Getting To The Heart Of Your Story Part 1: Meeting Your Characters

Welcome to the first part of my new four-post series: Getting To The Heart Of Your Story! I'm super excited to do this for the next month!

As writers, we're constantly growing and learning. I want to share with you what I've learned so far in this crazy journey called writing.

So, let's do this:

(Pictures from Pinterest)

 Say Hello

 (warning: this is where you lose your right to be called 'rational.')

Characters: the living, breathing heart and soul of the story (if hearts and souls breathe...?) Without good characters, there's no story. Every reader will put down the book or cringe all the way through it. Worse yet, they'll hate your characters. You don't want that. So in order for your reader to love your characters, you have to love them. How?

Know them. How?

Meet them.

Usually, I picture my protagonist right off the bat. Sometimes it's just a phrase or a feeling, like: He's a rebel at heart or She likes the forest. Then this blurry little imaginary character comes skipping into my mind. Who is he? What's he like? What does he do? (When I say "he" I could mean "she" as well, as a side note)

  

Go meet him.

Close your eyes and strut down the path to him. Introduce yourself. Is he nervous? Is he prideful? Guarded? 

Time to come back to the normal world and do some digging.

   

Personality 

I start with personality, because I think personality highly impacts appearance.

From the start, you should have a vague idea of who this character is going to be: the rebel, the guardian, the adventurer... anything. I start this process by scratching down random little thoughts, like: He can never stay in one place, but his loyalties don't fluctuate. He can seem....

Then, lo and behold, you have a rough character outline.

Ready to dig deep? Ready to be officially classified as crazy?

Go pretend you are the character.

Go do something as that character: walk the dog, run errands, finish math--anything. Then, take that feeling, and go do a personality quiz, pretending you are the character.

I do 16 Personalities (Myers Briggs) with my characters. Sometimes I'll already have an idea of who I  want them based off studying the personalities (yes, writers study people), or I'll go in randomly for the test. Have fun with this. I mean, you get to pretend to be someone else without becoming an actor--which is awesome.

If you've never taken Myers Briggs before, I suggest doing it so you can get the feel for how it works (and maybe be shocked how accurate it can be). Read up a bit on your character's personality: I find it's a great guideline in the first stages of character development. Who knows? Maybe you'll have the same personality as your character!

If this idea of pretending to be a different person scares you, it isn't necessary to take the quiz. I just like to get some base-layer to work with for my character, and find it fascinating to look at things from other peoples' points of view.

(and if you were wondering, I'm the one who can say something intelligent one moment and walk into a wall the next, and is quite proud of her ability to "extrovert") 

Appearance

This section is brief, as your character's appearance is relatively easy to decide. Look at some actors if you need something to spark your imagination. I find Pinterest to be extremely helpful in this aspect of character creation.

You're stumped and need to mess around with some different appearances? Try an Avatar creator (silly, right?) This is the one I use. If you can do it without cracking up and moving a nose up to an eye, great (I've done that). It's just so you can get some idea of how your character looks. (I'd put one of mine on here, but I think I'd just die of embarrassment XD)

(Pictures from Pinterest)

    Dig Deeper

That character feeling pretty real so far? Good. Characters should be like real people to writers (they are for me, anyway). And, like real people, characters aren't perfect; they're gray. No perfect good or perfect evil. Give them flaws. Give them problems. I cannot begin to stress how important this is, but will so in next week's post.

You have lots of layers to you, right? Hopes. Dreams. Fears. Problems. Guess what? So does your character! You just have to unveil them. This list I've found to be OUTSTANDING at doing that.

But wow, that's a ton of questions. And it is, but if this is your protagonist or antagonist, you're going to want to take some time to do this. You should know more than you share in your novel. So....

Say hello to Kara.

(Pictures from Pinterest)

   I'd do an interview with her, but... let's just say "spoilers." Anyway, you might have seen her pinned up on Pinterest (sounds disturbing). She's my wonderful protagonist who I've been working with for the past three years. Her character has been H-A-R-D. It's gone up and down and I could never decide....

Even after three years?

If that's what you're thinking, yes, even after three years, I'm still learning more about my hero. That's how deep your main character should be. Because if you don't know him, how will the reader?

You might be staring at your huge cast and groaning right now. So, I'm going to bring in another of my characters, one who is super excited to be here.

Meet Miriam... minus that jacket that's really out of the time period for the planet she's on.

(I'm in italics, she's in bold)

(Pictures from Pinterest)

 

 Hi, Miriam!

Hello! Oooh! Who are all these people? Are they -

Shh! This is serious!

*shuts mouth and nods* Okay. I'll be quiet now.

Anyway... Miriam is one of my minor characters

*jumps up* I'm - 

A minor character, but still important. I brought her here to talk about her character creation. Miriam *lowers voice* don't... you know what.

*beams* Alright, I wasn't in the original version of the story, but Audrey recently added me back in. I guess you could say I'm in a bunch of scenes, which is awesome! There's this one when - 

Miriam!

I'm not supposed to say, but it's so great! Anyway, I'm pretty much present through a lot of the story, but Audrey never did a profile on me.

She means that list of questions.

Yeah. She doesn't not know me, but I didn't have to sit through one of her interviews. Anguis did one though, and he said -- 

He lied. I don't use force.

*grins* Okay. But maybe one day I'll get to do one. Audrey doesn't always do them with her main characters though. I heard she's adding a girl named Skye to her sequel, and Skye doesn't have a profile yet. She's a - 

Thank you very much, Miriam. You can go back to.... *waves hand* You know what I mean.

*squeezes the life out me* Alright! This was so fun, Audrey! I - 

*clears throat* She can be that way. But, back to the main point, you don't always have to interview every character. The more you know about your character, the better!

(I think I have succeeded in showcasing every writer's craziness in this post)

Check back next week for part 2: Embodying Your Characters. Sound freaky? We're not even halfway, yet ;-)

<3 

- Audrey Caylin

Talk to me! How do you "meet" your characters? Have you used any of these methods?