Characters are crucial to your writing. They make your writing come alive to the reader; good characters should become almost real to the reader. You are creating a friend for your reader to journey through the story with or a villain for them to dislike. A good character stays with your reader long after they finish the book.
So How Do You Create Characters?
You meet your story characters in a variety of different often surreal ways.
For example, J.K. Rowling first met Harry Potter when he strolled into her consciousness while sitting in a train. The character becoming a catalyst for the story.
Other times you base your characters on people who you have met in the past, as in the case of Severus Snape. Who Rowling explained was based on a former teacher. “Snape is the very sadistic teacher loosely based on a teacher I had, I have to say. Children are very aware and we're kidding ourselves if we don't think that they are—that teachers do sometimes abuse their power and this particular teacher does abuse his power. He is not a particularly pleasant person at all.”
Writers will often base their characters on people who have had a big impact on their lives whether for good or bad reasons - most people have seen the relatively true meme warning that if you upset an author, they will kill you in their book!
Or even worse, they will assassinate your character. For example, a reviewer named Michael Crowley has alleged that after he wrote a negative review of Michael Crichton's novel ‘State of Fear,’ Crichton libelled him by including a character named "Mick Crowley" in the novel, ‘Next.’ In the novel, Mick Crowley was described as being a paedophile with a small penis, which is probably far worse than having your character killed in a book! Obviously, if you write a character overtly based on one person it is best to either get their permission or change the character so your readers cannot readily identify them. A libel case may bring publicity to your novel but comes with an expensive price tag.
Personally, I would never want to be reminded of a person I didn’t like, so I would not want them in one of my books because it would spoil the book for me. Therefore, if you end up a character in one of my novels it means I like you. Even if your character does come to a rather bad end.
Other times an author can create a character from a composite of different people they have encountered. I notice how people talk, dress, and speak and tend to compile a composite character’s other times like Rowling characters will just wander into my mind.
There is no one right way of creating characters, just have fun, write and they will come to you!
Keep Writing!
P.J. :)
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