Creating Captivating Characters

by Alex Kunce

Are your characters flat and uninteresting?

Then try Creating Captivating Characters, a three-part series detailing what it takes to create a deep, sympathetic, and most importantly, captivating character. In this first video, we will focus on the outside parts of your character: their appearance, speech, and personality.

Enjoy!

PART 1: External Traits

As the first lesson ends, keep some of the following questions in mind to further improve your character:

Think about what other external characteristics there are, and which ones you should use for your new character. There are so many!

Think about the characters in your favorite fictional uni/multiverses. What parts of their character do you think the creator did well, and which ones did you think they didn’t? Through other stories, you can see what other story makers do, and how to improve upon your own creations from them.

5 Tips for Naming Your Characters

Naming your characters is hard. What should you choose? Besides the obvious best name—Alex!—the options are innumerable. Fortunately, here are some ways for making up great names for your characters:

  1. Look at the names around you. Baby name books are great for finding first names, while phone books and movie credits work for both first and last names.
  2. Consider words and sounds you could pair. This is a good option for fantasy/sci-fi characters, who don’t use traditional names from where we live, and for made-up surnames. Start mumbling gibberish, and listen for some cool choices if you want!
  3. In the world around us, there are so many different names, not only for people but for plants, animals, and all sorts of other things. If you name your character something derivative of a scientific classification name, or a Greek/Latin word, their moniker will have a real-life secondary meaning.
  4. Take a peek back throughout history: famous scientists, writers, philosophers, celebrities, and other characters from famous literary works. Similar to the last suggestion, the name would also have an “easter-egg” meaning. Or the fictional parents might have purposefully named their child after a famous person, either as wishful thinking (“If I name him Einstein, maybe he’ll grow up to be a genius…) or simply as a tribute.
  5. Think about the type of character you are trying to create to help narrow down your name search. If your guy is a sensitive type, you might want to steer clear of Brutus, Rocco, or Gunnar. If your gal is fierce and spirited, you might not pick Daisy, Isabella, or Juliette.

Homework

Here are some things to document for your character after Part I. Make sure you’ve picked a name for your character, an age, gender, species, height, weight, hair, eyes, skin, and some nice distinctive characteristics to make them different from everyone else! With the knowledge from Part I, you will for sure make an astounding character to use in whatever story you’d like! Also, see the downloadable form (bottom of page) for writing in, and have fun!

PART II: Background & Origins

Homework

After finishing the second part, add these details to your printable character form: Likes, Dislikes, Friends, Foes, Family, Affiliations, and Backstory. We’ll finish the project in the next part with a complete character!

PART 3: Internal Traits

Homework

As you finish my lessons, don’t forget to include the following on your character sheet (if you’ve been following along, these should be everything left unfilled on the form): Goals, Strengths, Weaknesses, Fears, and Personality. Congratulations! You have a character now!

Thank you for learning about making characters with me! I hope my information helps you create your very own captivating character for your amazing fictional story. Have fun creating!

Fill in a Downloadable Character Form

Once you start to think up a great character, be sure to document your thoughts onto one of my printable Character Creation Forms, available below:

Character_fillin_formDownload

References:

– Levine, Gail Carson. Writer to Writer: From Think to Ink. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2015. Print.

– Levine, Gail Carson. Writing Magic: Creating Stories that Fly! New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006. Print.

Thank you so much to Ms. Levine’s books, for helping me learn about characters and about writing great stories themselves!