Who Are Your Characters?

A grand question which was hard for me to answer for ages. It's easy to know characters from books you read, but when you have to create your own, who exactly are they? Your characters should be an extension from yourself. I say, they first thing you need to do to figure out who your characters are, is talk to them. You may say I'm insane, or ask me how that would help, but I believe if you do not talk to yourself then you are not a writer. A writer has to be someone who could be put in an insane asylum because they appear to have multiple personalities, but the difference is, they are still considered a part of society which will not harm you further than your feelings.

I love the site springhole.net, especially the generators they have available. It helped me out a lot and I will be pulling from things I learned there to help you create your characters.

So you've been talking to your characters, hopefully they've replied back because if they haven't you can't move forward. Once you've had some good conversation with them, you're bound to know some of their personality and part of their back story. Write down what you know about them, start from when they were a child and work to what age they are at now/when your novel takes place. Now you know their back story from age 0 to 19, let's say for this, and you are ready to get writing. Not yet, this is not enough information about them.

What kind of society do they live in? This is going to play a major role on who your character is and who they have yet to become. Define your society and see how it has shaped your character in their past, start planning part of your plot so you know how they will react as they grow older.

Do they come from any kind of culture? If they do, you're going to need to do some research. Let's say your character is a Russian living in America, he knows English but he obviously has an accent. Find out what a Russian accent sounds like, be able to portray it whenever he speaks. Also, people from other countries tend to know the English word but will say it in Russian from time to time, the most common are "yes" and "no." If he's asked a question in which he can use either of these two words, he's going to be likely to reply "da" or "nyet." The wh sound in words will also come out sound like a v, so if you want to make it a little more realistic for your readers, then change some or all of them to a v instead. It's like how J.K. Rowling portrayed Viktor Krum and Fleur Delacour because their first language was not English, so she made them have an accent in her writing.

The final step is now knowing how they might react in certain situations. Put them in a white room and see how they respond in your head, write down your observations.

It's also safe to say, you should know when your story is taking place and when every character's birthday is so you can cover it if you so desire. Some people will choose not to speak about birthday's, but the character's still have them and the author knows exactly when they are.

Now, for the final step on creating your character. There is a template for figuring out some minor things about your character:

Courteous: 

Risk-Taking:

Ambitious:

Curious:

Self-Controlled:

Nurturing:

Trusting:

Honest:

Loyal:

Affectionate:

Romantic:

Flirty:

Sympathetic:

Altruistic:

Optimistic:

Observant:

Logical:

Social:

Emotions:

These are not simple "yes or no" questions either, so don't get too ahead of yourself saying this is "easy." You are going to put a more in depth answer to all of these and it will take some time and possibly more observations of your character. For most of these you can answer with: always, usually, sometimes, occasionally, not really, never. Others may require something more along the lines of: thrives on it, hidden, very, definitely, okay with it, scared, hates it (these might apply to social or emotions).

I put all of my character information in a note on the original text document where I'm writing, as well as in a separate document where it is easier to view. I set it up so I have their name, what their life was like, minor information, culture, how they respond, birthday. It looks much like this:

Catrina: Catrina was born in England and her family moved to America when she was a child. There is a group of people called the etc. etc. etc.

Courteous: Rarely, Risk-Taking: Rarely, Ambitious: Rarely, Curious: Rarely, Self-Controlled: Usually, Nurturing: Never, Trusting: Rarely, Honest: Always, Loyal: Usually, Affectionate: Rarely, Romantic: Mostly, Flirty: Always, Sympathetic: Rarely, Altruistic: Sometimes, Optimistic: Barely, Observant: Sometimes, Logical: Always, Social: Not Really, Emotions: Hidden.

Catrina's Culture: how the place she came from affects her, some things which differ between America and Great Britain, food preferences, etc.

How they react in this situation: they scream and clutch their head.

Birthday: June 25, 1972

It'll take some time, but it's nice to have a reference, especially since I won't have to remember millions of words or tiny pieces of culture which goes with each character 100% of the time.