When Creating Characters Let Reality Inspire You
First-Timers Should Put A Little Of Themselves Into A Novel
Creating characters becomes easier when authors use inspiration from the world around them. Whether it’s the same personality traits as a best friend, or the same physical appearance as a loved one, the writer’s comfort increases and the characters become more relatable.
Create Composite Characters, With Interests Similar To Yours
Novel writing for first-timers can be a daunting task. Authors could simplify it by creating characters that are composites of people they know. Physically they could have the same eyes as a cousin, the same build as a friend. They could have a similar sense of humour to yours, or be as serious as your father. By using people in their lives, an author makes their characters more relatable for their readers, easier to write, thereby making the novel-writing process a little less scary.
Now the author has the physical characteristics, and personality of their characters down, it’s time to write their interests. Here again, it helps to draw inspiration from their lives. If the author is a history buff, create a character interested in history. If they love hockey, build the story around a hockey player. Having similar interests makes it easier to write. The possibilities are endless!
Keep Characters’ Responses Realistic, Ask Yourself: How Would I React?
Even the characters’ responses to certain situations can be based on real-life. Say you’re writing a romance, and stuck on a scene where the hero proposes marriage to the heroine. Why not have it loosely based on what happened between your friends or relatives? Or be creative, and take pieces form each situation to make it your own. In certain situations, making the character responses realistic helps readers connect more with them.
When deciding how a character should respond in a given situation, the author should ask themselves how they would respond in a given situation. Say you’re writing a mystery, and you have a character that gets put in jail for a murder they didn’t commit. The writer should as the question: How Would I React? If you’d be bitter, have your character respond in a bitter way. If you’d be angry, and determined to find out who really did it, then that’s what the character’s response should be.
Drawing inspiration from real life, or writing what you know may sound like the oldest cliché to most writers. But for the writers starting a first novel it’s good to remind themselves of it. When writing that first novel, create characters that are composites of people you know in real life, with similar interests and responses. Finding inspiration in real life allows readers a chance to become connected to characters, and it makes it easier for a first-time author to write.
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