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Character Creaton and Inspiration



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Tue Mar 01, 2016 9:42 am
zsmith says...



Where do you get the inspiration for your characters? How do you come up with your character's entire personality?

Some of mine are loosely based on people I know, others are completely created in my head - with those ones I tend to draw inspiration from certain songs or movie characters. Sometimes I write up character profiles but I find they don't help me much.

I ask out of curiosity to find out what other people do, but I'm also asking because there's this one character I am really struggling with - I realized she wasn't likable and decided to redesign her personality, but now I have no inspiration for her character and I'm trying to find a way to get that inspiration back.
  





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Tue Mar 01, 2016 10:06 am
Zolen says...



observe actual people
Self quoting is the key to sounding wise and all knowing.
  





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Wed Mar 02, 2016 6:36 am
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Lightsong says...



Well, for me, sometimes I created characters that I wanted to be in the novel—like it needed them. Maybe this novel was too full with serious people, so I added in another character who was more lighthearted and funny.

As for my inspiration of writing them? Well, I did based them on real people, but I actually took just a bit of the people and made the character as my own. It was simply because my character and the person I based him on would have some differences in background or some other details—those differences would affect their personalities in some ways.

The non-likeable character you have there could be fixed by given her some complex issues. Like, there should be a reason why she's like that. Maybe there's an advantage of being her personality—perhaps she's more immune to persuasion, or any other form of manipulation? To sum it up, a character can't be all bad; she has to have some good redeeming qualities that she doesn't show often because of some unknown reasons.

To continue writing her character, give her a goal to achieve so that you'd know on what direction you'd lead her, and what would she accomplish at the end of the novel.
"Writing, though, belongs first to the writer, and then to the reader, to the world.

The subject is a catalyst, a character, but our responsibility is, has to be, to the work."

- David L. Ulin
  





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Wed Mar 02, 2016 2:28 pm
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steampowered says...



One of the first things I do is think of the kinds of people I want. For example, I wanted a really flirty character in a story I wrote ages ago. That was literally all I knew about him.

Following on from this single character trait, I added in a couple of others much later on, such as that he was also arrogant. When the story failed to go anywhere because I didn't care about him and didn't really know what I was doing, I stepped back from the traits and started thinking, "how might somebody who is arrogant and flirty behave?" That gave me some rough ideas for what kind of conflicts he could create and how other people might react to him.

Generally, characters morph a lot when I get to know them better and they cease to become archetypal. For example, the aforementioned character has become the protagonist in a new story of mine, but he's no longer simply "arrogant" or "flirty." Working off the arrogant trait, he can be selfish and he outwardly projects a sense of self-importance, but it thinly veils his deep insecurity.

I completely got rid of the flirty trait later on, when I realised it no longer matched the kind of character I wanted.
Live well. Learn lots. Question everything.
  





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Sat Mar 12, 2016 8:30 pm
micamouth says...



Here are some things that inspired me.

- real, live people (my best friend inspired Tabitha Allen from Forgotten Fire and there are similarities between many of my characters and real people that I know personally)
- seasons (Faihrah was inspired by autumn, and Tiru by winter)
- art
- music (unknown-bad-guy from The August Province was inspired by Looking Like This by Lyre le Temps)
- patterns. Yes, patterns.
- a simple appearance (Jorah started off as just a half-Asian girl with dark hair and grey eyes, and evolved from there)
formerly Sagitta
  





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Sun Mar 20, 2016 1:05 am
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Rosendorn says...



I build everything from their base emotional reaction.

Ie, I pick one word that sums up how the character approaches life, and take everything from that word, up.

A recent-ish character I made started with the basic word of "stoic." "Emotionally reserved" quickly followed, as did "unpredictable" because nobody could read vem and figure out where ve was going. Shortly thereafter other traits such as background— educated in a monastery— and reactions— ice cold anger when faced with injustice— came to light. Everything was restrained so I tried to figure out what would make vem snap, or happy. I figured out ve was mistrusting, too, and the reserved air was a defence mechanism to make it nobody else could misuse vem, like ve had been misused in the past.

And within just a few scenes with this character I had a fairly well formed individual. Still working on vem, because character creation never truly stops, but it's been enough everyone else gets the basic idea of how to write with the character without much help from me.
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  








A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
— Jean Cocteau