Giving life to characters in any piece of writing has been one of the challenging parts to any writer of any book, comic strip, or television series out there. For both amateur and professional writers alike, sometimes it's devising a personality, differentiating the characters, or keeping simple consistency in the plot. It's even more complicated when more characters are involved as the series progresses. One would wonder how Marvel or even manga series' like One Piece are able to maintain a proper plot with tons of characters.
1) Draft - I think this is pretty self explanatory. Basic questions to ask are: What do you want your characters to look like? How do you want them to act? For me, I like to use the long term outlook of a series to determine their purpose and personality in the series. Before you know your characters, you'd at least want to know your story first.
Using one of my writings as an example, if I'm going to write a story about an organization that's hellbent on necromancy, I'm likely going to put a scientist character there that discovered the science for bringing back the dead. And chances are, his personality is going to be very fucking crazy!
What you would not see me do in that scenario is add a business man unless opportunity for the plot provides for it. (I actually did add the business man in my Threshold Story but I'll explain that later). But anyways, when I took Theater Production in high school, my teacher would tell us that "every prop on stage was usually there for a purpose. If there was a phone, then it was going to be answered."
2) Write it out - If you're still not sure if this character's personality sounds appropriate to you or the plot, then write it out, experiment, and improvise. See if it sounds right. Ask somebody else to review it for you. From my experience if I was ever unsure or just dull on ideas... or even if I had writer's block, I would simply free write randomly. My best ideas, whether in theater and writing, usually came from scribbling something down randomly until I came up with something good and presentable. A similar concept derives from "Just Do It" or "You never know unless you try" can also be applied to character creation and writing. It doesn't have to be the final product, but at least you've tried something.
3) Act It Out - As a theater person, one of the best lessons I've come across was to just act it out, even if the situation didn't call for it. Before my performances, job interviews, boring powerpoint presentation, the best things I could do to reduce any unsure feelings or anxiety was to simply practice it out as if it's already happening. And as a public speaker, frankly, I've gone from reading off a script, to flash cards, to speaking from the heart. In theater, I've learned that becoming the characters I act out as and getting into the moment tends to make me a better actor.
I also apply this to my writing. If I'm having a writer's block or am unsure of how I'm gonna incorporate my characters, I simply have to "be" them. If it means imagining myself as and acting out in front of a mirror as the crazy middle-aged mad scientist character I wrote about, so be it. Even if I was unsure about that old grumpy cat lady, you can bet I'll act as an old grumpy cat lady. And how can we become immersed in our characters? This leads to tapping into a bit of your life experience and your inner passion.
4) Life Experience - It's safe to say that writers base at least some of their characters based on the people they've met in life. Understand that we all have a role to play in life and that you're usually a different person depending on who you meet. To a parent, you're their kid. To a teacher, you're a student. To your boss, you're their subordinate. To a dog, you're their owner. Obviously, you wouldn't talk to your boss in the same nature as you'd talk to your boss. It's also important to know that everyone is uniquely shaped by their own past, living their own present, in pursuit of their own future. Consultants, doctors, and even politicians can meet with tens, perhaps hundreds of people on a daily basis and have to understand this basic concept in order to be successful in their careers and with the people they meet.
The theater and writing setting can be no different in a sense that it's very dynamic. Actors are required to adjust to the multiple characters they play, writers usually need to come up with a wide variety of plots and characters in order to meet the needs of whatever the environment demands. If it's Saturday Night Live, in which the writers and the actors/actresses have to adapt to devising a plot to parody recent political events in a short amount of time. Soap Operas, similarly, usually have the same traits, but are much more fast-paced in the case that they are indefinite and much more independent to real world events as opposed to the late night show.
Long story short: When in doubt, turn to life experiences. It doesn't hurt to base your characters off the people you meet and through life experiences. It also doesn't hurt to sit down in a public setting, talk to strangers or simply sit in the background and and just observe. Beware not to make it too obvious (using the person's real name and revealing personal/false info) otherwise you can get in serious trouble.
5) Passion - The final point I was stress is passion. Having passion is a timeless advice you'll never get tired of hearing from successful entrepreneurs, teachers, celebrities, and leaders alike. All this says is, in order to be successful in anything you do or getting what you want, whether you like it or not, give it 110% by putting your all into it.
Whether it's to write that book, script, speech, or finish that essay you were assigned in English class, you've had to have some passion to do it whether you wanted to do it or not. And usually what you got in return was near or exactly the amount of effort you put in.
When I write about characters and attempt to hone their integration into the series through steps #1-4, I wanna make sure I'm putting my effort and energy into creating something I'm proud of. Otherwise, what's the point?
Now that these are tips on how to write good characters, the next questions are, How am I going to write something that appeals to the audience? Or what's a good storyline? That's a "story" for another time.
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