Five Steps to Creating Characters-Step Four

 

Five Steps to Creating Characters—Step Four

In February I talked about Make a character likeable by making someone like them. Linked below. In March I talked about Character Arcs, linked below. In April I talked about giving characters quirks, link below. 

This month I’m talking about my main characters types.

1.      Make a character likeable by making someone like them

2.     Character arcs

3.      Give them quirks

4.      My main character types

5.      Avoid backstory dumps

My main character types. This part is sort of my standard set-up. I almost always start with three main character types. But often I abandon them as part of introducing them to readers. In fiction, I stick to the main types until they become inconvenient, which is often immediately but they are my starting point.

The delicate flower

The business woman

The wild child

In the Lumber Baron’s Daughter series Book #1 heroine Laura Stiles is my Delicate Flower. Laura, her sweet, compassionate child. The blue-eyed blonde who was a fine-boned, feminine version of her father, Liam Stiles. Laura, who knew how to blow things up.

Book #2 heroine Michelle Stiles is the business woman. Michelle the leader, the calm one who took charge of the sweet Laura and the fiery Jillian, and they mostly let her. Michelle the mechanical engineer who saw all the details and made everything and everyone work together.

Book #3 heroine Jilly Stiles is the wild child. Jillian, the one with the oddly mathematical mind who made theories work. She’d been educated to build trestles across vast gorges, and build railroad tracks into the heart of a mountain. A fiery green-eyed red-head, a throw-back to her papa’s Irish grandmother.

Those three types. That’s how I start. In my current work in progress my delicate flower is a lot tougher than she looks, but then characters often differ from their surface appearance. The business woman and the wild child are a little blurry. They’re both business woman working in a man’s world. So does that make those two characters business-wild-child women? Not sure. But I write in three book series and those are my jumping off places. Business woman, or take-charge woman maybe. The delicate flower, in this case the widow of a dead lawman. She learned more from the jerk she was married to than even she realized. And the wild child. Fiery, red-headed Jillian who loathes the very idea of marriage. She won’t say why, but they know it has something to do with their stepfather.

While I usually start out with those three character types I am in no way bound by them.

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