By: Peter Rey
You can write a romance. You can write a thriller
or a fantasy. You can write whatever kind of story you want.
In any case you’re at least going to have to
create a character.
More likely, you’re going to have to fill your
stories up with characters. A lot of them.
And chances are that in most cases you’re going
to have to create them from scratch—especially if you want to avoid being sued.
As a result, it’s important to know how to
create a character as interesting and compelling as possible. After all, a
story can be extremely promising from a purely plot-wise point of view,
nevertheless it can fall flat on its face if the characters populating it are
nothing more than banal stereotypes.
After all, when we pick up a book we want to be
moved, thrilled, scared. We want to get a glimpse of interesting and unexpected
hypotheses about the meaning of life, of death and whatever else in between.
But for sure we don’t want to be fed with banalities, with stale and flat
characters.
The key ingredient to create a character who
feels real
Looking around on the Internet it’s all too easy
to come across many articles detailing how to create compelling characters.
They tell you characters must be compassionate,
likable, very good at least at one thing. They must be bright and self-assured.
They must be brave and sensible. They must have evocative names and interesting
backstories.
This list could go on for quite a while, but the
truth about such a litany of “desirable traits “ is that even though they can
be helpful, they don’t help beginning writers to get to the core of the
question.
In fact, what a character really needs, if he or
she is to become a memorable one, is a good amount of complexity and
conflict.
Just this.
I mean. It’s like in real life. We may know a lot
of people superficially. But it’s only those we get to know better we fall
in love with, or really come to loathe. There’s no way around it. The
more we know about someone, the more our feelings can grow for the better or
the worse.
In a novel, the same principle applies.
. . .
To read the rest of the post, click here:
~*~
If you missed my
latest writing and marketing tweets, here they are again:
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