Creating Characters

 by Sybil Johnson

Creating characters for stories is both fun and challenging. I worry sometimes that the ones I’ve created are too much alike, that readers won’t be able to distinguish between them. Or find them boring or unbelievable or...

I’m always thinking about different ways to create characters that will produce different personalities. These 2 books have been helpful to me: Getting Into Character by Brandilyn Collins and Creating Characters by Dwight V. Swain. They’ve both been around awhile. I still find them helpful. They are definitely worth reading.

 

In my books, I have a theme for each story. In my latest, Brush Up On Murder, love is the theme since it’s set around Valentine’s Day. I created characters who show love in different ways. The love might be for a parent, child, friend, a romantic partner, the world in general. How far would they go for that loved one? How do they express this love? I hope by doing this the characters are different enough and they make the story interesting. I also do mini bios when I have a feel for the character to delve more deeply into their personality. For my short stories, I do mini bios.

I’ve been thinking about other methods for creating characters. Here are a couple: 

Using characteristics of animals: I’ve often heard people describing others as being like an animal. He’s a dog, she’s a cat... I think that would be interesting to use to create characters. 

Me? I’m a cat for sure. I consider myself to be independent. I don’t mind spending time alone. I can entertain myself. I do like to socialize, though, just not a huge amount. I’m an observer. Our cats, when we had them, did a lot of looking out windows, observing the world. Okay, they were probably looking for birds or squirrels, but they were still observing. I’m generally easygoing, but I do have my limits. I remember our vet describing cats as animals that will let you do things for a bit but, once their limit is hit, the hissing starts and the claws come out. That pretty much describes me.

Using astrology: I don’t mean you need to figure out when a character was born and cast their horoscope. Though, hey, if that’s what you want to do, go for it. I mean reading an astrology book that describes the personality characteristics of different signs and using them to create characters. You get some opposing signs involved, you’ll probably have conflict.

I’ve not used either approach yet, but I keep on thinking they would be interesting.

For the writers out there, how do you go about creating characters? What is your process?