How to Create Characters Who Come Alive

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Many beginning writers think the answer has to do with what the story's about.? They get dramatic with car wrecks, passionate romance, serial killers... They raise the volume and the body count.
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- C9 K8 J* B+ w; S9 a% j  NTo make readers feel that your characters are real people, the first step is convincing yourself.
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1 B: x1 @: [* w8 @* s3 |Here's the problem with that theory.? People normally don't cry or lose sleep over the accidents, love affairs,christian louboutin sale, or deaths of complete strangers.? Otherwise, just reading the front page of the newspaper every day would give anyone a nervous breakdown.
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Character profiles are a great tool for getting to know your characters so that they start to come alive for you.? Make notes for yourself about the character's looks, past history, family, personality, relationships, habits, hopes and fears.? Some writers have lists of questions that they answer about every character, in areas such as:

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% w5 y1 J4 z# C9 h( P1 N0 PWhat's the number one secret to writing fiction that readers will care about, fiction that keeps them up all night reading, that makes them cry and fall in love?
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Basic information: (name, age, general physical description…) Relationships: (friends, family, relationships with men, relationships with women…) Tastes and interests: (hobbies, sports, favorite foods…) Personality: (sense of humor, temper,abercrombie jackets, strongest positive and negative personality traits…) Attitudes and beliefs: (ambitions, religion, philosophy of life…)
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! W" M! u4 S9 PAs you are writing,juicy couture tracksuits, you should constantly ask yourself,polo ralph lauren, "What would this character do now? What would he or she say? How would she or he react? What would happen next?"? Trust the answers.? Never push the characters to act in a way that isn't natural to them.? If you try to cheat, the characters or the story will feel false.
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* X- |( X' }$ [8 |/ J5 ]/ b Start with people you know. But the novelist A.S. Byatt recommends basing a fictional character not on a single real person, but on a combination of several people.? This gives your imagination more room to work. Start with people-watching. When you're walking through the mall, sitting in the dentist's waiting room, standing in line at the supermarket, look at the people around you and imagine lives for them. Start with a photograph. Choose a picture of a person in a magazine and invent a name for him or her, a family, a personality, strengths and weaknesses, fears and secret desires. Start with a name. Open a phone book to a random page and choose a name.? Let's say you pick "L. Weatherbed."? What could the "L." stand for?? Write down the first thing that occurs to you -- for example,ed hardy hoodies, Lillian.? If you picture someone named Lillian Weatherbed, what mental image comes to mind?? I see a woman about fifty years old, small and bony, with frizzy blondish hair,nike air max, buck teeth, oversized glasses.? Turn the name you've picked into a character.


Don't try to pack all this background information into your fiction.? Readers will not want to read a background file on every character.? The character profile is a tool to deepen your own knowledge of the characters.? Your knowledge will allow you to make the right choices in your story or novel so that the characters come through as real people.
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% j6 [( G7 H" t, L! t9 MHow to invent a character
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( u: h9 {: \, i, h% C4 a: z( jNot sure how to come up with fictional characters?? Here are some possible places to begin:
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How to make the character feel real
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# t" `" ^- K6 |But if you do things right, the characters will come alive for your readers as real people that they know and care about.


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So if you can make readers feel like your characters are real people they know, then readers will care what happens to those characters.? They will worry about your characters' problems, turn pages to see what happens, feel sad when things go wrong or relieved when things work out.? They will become absorbed in your story.
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You can get free character development worksheets on the Creative Writing Now website.

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Caution
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No, the truth is that most people get more upset about the small problems of someone close to them than they do about the big problems of somebody they've never met.