Lesson #1: Characters

Character Introduction

This section is about original characters. Personally, I think this is the most important area to develop originality in.

The parts of characters that I’m going to focus on (for now) are as follows: Race/Nationality/Ethnic Group/Class, Looks, Names, Personality/Hobbies/Quirks/Skills, Occupation, and Relationships. Each of these is interlocking, and each one affects the other. For example, if your setting was in the early 1800s (we’ll discuss setting later) and the character was a ‘white human,’ you would not make their occupation “slave,” at least, you wouldn’t if you were going for a historical approach. (Though now that I think about it…that would be an interesting story line.)

Sometimes characters must fit into a specific ‘character category.’ This is because most of the time, writers try to mimic reality. If there’s a mean girl at school (which there inevitably is in any stories involving education) then she will be one of the “popular” crowd. Mean girls aren’t part of the unpopular crowd. You’ve heard similar things before. Some people almost have to be stock characters, or at least exhibit some stock character traits in order to move the main character forward. Having the main character be original is the most important thing, however.

You have to make the reader attached to your character somehow. So, the introductory lesson is: pick a character that you have already created, and write down why the reader would want to know about that character. What makes him/her/it interesting to someone else?

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