructive. It is more helpful to everyone.
By the way, the errors you made in your own comments would be considered to be typographical errors, not grammatical errors. I don’t point this out to make fun of you, but because this leads me to believe you aren’t entirely sure of how to classify your complaint and that may be why I am not finding the errors you are claiming that I have made. Again, I believe your complaints are aimed more at my writing style than at what can be considered grammatical errors. I could be wrong about this, but you have not offered any evidence to back up your claims at this point so I am merely speculating about what the true problem is.
Harry,
Yes, I could have done either of the things you mentioned. I didn’t because frankly I didn’t see the point in spending any time on your complaint. Your complaint appeared to be groundless and designed to make me angry. I preferred to delete it rather than confront you and start an unpleasant war of words. I apologize for deleting your comment because it clearly meant more to you than I thought.
As I suspected, your complaint is one of style, not grammar. The use of they and their in place of he or she is a choice I knowingly make and that others make as well. He or she is a very awkward phrase and I hate to use it although I will if I feel it is absolutely necessary. The use of they or their is an attempt to be gender neutral without making a point of being gender neutral. Support for my style choice can be found here:
http://www.yaelf.com/swot.shtml
http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/gender.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002740.html
There are many people who support your point of view as well. You can view a site that supports your view here:
http://home.comcast.net/~rdarst/errors.html
I understand and accept that you object my use of they and their in place of gender-based singular pronouns. It is a point on which we disagree. I do not accept, however, that my usage is so objectionable that people should not read my article. I feel that your original comment was unfair. I believe it was at best made thoughtlessly and at worst designed to provoke an outburst on my part. That is why I deleted your comment. Again, I apologize for upsetting you. I hope we can both move on now.
I’m seriously considering writing a book about a very stressful time in my life and how I
conquered it. Most of the story will take place in a day to day working enviroment and will
involve a lot of people. I will appreciate any advice on this subject.
Michael,
It can be a difficult task to turn real-life people into literary characters. Just remember that their motivations may be more complicated that just what you (or your character) sees.
Good luck,
John
I am running into a problem with my book. I’m writing an autobiography about becoming a ventilator dependent quadriplegic and my rehabilitation. I don’t remember a lot of things and my descriptions are dry and don’t bring a vivid image to mind. I’d have to cheat a little to change that.
My main problem is my character portrayal. How do I make these people “real” to my reader, when my memory is so full of holes? Can you help me learn to develop nonfiction characters?
A few months ago, I watched Opra. Her book club was reading A million Little Pieces. I read it and fell in love with it. It’s one of the best books I’d ever read. I read 2-3 books a week. Well, I learned later it was partially fiction. I felt cheated. How can I jog my memory to avoid this same pitfall?
Thank you for writing this article.
I find it very useful to reference it whenever my character-based inspiration runs a little low.
In my opinion anything that can actually inspire someone and not just tell them what to do is quality.
: )
Hi,
I am writing a suspense/mystery story. The protagonist is a single mom who works as a visiting nurse in the bowels of a crime infested territory. Her patients are brutally murdered one at a time and she becomes the prime suspect. The mafia controls the territory and the crimes involve transporting young teenage females for prostitution. I just don’t know much about how the operation of the mob works. Any help with this would be appreciated. Thanks a million, Beth
Hi Beth,
In my eyes, there are two ways to approach the problem you are facing. One is to research organised crime in general, not just the Mafia. Particularly focussing on human trafficking syndicates if at all possible. The idea is to convince the reader that your character knows more about the current criminal underworld than the average Joe (and/or Police in your storys case).
The second approach would be to plead ignorance. Put yourself in the position of one of these young women. You may think you are travelling to a better life, with job opporunities and a chance to get away from whatever country you are trying to flee, only to be thrown into a world of hardship and humiliation. Your character may not know the full story, and so that is the angle you take towards writing her.
Mr. Hewitt
I’ve wanted to say thank you for the awesome tips. I’m in the middle of writing a fiction novel, my main characters are well defined I was having problems with sub- characters how would you define their feelings and thoughts without taking away from the main characters. My biggest problem is that the sub-characters are needed to help shed light/define the main characters, their moods, their hopes and fears, ect… any suggestions would be great….
thanks
p.s. you handle the above problem quite nicely.
Mr Hewitt.
I just wanted to say, this is some pretty top notch advice. It has really helped me develop my characters in a novel I am currently starting. I am only 15 and I have been searching around for tips and stuff to help me with my writing and I have to say, this is the best advice and such yet. I have a plot and everything but my characters were rather dull it has to be said. With this I can now try and make my two main characters a little better.
Thank you so much.
I read the article on creating characters and I can’t say that I agree. What exactly does that really help any writer. In order to know fictional people I feel the best way to bring characters to life is to give them a main goal, motivation and conflict, resolution and change. This is really enough to know our characters. I’ve tried for years to create characters like the article suggests, but unfortunately it didn’t help much in knowing my characters. I didn’t really feel I knew them and something always seemed wrong. The characters won’t come alive without the main ingredients of characterization. If a main character doesn’t have a goal, motivation, and conflict, and a resolution as well as change, it’s not a worthy exercise. Practically every article I’ve read keeps giving us bad advice about creating characters and none of these articles ever mention the internal and external goals and motivation and conflict. Every character must have their own goals, their own motivations, and their own conflicts in order for them to be real and alive. When I mention these ingredients of good characterization, writers get angry. Well, too bad. The fact is without a goal, motivation and conflict the characters will never be sympathetic and real.
Vincent, the method I outlined is a way of discovering character motivations. I do not claim that it works for everyone. Different people need different processes. I’m sorry this does not work for you. It sounds as if you would be more interested in my article: Building Characters Through Adversity.
Thnak Hewitt it was so nice reading an article like this. It has given me to a great extent enormos help in writing my story. Please forgive me if i sound a bit greedy but, I want ur help. I am writing about a character who is a person living in depression and doesnot like the way the life is going around him. And here this character meets another character who is pious and a religious person and has great super natural powers with him. Now the problem is i want to develop a plot and relationship between them so that the later one transform some of his power to the former. I am greatly confused here as I dont want this part to be like “give and take suitation”. I want the character to have a strong reason and well mannered plot behind giving the powers to the other.
John, this is a really fine article. Don’t worry about all the criticism. It helped me a lot and, if it helps some people, I would think you’ve achieved your purpose.
Of course, there are many ways to conjure up and create characters. Whatever floats your boat, as they say. I don’t understand how some people can criticize a fellow writer for trying to help.
I’ve written my first novel and now have 23 rejections to show for it. Most of the criticism centers around the fact that, although it’s a mystery, there are something like 5,000 other mysteries floating around agents’ office and many of them are more unusual, better conceived, or whatever than mine. This will not stop me, but it does give me pause. I’ve read a lot of books on the matter and have decided a big problem with my mss is the main character. He needs a little more dimension.
Since I love the writing process I’ll continue to read, study and revise until I feel I have it right. Your article will help.
Thanks again. Onward and upward.
Don
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