vanax

i have problems making my characters believable. They are either too prefect or too evil. How can i fix this? i give them faults and stuff but when i do this they don't seem to fit with the type of person i want them to be. I'll use my elven princess for example. I want her to be a stubborn but compassionate princess. The faults i gave her are she's a little spoiled and too trusting now she just seems nieve and thats not what i want. please help me out.

bobbie

Angelmusic234

I think this is a challenge for most people... Because we don't like faults in our characters. We want them to be perfect, and yet be believable so that our stories doesn't have what I like to call the "Nancy Drew Syndrome." I have bitterness towards her, in case you can't tell. It's like, everything she picks up is done perfectly, and her friends are total failures. Sorry, I'm rambling.

Anyway, I think you just have to accept that your characters need to have faults. You might not like how it changes the original character you had in mind, but that's what makes them seem real. Or if you wanted you could start with someone with bad traits, and have them change throughout the story to get rid of them. I don't know what to tell you other than that, because sometimes I have your same problem.

-Angelmusic

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vanax

thanks and that seems like a good idea. i never tried it that way. i think ever one does. it's so hard to do.

i'm not a fan of nancy drew either.

Gothic Rose

I write full backgrounds for every major character in my stories. I write where they come from, what they want out of their future, who their parents were, who and where they are now, and of course relationships. I think characters are believable when you believe them. A character that is real in your mind can't ring false, I spend so much time developing my characters that the dialogue writes itself. I think figuring out specific faults and virtues ahead of time is awkward, events in their lives will make them compassionate or stubborn, and knowing what events made them that way will allow the character to act in a way natural to them when you write. The background stuff won't even show up in my stories most of the time, but having it there gives me a sense of how my character will respond to certain situations.

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vanax

i try that but i just get confused. Like in my fantasy book it's hard to figure out the kind of thngs they would have done. maybe i'm just not ready for that genre?? for my present books thats easy and i'm not having too much of a problem. (except with my human dragon hybrid) but that story is more complex and will take longer to write.

Lpspider

wow, this is like my exact problem...making the characters REAL.

vanax

it's hard huh??

Aevin

Well, maybe I'm just one of the lucky ones, or maybe I'm delusional as to how real my characters are. But I just let the characters speak for themselves and think for themselves, and they turn out. Through their actions, they reveal their biases and their complexities. Only after writing do I go back and try to hone my portrayals--after I've gotten to know them better. Although some of my characters at first glance may seem flat and cliché--the kid psychic, for example--their personalities generally seem to break the clichés and demonstrate they are round characters.

As for advice ... I guess what I'm trying to say is that you shouldn't work TOO hard at "crafting" the characters. Let them do what they want, and refine them a little after the story's written. Test-tube characters with faults thrown in for variety will be less believable than those who are allowed their freedom, I think.

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vanax

Dark good advice. The only problem i have with that is so much of me ends up in my characters and want them to be different people with their own probems and personalities.

bobbie

Nickie

I always portray my characters on people I know - their traits, their habits, etc. Years of teaching also have me 'blessed' with pyschological insight in how someone is. That makes it easier to create characters that are "life".



Nickie

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PamHKyle

In a way there's always a part of the writer in the characters, whether you like it or not.
Don't worry too much about character development, just write and let your characters surprise you, as Dark suggested, that's really the best way (guess what, that's the way I write too )They will be different and have their own problems & personalities, but their also a part of you. You can sort of look at them like your children: they're persons on their own, yet have so much of you in them. And the best thing is: they teach you something about yourself.
Happy writing,
Pam

Avarice

i base my chracters on people i know, real life and internet or even characters that I liked in films and then alter them to suit me. Theres a list of different character classes and although I dont like using them to create a character I find that you can put every character created and actually every person you know into it. Funny, psycho, greedy etc....

Davey

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suzakugaiden

You also have to take in how one percieves faults. Depending on the situation, flaws can become assets and vice versa, (and also nothing may change, for the sake of argument).

Furthermore, a lot of it is also how one percieves flaws. I, myself, tend to focus on smaller things. If someone is stubborn, that's too big of a personality trait for me to really consider a flaw. I know that in my writing, I tend to focus on rather subtle things, which aren't really flaws OR assets. They just sort of are, and they change a bit, and they change if they help or hinder depending on the time of day and character's state of mind.

Also, when a character's just starting out, they're probably largely untainted. Strengths and weaknesses don't really show up until they're under some sort of stress*.

* They do, but they're less relevant-seeming.

"break the clichés and demonstrate they are round characters."

Being cliche doesn't prevent a character from being fleshed out. A lot of real people are very cliched.

vanax

thanks everyone. really good advice. Pam i never thought of it that way, thanks. Suza that is a good idea. i always just thought of major personality traits.
thanks again
bobbe

Viqto

I started writing a fun story a couple days ago, just to break the mold. I wrote entirely differently from my normal style and outside of the normal genre (fantasy) that I like. To the point, I started my characters all as me. Then focused them to a point of obsession down a particular avenue of my psyche. For instance there was a man who lived for love and romantics. Another who wanted to stay all alone and by himself forever. And yet another who constantly made jokes whether it was the appropriate time or not. After the rough draft was done, I went back and basically rewrote the whole thing diminishing their reactions and dialogue. Lot of work, but I was bored and it killed several hours haha. In the end I was surprised how far apart they seemed from myself. I even had trouble connecting with the reasoning behind some of them (their were about 12 characters in all if I remember correctly)

The Spider Approach (as I've nicknamed it) was way too time consuming for me, but fun no less when you are bored. Good luck on your writing.

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