Plunging into your characters…
I follow a number of blogs, from everything for Zombie Preparedness, to writing techniques, to pure humor. One of my favorites is Kristen Lamb at warriorwriters.wordpress.com and this week she hit on something I’ve been chatting over with some other writerly friends for awhile–how do make your characters ‘real’?
As writers, we’ve been told many, many, many times (ad naseum) that there only so many archetypes for our characters, to differentiate them we have to make them ‘unique’. Uh-huh, right then and how do we do that? Well, I like what Kristen’s outline in her blog so I’m linking it right here:
Take the time to read this post. I’m a hugely character driven writer, so the more complex and intricate I can make my peeps, the more ‘real’ they come across to my readers. No one wants to read the same stereotype character with a different hair color/eye color/warts/plaid/polka dots/height. The more you can shade them, giving them corners no one wants to admit to having the more your readers will be inclined to follow along and invest themselves in your world.
It’s sharing time….feel free to add bits and pieces you’ve discovered in making your characters ‘real’.
