Basic Guide for Character Creation

Welcome! This article will hopefully provide a guide to creating a character that will make your audience fall in love (or hate). I have used this many times and hope you will use it for future creations.

All proper characters need a good name. It should be easy to find names due to the numerous websites that give options. Just find ones you like and give your character a name. Make sure to be aware of your characters situation which naming them. You don't want to give a steampunk futuristic character a preppy 1990's name.

The next step is to give your character basic personality traits to base the speech and actions around. I would suggest writing them down so you don't forget them. If you can't think of any traits, google should give plenty of suggestions. Another thing to keep in mind is how beneficial it can be to base a character around someone you are close to, or even yourself.

This part has many different options and steps. You need to think about every aspect of a person and what you want your character to look like. You can base your character off a real person or celebrity, or you can create a character from scratch. Don;t forget to focus on any characteristics that make them unique, birthmarks, tattoos, etc. Appearance may not come up very often, but it is one of the most crucial parts of the progress.

Now that the basics are worked through, you can get into the finer details of the character. It is important to make note of certain actions and habits that your character might have. This will help with foreshadowing and character development. Adding mannerisms and flaws to your character will make them more relatable to the public and thus better in the long run.

Backstory can be the most or least influential thing on your character depending on how you do it. It an give your character motivation and purpose or it can be flavor text. Either way it is absolutely necessary for creating a character. Everyone has a backstory, and while it doe't need to be tragic or some horror story, it has to exist.

The final step to creating a realistic character is to give it at least one relationship. Whether it be a parent or guardian, friend or sibling, lover or enemy, every character, and real life person, has some sort of person they know and feel about. This step is absolutely undeniably the most important step to creating a character that can be used for anything.

If you follow all of these steps, then you will create a wonderful, relatable character that is sure to have all your readers and followers raving about your character creating skills.