Planning Characters

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. – Ernest Hemingway

Characters are very important for books. They often make or break the book.

I know that I have stopped reading books because the characters just don’t work for me.

Today I want to share with you some of the things that I tend to use or figure out when I am building characters.

Character Sheets

I usually start by getting a character sheet. I usually use this one from the NaNoWriMo. It covers a lot of things and as long as I have a vague idea of what that character is it works well.

The only problem is that I have to know something about the character before I start.

Personality Quizzes

Myers-Briggs. Enneagram. Hogwarts house.

If I know enough about that character I will pretend to be that character and take those tests for them.

Or if I don’t feel like taking the time to do that I will figure it out without having them take the test.

This helps me to have a better idea of how they would respond to certain situations.

Each Character Has Their Own Motive

Remembering this is important because this is what helps them to be important to the story.

If a character has their own motive it really helps the character to become real, and that should be every author’s goal to not write characters, but people.

Test Run

Just start writing with the character. Usually not the actual story because this is a time that the character is still developing.

Writing with the character just helps me learn about them and really how they would respond to a situation.

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So, that is how I usually figure out my characters. How to you create your characters?

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