Creating three dimensional characters isn’t easy. Writers tend to draw on real life experiences so our characters experience those universal emotions. It’s tempting to draw on real life people as well. Much easier than coming up with three dimensional people from scratch. And it can be so freeing. Yesterday at work something happened that really ticked me off. It wasn’t completely this person’s fault. I was anxious to leave so I could go swimming, I was already running behind and then I had to stay a lot longer to deal with something. So on the way home from work I decided this person would be the next victim in my serial killer book. Putting people like that in my books is how I blow off steam so I don’t get angry. And sometimes they actually give me good characters.

But do I do that all the time? No. As hard as it is to come up with sympathetic, three dimensional characters, I do create most of them from scratch. I use various methods for getting to know my characters. And I’ve discovered, partly with the help of Karin Tabke’s advice on characters, that I need to REALLY know them before I can write my stories. I use a template that is a mash up of a number of different templates. I list the basics like height, weight, hair colour, eye colour. Then I go further and pick three positive traits and one negative trait. After that I decide what secret the character has. Now this secret may never come out during the course of the book but they’ll still have a secret that they don’t want anyone to know. I figure out who their family and friends are. What their childhood was like. I figure out their favourite food, colour, music. Then I decide what their personality is like. Are they funny? Depressed? Serious? No matter what role they play in the story I give them a Save the Cat! moment. Something that makes them sympathetic.

After I do all that I figure out the really important stuff. The stuff that will drive the book. I figure out what their goal, motivation and conflict is. Internal and external. What the character wants and why will drive the story. What are they willing to do to get what they want?

One of the reasons I can’t wait to write my new urban fantasy idea is because all of that, down to who her best friend was in college, came to me in a flash. Literally. I was driving home from work and suddenly I just KNEW her. She’s really damaged but she’s going to be a lot of fun to write. I’m sure she’s hiding a few secrets even from me but I’ll find them out.

Anyone out there use real people as the basis for characters? How do you change the character so the people don’t know? If I base a character on a real person I always change something about them so even if the person who the character was based on read it, they wouldn’t know it was them. Except the protagonist in my ghost story who is actually my best friend. But she knows about it. I told her. I did change her name.

Well, off to work.

Until next time…

Cindy