The Characters In Your Book
How do I build a character?
How you build characters tends to start with their physicalities, so you would make notes on how they are dressed, what they look like, the color of their hair, the color of their eyes, and then, probably what they do for a living. If you look at most fiction, characters have jobs, and out of the jobs come their voices and preoccupations, and very often their conflicts, the family connections, the history, how old they are, where they live, their culture, their nationality. All of these things are very important, and are built gradually as you go into the novel, and the deeper you write, the more youll find out about your characters anyway.
Do some characters write themselves?
Characters write themselves, is a statement about streaming consciousness in writing. Shakespeare seemed to have characters written themselves. They speak in the way only they could. An office was in control of an enterprise, but good writing will locus if all those characters are free from the author and that is the whole it fetch you.
How can I make a character believable?
The characters in fiction and characters in life are believable for the same reasons, that they are complicated, contradictory, not necessarily always articulate and honest. When I say honest, the author has to be honest in the creation of the character. You have to ask the question: Would this character really say this, or am I somehow imposing my philosophy of life on this character?
Can I have too many or too few characters?
You can have as many characters as you like in fiction. Sometimes you need at least two but it´s not essential. I can´t think of many good examples of fiction in which there is only one. You tend to need two because you need a conflict. What you do need to do is make sure that each character that you have introduced is fully developed, even the minor ones. Probably Dickens is a very good example of a writer who is very democratic to all the characters that he creates, and he creates many.
Should I base characters on people I know?
Basing characters on people is tricky, because you're usually too timid about making those characters do terrible things. Sometimes you have to base characters on people you know, but those characters in your fiction will change and will alter to such an extent that by the end of it they probably will not resemble the people they were originally formed upon.
I've based a character on someone I know will this get me into trouble?
If you base a character on someone you know, it could get you into trouble if the portrait you created is very similar to the real life character. The character may want to sue you. It is unlikely, but it does happen, of course. It is probably good practice to create fictional characters that do not resemble anyone you know in the end.
Should I base characters on myself?
I don't think you should base any character upon yourself. however, what you can do is create fictional characters and imbue them with certain of your characteristics. That is how you get close to someone who may be very foreign to you in life. And it's a way of personalizing a character in fiction. To write about your own life is not really what fiction does.
