Write or Wrong: Part 1
How Do You Create Characters?
In my early stages of writing, I found a lot of myself went into creating my main characters. They were who I wanted to be, or they were slices of my life reimagined. Other characters in my books were based on friends. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s natural to pull from your own experiences and the people around you, no matter how limited — or broad — your worldliness may be.
But as I got older, and my writing style began to change, and I had a few books under my belt, and I’d experienced a lot more things in life, that all changed. This post will share some of the common things to consider when creating a character for your next story or novel.
How do I look?
In the beginning, I obsessed over how my characters looked. I painted an overly descriptive picture of them for the reader: eye color, hair color, physique, clothes, speech, etc. Young writers tend to do that because we’re writing for ourselves. We don’t have an audience yet. We’ve given birth to these characters, and we can control everything about them.
I think that’s ok if such traits are important to your story. If the eyes of a character are an integral part, then paint away! Obviously, a book about someone working in the fashion industry might play heavily into how they dress.