Goodreads Authors/Readers discussion
Bulletin Board
>
Creating characters from scratch
date
newest »
newest »
You skirted on the edge of contradiction there: "All of my characters are like my children and they all have one thing in common. They are not modeled after any single, real person that I know."Then you go on to say all your characters are modeled after people you know.
I readily admit all my characters are people I've known and I mix their traits as well.
There's a good reason most authors do the same - because real people are about the weirdest, craziest characters ever.
It never ceases to amaze me what people do.
I think what Niel meant by that piece you quoted, Ed, was that they're based on a mix of people he knows, not one single person.
Characters for me are a mosaic: a little bit of this and a little bit of that: How I visualize them, their clothing their environment and more importantly what motivates them depends on the demands of the story...both the story and characters change as the tale grows
My characters are what they need to be for the story they're in. Some are based on my pets, some are based on a combination of people I know, and others aren't intentionally based on anyone but are just the characters that developed along with the story.
Mine usually come to me already formed as their own person. I rarely base one on a real person, and when I've tried, they always show their own personality and end up being nothing like the person I wanted to base them on.
My characters are all different facets of myself, whether they are a female assassin; a blind jazz musician; a home-growing Rastafarian session musician; a bisexual sculptress; a heroin-addicted Chinese sniper; a mute enforcer; a huge but gentle biker; a legless bar-owner; a half-paralyzed tattoo artist; or a DEA special agent battling alcohol addiction.
Lena wrote: "Mine usually come to me already formed as their own person. I rarely base one on a real person, and when I've tried, they always show their own personality and end up being nothing like the person ..."That's how mine are, but some elements of myself might show up. One of my male characters wrote a poem, and until I read it out of the story, I did not realize that it was somewhat autobiographal.
Characters grow as I get to know them. Sometimes a gesture appears or they say something unexpected which somehow expresses something I always knew about them.
I start out with a general idea and then after a while, they take over and insist I write them a certain way. Bits of them are from my own personality, likes and dislikes etc. but as I have pointed out on my blog about my fanfiction, I'm learning things about myself that I never knew and turning more into my character than the other way around. Some of what they do comes from things I wish I had done or said, so there's a bit of wish fulfillment too.
Neil wrote: "I’m often asked by media and friends how do I create my characters? At last count I have somewhere in the neighborhood of over one hundred spread over my nine published and three unpublished books...."Neil,
LOL is such a cliché, but you literally made my laugh. It was the bit about you ex and her suspicions. That was hilarious. I don't need to sketch characters modeled after real people. I have an imagination that runs 24/7. That's where my characters start and grow. How it works? I have no idea.
When I begin a story I give my imagination a concept. After that I check back periodically and watch these movie clips that have been prepared for me. In turn I show the reader what my invisible companion shows me.
I never know the ending of my stories beyond the most general terms. The bad guy gets it. I don't know how or where until it's shown to me. I've been shocked more than once by some character's dialog or action.
I've had to kill some very good characters, but not all by design. Sometimes it's demanded of me. Oh, I've tried to resist. I suppose you've heard of writer's block. When I relent or go back and fix whatever problem I've created the creative flow is turned back on.
Yeah, it's that bad. The only thing worse than deviating from the master plan is quitting. I've thrown my laptop in the trash a few times, disgusted with the dysfunction of the publisher/agent/author dynamic, but every time I do my imagination explains that it's either my fingers or my brains on the keyboard.
It reads everything I write.
Help me!
ScaryBob
Martyn wrote: "My characters are all different facets of myself, whether they are a female assassin; a blind jazz musician; a home-growing Rastafarian session musician; a bisexual sculptress; a heroin-addicted Ch..."I knew you were deep and complicated. (Smile)
I allow aspects of myself into my characters--Mae is a runner and fitness professional, Bernadette is a college professor--but at the same time I makes sure none of them are directly based on my personality. My protagonist is inspired by a close friend. After I wrote certain life events into the books, those things began to happen to my friend--before she read the books, too.
My character who gets the strongest reader responses (aside from Mae, the series protagonist), is Jamie in Shaman's Blues. He showed up whole in what was meant to be another book and took over. I had to get to know him, listen to him, honor his eccentricities, do research to get certain details right once I knew his story, but he was a character in search of an author. He ended up requiring me to write Shaman's Blues.
Amber wrote: "I knew you were deep and complicated. (Smile)"Thanks.
I like the idea of 'a character in search of an author'.
I don't deserve credit. I was making a reference to a play by Luigi Pirandello. Six Characters in Search of an Author
>.
"There are two basic reactions. There are those who hate you because they think you put them in your book, and there are those who hate you because they think you didn't put them in your book."
~ HANIF KUREISHI
Amber wrote: "I don't deserve credit. I was making a reference to a play by Luigi Pirandello. Six Characters in Search of an Author."I know. I read the graphic novel version by Milo Manara.
Jack wrote: ""There are two basic reactions. There are those who hate you because they think you put them in your book, and there are those who hate you because they think you didn't put them in your book."
..."
Great quote!
I got into chapter 10 [of 144] and decided 'Gee. I need a character who chases my heroes.' Little did I know this unanticipated character would wind up driving half the action of the rest of the book.Creating characters is hard? Heck - it's hard *NOT* to create characters!
Chester wrote: "I got into chapter 10 [of 144] and decided 'Gee. I need a character who chases my heroes.' Little did I know this unanticipated character would wind up driving half the action of the rest of the bo..."Sometimes they do seem to just show up. I created a boy for one scene, and he grew into a major influence, and will probably get his own book.
Selena wrote: "I start out with a general idea and then after a while, they take over and insist I write them a certain way. Bits of them are from my own personality, likes and dislikes etc. but as I have pointed..."Selena, I have experiences much like yours. I begin with a germ of a character which generally takes a life of his/her own and grow in complexity and completeness.
It is said, don't know if true, that Charles Schultz designed the population of 'Peanuts' from astrology signs and their characteristics.
To each his own, I guess.
I think all of my characters appear that way. I don't even do an outline, because I fear that would make things predictable. I'm not truly sure where I am going with the story. It's like, "Hmm. Let's write a story about a woman coming to America in 1820. What is the ship like, how can I make her life hell?"
In my book "The Creek:Where Stories of the Past Come Alive" I wrote a love making scene with a newly wed couple, but thought "What would shock people at this moment?" Then .. well... I won't tell you, but every reader thus far has said, "Wow! I wasn't expecting that!" lol That is because I don't prepare ahead of time. If you know where and who you are going with, then it could become predictable.
www.rhodadettore.com
My characters tend to have parts of my personality but also personality traits of their own. I wouldn't say any of them are based on anyone I know but are more based on general personality traits and what I feel motivates them. I hope that makes sense.
Steven wrote: "It is said, don't know if true, that Charles Schultz designed the population of 'Peanuts' from astrology signs and their characteristics.Oh now there's an idea!
When I base a character on someone I personally know, I never tell the person because I'm afraid they'll take it the wrong way. Once I was so worried about a friend's reaction to basing a character on them I kept the story I'd written a secret from them because even though I'd changed the name and some other details there were certain things about the character that made it obvious that he was my inspiration.
I don't think I've ever used a real person for a character or even a basis for one. Primary characters step into my head fully formed with personalities of their own. I may learn the reasons for their personal quirks, but they aren't composites of anyone I've met. Secondary characters show up as needed and their personalities come with them. Perhaps it's the genre?
When people suggest that a character in my work is based upon a real person, I am vaguely offended. I don't need to borrow from reality. I can make up from whole cloth perfectly well.
Goin' Postal: True Stories of a U.S. Postal Worker & The Creek: Where Stories of the Past Come Alivewell... my workplace is a comical place, hence my book "Goin Postal: True Stories of a US Postal Worker". Since I published and the book were flying out the door due to the postal workers buying them, they have pretty much demanded a new book. I mean, seriously... where else would you find human heads, alligators, anthrax, bombs, and crazy people who want to set themselves on fire???Guess what? My co-workers are telling me what anecdotes to put in the book, AND they want me to use their real names so their families can see it! LOL They even argued over who the characters in the first book were! lol
What is the process that some of you go through to create characters?I write real inspirational books, so I've never had to go through the creative process of making up a character. Seems like an awesome process though.
-Nihar
www.niharsuthar.com
@NiharSuthar
Nihar wrote: "What is the process that some of you go through to create characters?I write real inspirational books, so I've never had to go through the creative process of making up a character. Seems like an ..."
In my case, the story and the scenes come before the development of the characters, and the characters are usually developed based on their reactions to the scenes.
I love characters because most of them come to me to serve a purpose, fill a specific role. I'm what's known as a "pantser" not a "plotter" because I seldom plot out a book, but "write by the seat of my pants." I envision a person in a particular situation that intrigues me, or has just popped into my mind when I'm playing "what if" with myself. I've studied some psychology and that helps me determine each character's likely response to a specific stimulus, but most of the time, about halfway into the first draft, the characters take over and refuse to stay in the role I've assigned them. This makes for interesting plot twists I had no idea were going to occur. I'm sure I use bits and pieces of people I know, but seldom consciously. I do tweak anecdotes I've heard or read about to give each character a background and depth as well as reasons for behaving in a certain way. This has worked for me for over 55 novels and while I've tried on a few foolish occasions to plot a novel, I always go back to the old way of giving my "people" their heads when they decide they, the characters, are actually writing the story. I'm nothing but their medium.
Nihar wrote: "What is the process that some of you go through to create characters?"Mine just waltz into the story, put up their feet and ask me what their part is going to be like. I tell them, 'You're going to be a heroin-addicted sniper' and they nod and say, 'Cool, anything else I need to know?', and I'll say, 'Nope, just imagine that you're the main character in your story, despite what the protagonist might say', and then we're off...
Judy wrote: "I love characters because most of them come to me to serve a purpose, fill a specific role. I'm what's known as a "pantser" not a "plotter" because I seldom plot out a book, but "write by the seat ..."These often make the best characters.
I agree with most of the folks who don't base their characters off of real people [unless, of course you have to throw an historical figure in - had to do quite a number of those].Just for fun, I'd like to take this discussion off on a tangent for a bit. How do you guys come up with character NAMES?
For my novel [set in Napoleonic France], it was fairly simple. I needed about 300 names, so I just googled a list of French artists between 1650-1850, printed it out and then went to work.
I would take the first name of fellow #1, then pair it with the last name of fellow #4. Didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would.
For my fantasy books coming up, I did something similar. I looked up baby names in various cultures I am unfamiliar with [like 18th century Latvians] and used them as the base for a series of names. eg: if a real name happened to be 'votyjarer' I would transliterate it as 'varjyt' [which is easier for me to say and becomes original].
But don't tell anybody when the books come out. ;-)
Your Buddy, Chester
Pulling up the lists of Olympic or soccer athletes of the appropriate country also works well, I am told.I am writing a novel set in Britain of 1890, and have here a Reader's Digest volume about English villages. I am mining it for surnames -- a tip I picked up from Georgette Heyer.
If you're going the full fantasy route, and need Orcish names or something like that, consider Scrabble tiles. You can select the 'look' of the names (frequent use of the letter K, let us say) by picking out a subset of tiles, and then start throwing in vowels and creating variants.
I theoretically keep a baby name book next to my computer. In practice, my child bears it away for his own secretive literary endeavors. We suspect they involve Transformers fanfic. As a result I usually resort to Google, but I think I reuse names in different books/series more than I should, especially since I mostly need men's names and there are far fewer in common usage than there are women's.
Brenda- Scrabble sounds like too much work and too limited to my pea brain. I prefer to get a list of 100-200 names then alter them.For different races/countries/ethnicities, I just choose different countries.
DC - you got the right idea. Did you know there are websites with baby names for Mongolia? ;-) Wheeee!
For every book I put together a list of names of characters [all on the same sheet - no details, just names]. Doing this for your different series should keep you from reuse too much as it will allow you to check each list quickly.
Your Buddy, Chester
In 2008, I began writing Surviving the Fog. It had a potential of more than fifty characters, so I wondered how readers could keep track of that many. Believing that first names and last names are stored in separate memory cells, I decided to use only first names. Several readers have commented on how easy it was to remember the characters despite having so many.
Stan - interesting. I would have thought that the 10th reference to Bob on the same page would make my readers batty, so I try to mix it up by using first/last/title. I've never had any comments on that either way, so I may need to start asking.Sounds like you had a completely different experience.
How do you get away with so few characters in a long novel? Of course - both of my projects involve military units which sort of needs a roster....
Another fun question - what's some of the most unusual names you've ever made up?
I have a pair of master wizards that were really old before they were buried for 700 years under tons of rock at the bottom of a lake before a critter wizard dug them up [needless to say, there's not much left of their minds at this point - but they're still evil!]. I named them Qehemet and Qiftali. Seemed like the thing to do at the time.
Your Buddy, Chester
Stan and Martyn,Cool, thanks for sharing your process! It seems like you kind of go with the flow :)
-Nihar
www.niharsuthar.com
@NiharSuthar
I love picking names. I usually make them symbolic but sometimes I just pick one that I like. Or in one case, I named my character what I would have been named had my father named me instead.
Chester wrote: "Brenda- Scrabble sounds like too much work and too limited to my pea brain. I prefer to get a list of 100-200 names then alter them.For different races/countries/ethnicities, I just choose differ..."
I've found this site very helpful in developing names. It provides modern, ancient and mythical first names from all ethnicities. Sometimes I change the spelling a little.
http://www.behindthename.com/
E.G. - SWEET! bookmarked that puppy with a quickness. You rock, kid!Your Buddy, Chester
I get name ideas from my students--not that I steal their exact names, but I get 125 or more new last-name first-name combinations every semester.In various American Indian communities in New Mexico I pay attention to interesting and also common last names to use for for characters from those tribes. I have Zak Fatty (who is not fat) and Reno Geronimo (my favorite name I've come up with) as Mescalero Apache characters with accurate but colorful names, in two works in progress.
Another name source : the callers on Car Talk. They use first names only. A woman named Seychelles called once. I am using that in the same book with Zak Fatty (she is not from Mescalero).
I'm reading a book right now that has two Greg characters, both minor, but it's an oversight on the author's part.
I'm particular about names.For instance, the blind protagonist Bram Merleyn, mostly uses his first name, but for plot reasons I needed a last name that could also be a first name.
His first name 'Bram' has a sober kind of 'no frills' and 'solid' feel to it, without being too common/boring like 'David' or 'Bob' or 'Jan'* or 'Joop'.
Also 'Bram' is almost exclusively a Dutch name, whereas 'David' and 'Bob' are less bound to a certain locale. And while Joop and Jan are names often associated (in the Netherlands) with plainness and 'low' standing, Bram doesn't have such connotations.
* 'Jan', while mostly a female name in English-speaking countries, is pure male in the Netherlands. It's the main abbreviation for 'Johannes' (Dutch name for John the Baptist). Female form of Jan in Dutch is 'Janneke' (from Johanneke or Jojanneke). Even 'Janne' is a Frysian boy's name. The suffix -neke denotes a tiny stature, like in 'manneke' (little man) or 'kanneke' (small pitcher). Here endeth the lesson...
Some of my fan fic characters are named for friends and relatives and some are theme named. I initially thought about theme naming some of the characters in one of my novels but thought some of my choices were pushing it a bit (fire themed if you're wondering) so everyone's now nameless at the moment.
As for my collaborative project, my friends named their characters themselves, but we all have "significant" names. Or at least our alter egos do.
I choose most of my character's and some of their traits from movies. The main character in my series was from an old Jules Vern movie. I don't even remember the actors name, but I liked how he played the role in the movie. I base the names of my characters on their part in the story. Feminine, masculine, sexy, shy. I try to choose a name to match their personality.
Goodreads Authors/Readers
Books mentioned in this topic
Goin' Postal: True Stories of a U.S. Postal Worker & The Creek: Where Stories of the Past Come Alive (other topics)Six Characters in Search of an Author (other topics)
Each of my individual characters are a conglomeration, a mix, of people I’ve known and associated with over the course of my life. This naked truth always perplexes my friends who often tell me that a certain character is just like them in every way and how much they relate to that particular character. I’ve even had an old girlfriend (before I was married) get angry with me because she thought a character in one of my novels was too much like her. I had to assure my ex that the psycho girl (who needs to be highly medicated but isn’t taking her anti-psychotic pills) in my novel was not based on her, but on at least eight different people, most of whom I went to college with. I’m not certain if she believed me or not but I recently noticed that she un-friended me on Facebook..
When I write I transform into and become my characters. I become the clairvoyant prostitute and the daring young man fighting an alien insect invasion. I am the disfigured 9/11 hero and the dignified young woman dying of cancer. I immerse myself in these characters and their worlds and live for a time in the fantasy. It would be hard for me to pretend to be someone I know as a person, if that makes any sense.
To read more about my world and my books please check out my blog: ALWAYS WRITING
http://www.neilostroff.blogspot.com