Creating Interesting Characters

Happy Wednesday Scribblers, I hope you all had a great week. This week I thought we could talk about creating interesting book characters. Creating interesting characters is one of the most important aspects of writing a novel or a short story, especially in queer fiction. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve read where the characters are bland and have absolutely nothing to offer the reader. Our characters are the ones who drive the plot, engage the readers, and make the story come alive. These are the people we need to cheer for and if don’t feel anything for them, then the book becomes drudgery to read. But how do you create characters that are not only believable but also memorable and original? Here are some tips to help with character development.

1. Start with a character archetype

A character archetype is a typical or universal pattern of behavior that represents a certain type of person in a story. For example, the hero, the villain, the sidekick, the mentor, etc. Archetypes help you define the basic personality, goals, and motivations of your character, as well as their strengths and weaknesses. You can use archetypes as a starting point, but don’t limit yourself to them. You can mix and match different archetypes or create your own unique ones. This is especially helpful when you are creating queer characters. You don’t want to land on stereotypes that can turn off your reader.

2. Give the character some flaws

No one is perfect, and neither should your characters be. Flaws make your characters more realistic and relatable, and they also create conflict and tension in your story. Faults can be physical, psychological, emotional, moral, or social. They can be minor quirks or major weaknesses that affect the character’s actions and decisions. For example, a character might be clumsy, stubborn, insecure, greedy, or impulsive. These shortcomings can also be sources of growth and change for your character throughout the story. I find this is really helpful in ensuring I don’t have perfect characters. I will even do this for my background characters.

3. Define the character’s goals and motivations

Every character, queer characters included, needs a reason to exist in your story. What do they want? Why do they want it? How do they plan to get it? These are the questions that define your character’s goals and motivations. Goals are the specific outcomes that your character desires or needs to achieve. Motivations are the underlying reasons or forces that drive your character to pursue their goals. These goals and motivations create stakes and urgency in the story, and they also reveal a lot about your character’s personality and values. What’s nice is these goals and motivations don’t always have to do with the plot of your story. You can treat them as significant as you want for the story.

4. Describe the character’s history

Your character’s past shapes their present and future. Their history includes their background, upbringing, education, relationships (good and bad), experiences, traumas, achievements, etc. All these factors influence your character’s worldview, beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, skills, fears, hopes, dreams, etc. You don’t need to write a detailed biography for every character, but you should have a clear idea of their history and how it affects them in the story. I also suggest that you keep a file on each of your characters with all this information for easy reference.

5. Allow the character to be vulnerable

Vulnerability is the ability to show one’s emotions and feelings without fear of judgment or rejection. And this is incredibly important for our characters, especially our Main Characters. It is also the willingness to take risks and face challenges despite uncertainty or potential failure. Vulnerability makes your characters more human and sympathetic, and it also creates opportunities for growth and change. To make your characters vulnerable, you need to put them in situations where they have to face their fears, doubts, insecurities, regrets, etc., and where they have to open up to others or themselves. I find this really important when I’m writing any kind of relationship.

6. Make your character a bit unpredictable

Predictability is boring. If your readers can always guess what your character will do or say next, they will lose interest in them and the story. To avoid this problem, you need to make your character a bit unpredictable. This doesn’t mean that you have to make them act randomly or illogically; rather, you have to make them act in ways that surprise or challenge the readers’ expectations. For example, you can make your character do something heroic or vulnerable; reveal a hidden secret or talent; change their mind or opinion; make a mistake or fail; etc. Adding in unpredictability to your characters is a lot of fun. I love doing this in my stories.

7. Do your research

If you want to create realistic and interesting characters and I cannot stress this enough, especially for queer characters, you need to do some research on the topics that relate to them. Or talk to people who live the life of your character. For example, if your character is a lawyer, you need to know how the legal system works; if your character is a musician, you need to know how music is composed and performed; if your character is from another culture or time period than yours, you need to know how people lived and behaved in that context; etc. Research can help you avoid stereotypes and clichés, and it can also provide you with inspiration and details that enrich your characters and your story. I find this helps me discover what a character’s vulnerabilities, goals and motivations are.

8. Steer clear of the biggest character development mistake

The biggest character development mistake is creating flat or static characters who don’t change or grow throughout the story. This can happen a lot. The more time you spend in fleshing out your characters at the beginning, the more interesting and exciting your characters become as you write their story.

Well, there you go. Here are eight ways to create interesting book characters. Did I leave anything out? Want to add to the list, let me know in the comments below. Until time have a great week.

Five Tips on Character Creation

Happy Wednesday Scribblers. I hope you are all having a wonderful week despite all the bad news. It seems things keep getting darker and darker. I have to believe the light will come soon. I hope we can all hang in there until then. This week I wanted to share a new writing tip with you. I realized I haven’t shared any writing tips in a while and I figured today would be a good day to do so. This week I want to share my five tips on character creation. Keep in mind this is going to vary for everyone, but these are my tips that I use for all my characters, when I’m starting a new story. Or, sometimes, I discover I need an additional character in the story I’m working on.

Let’s jump into it:

  1. Create a bio for your character. Think about all the general things that are important for your character. Name. Date of birth. Age. Astrological sign. Where they work. What their education was like. How old they are? What do they do in their free time? What scares them? What is their religion? Are they religious? Did they have a terrible experience with their faith? Do they have any goals? Giving your characters some goals is always a good thing. It makes the character more three dimensional and gives you an opportunity to either help them with their goals throughout the story, or makes them reevaluate the importants of their goals. Is your character likeable? Are they kind?

  2. What do they look like? Often what I will do is find an image on line of what I think the character may look like. An actor. A model. Even a cartoon character (I know weird, but true). If you don’t want to find an image, then describe the characters and write it all down; eye-color, hair-color, height, weight, do they wear glasses, are they fat, are they thin, etc. The more details you can write up about your characters appearance, the more real that character will become to you. This also has the added benefit of giving you actions you can do with your character as you write. If they wear glasses, you can have them take them off, put them on, etc. If they are thin or overweight, you might have them play with their clothes as they may not fit right. If they are tall, you might have them hit their head. If they are short, they might not reach things.

  3. Describe their family. Are their parents alive? Are their parents dead? Do they have siblings? Do they have an extended family? What about Grandparents? Is their family religious? Does the lack of faith or too much faith cause tension in the family?

  4. Where are they from? What is their race/nationality? This will help you figure out how they speak and if they have any kind of accent. This will also tell you how the world responds to them. People don’t always treat foreigners very well. So, if your character isn’t a local, then you have that to play and work with. Also, when it comes to how they speak, if they have an accent this will give you a chance for variation in your dialog.

  5. This last one may not be hugely important for everyone, but I find it helpful with my character's creation. What is your character’s sexual orientation and identity? It may never come into play, but it is another opportunity to learn about your character and figure out how the world interacts with them.

Bonus: I find it helpful to create a character sheet for each of my main characters. That way I can easily pull it up as I’m writing the story. I can also, quickly, add to it as the need arises.

Those are my five tips and one bonus tip on creating and getting to know your characters in your story. I hope this helps. Also, if you are looking for more writing tips, check out these past blogs. I chalked them full of advice and helpful tips and tricks:

Events (What you didn’t know, you need to know)

Creating Audiobooks – Why and How?

Writing Process and How Writing Works… For me Now.

What it’s like being an author in a small publishing house?

What I Look for When I’m Judging Books for Book Awards.

Book Editing; Overly Used Words, Filtering and Filler Words.

Word Police and Word Censorship.

What is the Hardest part about Writing a Book – The Marketing.

Well Scribblers that is all I have for now. I really hope you found this all helpful. Let me know if you have any character creation tips in the comments below. Until next time have a great week.

Religion in non-Religious Books

To begin, in general I love religion. Belief in God plays such a strong role in our society that to ignore it as a writer is a mistake.  You’re doing a disservice to the reader and the story.  Now, I’m not saying to go in and make fun of religion (unless that is the point of your novel, article or short), or bash people over the head with your religious view.  Writers need to treat faith like they would treat any other topic.

It’s important so why ignore it.

The reason I bring this up is that as a writer all my stories hold some link to faith and a belief system of some kind.  I try to be fair with how I present the subject, and I don’t get preachy with beliefs in a Higher Power, and I steer clear of making fun of it. That said, I will point out hypocrisy because all faiths have it.

Regardless, I truly love religion (at one point I wanted to study World Religions) and I love how it affect us, who we are as a people and what we believe as a collective human culture.  Not to mention how we consider our fellow man.  Its saddens me when we attack each other for our religious beliefs. Because when you boil all beliefs in a High Power down to the basic ideal they are all pretty much the same.  There is so much that is wrong in the world today. Do we have to bring out the religious drums and beat them and attack each other over it?

I don’t think so.

Back to my point about religion in stories and as a fact in the lives of the character’s.  For me the subject of belief adds another layer to the character and their development.  When I create a character, I make a point to know what faith they are.  Even if it never comes up, because it will affect the decisions they make, for good and for bad.  Having that character knowledge helps with the details in the story.  Example:

A Jewish or Muslim character won’t typically eat pork;
A Mormon character won’t drink alcohol, caffeine (well some do) or curse;
A Catholic character may tend to be lax about some Catholic teachings; (divorce, contraception, fish on Fridays, church on Sundays, etc.) while being anti-abortion;
A Baptist character can be extremely religious (church every Sunday, bible study, heavy church involvement, etc.).

These are some general examples. How religion affects our characters, how they choose to believe, and how they practice their faith can be different for each one.  Faith in a Higher Power is different for each person. So, as writers we need to know this about our characters.

You may not want to have your Jewish main character eating a BLT on the Sabbath, or your Muslim main character having a huge meal at lunch during Ramadan, or your Mormon main character having a double espresso with a shot of bourbon at a party, or your Catholic main character having a fat juice steak on a Friday night during Lent, or your Baptist main character watching the big game on Sunday.

Again, these are just examples and I’m not saying it’s a rule (there are no rules in crafting your characters).

Once you know your character’s faith, you can play with it in the stories.  It can be a little flavor or spice thrown into the mix.

In ‘A New World - Contact’ I have a Catholic main character married to a Mormon secondary character, and I play with that dynamic.  I also, have a Baptist character who is good friends with a Russian Orthodox character, again you don’t know this as a reader because I don’t tell you in the story but it affects all the character motivations.

In ‘A Calling’ the main character was born Catholic, but his family wasn’t religious so he wasn’t religious. This was kind of fun to play with during the story.  It eventually becomes a major plot point in the work.

The other thing about religion in stories is faith helps with character motivations especially when those beliefs are called into question.  It allows the writer to add another layer of drama to why the character acts the way they do.  Imagine having all your beliefs suddenly called into question.  Stop and think about that for a moment.  How would you react?  How would that affect your life?  What would you have to change?  Would you be able to change, or would it be too much for you to cope with?

Interesting thought. Right? 

Faith in non-religious books, what do you think?  Yay, or Nay?  Feel free to share your thoughts below.  Remember you can always ‘like’ and ‘share’ this blog post.  It lets me know what you want to talk about. What you find interesting. What you would rather not see.  I’d love to hear from folks on this topic. 

See ya soon.