by DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills
One of the challenges of creating memorable characters is to choose traits opposite to our own. We know how we react and respond in various situations, making the story easier to craft. But that doesn’t mean we have produced the best character. Writing what we know is an excellent choice when we are sharpening our tools—practicing for publication. The process helps us develop our voice, learn fiction writing techniques, walk through critiques, and add to our training of establishing ourselves as a writer.
When we’ve practiced and perfected our writing muscles, the time comes to stretch and expand our stories. How do we think outside the box to treat our readers to the unusual, quirky, loveable, and sometimes detestable?
10 Ways to Power-pack the Characters You Write with Unique Traits
1. Understand your personality. Thoroughly. Detailed. Inside and out. If necessary, use one of the various personality tests to determine your dominant traits. We all have quirks, ideas, opinions, and beliefs that don’t fall under a specific personality. That makes us unique just like we want our characters to stand out.
2. Determine the career path of the character. Would the profession be something you haven’t or wouldn’t consider? What is required to obtain the career? Education? Skills? Lifestyle? Where is the character on their career path?
3. Establish characteristics that are opposite of yours. Can those traits be used effectively in your story? For example, you might prefer an evening reading and listening to music, but the character might thrive on interactions with others.
4. Create a home for the character that is foreign to yours. What style fits your character? Colors? Design?
5. Show the character’s culture. Research is your best friend.
6. Choose the character’s education skills or lack of. Where obtained? How?
7. Develop an unusual backstory that pours into the character’s motivation before chapter one, line one is written.
8. Specify the character’s best friend and friends. Why these characters?
9. Include strong emotion that is unpredictable but true to the character.
10. Study human behavior and observe people active in various activities.
If we write characters that are like us, our stories lose flavor and bore our readers with the same wants, desires, dialogue, personality, flaws, and weaknesses. When we accept the challenge and expand our skills to create characters who journey through unpredictable novels, not only will our readers thank us, but we will be pleased with our effort.
How do you create characters who are opposite of you?
TWEETABLE
She is the former director of the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference, Mountainside Marketing Retreat, and Mountainside Novelist Retreat with social media specialist Edie Melson. Connect here: DiAnnMills.com
Thank you for these tips, DiAnn Mills. There are times when I've noticed that some of the characters I create are a bit too similar to each other and I think it’s because I make them too similar to myself. For instance, I do prefer to read than have a lot of interactions with others, so I'd write my characters in a similar way. So, tips #2 and #3 will be especially helpful in making them more unique.
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