How To Make Your Characters Believable?
This is one of those topics I pray that every writer thinks about before starting a project. I have read some books that have great story lines, but their characters are just not believable. They lack true personality qualities a normal person would possess with the mindset or situation they are being exposed to. So, in order to stop that from happening in my characters, I’ve tried to model them after real people. If your characters are based on people you already know, you can always ask them random questions that will help you decide a character’s next move in your story, you can pretty much predict their behavior and mood, and, you can help the readers relate to them.
When you are writing a character into a story, it’s like introducing an old friend to a set of new friends they’ve never met that you vaguely know. The hope is that by the end of the story, all of you will be best friends or worse enemies, depending on the character. If you’ve ever had several groups of friends that you’ve met in different environments and you are trying to find a way to blend them all to see if it will work, you will understand this. There is this pull and tug you have to do with the details you divulge about each character until everyone knows each other enough to handle the full load. It’s like bringing a college boyfriend home to meet your parents for the first time. You won’t tell them the full story about the wild night of how you met until the two of you are either married or broken up with no chance of getting back together. In both of those cases, you can get feedback about what each party was thinking when they met the other.
After you’ve known someone for a while, you already know what their response to certain situations will be. That’s why text messaging has become so popular. For example, the way my mom says, “Girl, don’t play with me,” and my husband, is completely different. You want your readers to have that understanding and familiarity with your characters, but first, you have to. If you haven’t cultivated that relationship, a lot of the dialog and the character’s responses will seem out of place.
The most important part is taking all of these dimensions and putting it into something that the readers will relate with. They may not agree with the decisions and point of views the characters has, but can they recognize that behavior in someone they know personally? Do they see pieces of themselves or their loved ones in the characters they are reading about? It’s that connection that will take a mediocre story to a timeless piece of magic.
The modern day heroes assembled in this journey get to go to places most people will never see. With the gifts of the spirit and some other talents added to the bunch, they restore faith, hope in order into the world, while shaking it up in themselves. If you are a sci-fi extraordinaire looking for a good read, or if you need an escape from worldly limitations…join the cast of Party of Gifts.
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Genre - Sci-Fi
Rating – PG
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