Become The Character
Writers, Bring Your Characters To Life
As authors we should aspire to create, not only plots, but characters that will be unforgettable. If a story or novel is based on characters that are alive and interesting then, even if the plot is a bit weak, it will be a work readers will become engrossed in.
Character is everything. You could write a story about a man sitting alone in a prison cell and if you can make that prisoner come to life you can produce a fascinating work. People are interested in people. Readers are looking for those common threads that tie humanity together, emotion, life experiences, hopes and dreams, pain and disappointment. Readers want to live vicariously through the characters they meet in literary works. One of the most effective ways to create such characters is, not to simply write about them, become them. Let your mind slip into the psyche of the character. Think their thoughts, experience their feelings and reactions to life. Draw from your own life experiences but go beyond those into the realm of basic human goodness and evil. There is some of both in all of us in differing degrees and those degrees will dictate our thought processes and actions.
Take time and make the effort to study psychology. You don't have to have a degree, just read some basic books on the subject and learn what you can about the twists and turns of the human mind and heart. If you want to write about the ocean or a sunset you need to experience both. Look at the ocean at different times of day and weather conditions. Wade into the water, sit on the shore and feel the breeze, taste the salty air on your tongue and feel the sun hot on your skin. Listen to the sound of the waves, watch their patterns. Observe what goes on around the ocean, the gulls, the sand crabs, dolphins jumping in the distance. Fishing boats or ferries riding its surface. Surfers challenging its waves. People on the shore. If you want to write about the sunset you have to see one or many and you have to know how to quiet your spirit and focus your thoughts on every aspect of the sunset. It's the same with characters. If you want to create great characters you have to become a people watcher and you have to learn how to observe below the surface and read between the lines. People watchers make impressive novelists.
Good characters are not only believable but multi-faceted just like real life people are. After spending time with your characters readers will think they know how the characters will think and act, throw some curves. Every human mind and heart has some dark places, some places that are sometimes visited at inopportune times and under the pressures of life's stresses. Surprise your reader by exposing those quirks that all realistic characters will possess.
Writers have so much to draw on, our own humanity and experiences, our observations of other people. We have the unlimited possibilities of the situations our imaginations can place characters in to make them immortal. There is no excuse for bad characterization. We can create living, unforgettable characters so impressive our readers think of them as real people.
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