Creating Main Characters and Villains in Your Book

Creating characters how exciting! I cannot stress enough the importance of making good characters. Characters that have real feelings, that remain consistent through the duration of a book, and that are just plain awesome. Before you begin writing it’s not important that you plan out all of the characters that you are going to ever have in the book, in fact it’s probable that you will create some of the less important characters on the journey as you go along. However, some planning is required on your part to establish at least five of the main characters before you start. So get your notebooks, out its time to start developing characters.

1-) the first character who you need to create is the main, main, main character. Now I realize that in a book or novel there may be more than one main character but this character is the most important of them all, because the story will be told through his or her eyes. Even if you write in third person omniscient, where the narrator of the story is more aloof from all characters, you still need to have a character through whom you are telling the story, or who drives the story onward. Some good things to establish about your main character are the following:

• The name of the character.
•  Physical appearance and gender.
• What is the thing that drives him or her most? What is the thing that is going to keep him or her going during the entire duration of the hideous horrible most depressing things that you, as the author of the book, are going to put him through? Is it revenge? Does he have a girlfriend who he loves? Is he or her trying to prove something to themself or others? This driving force will probably come out later in the book, so it is important to establish it right now so that you can plan to show your readers by the things that your character does or says, rather than telling them the driving force of your characters. Also, when planning the main conflict of your storyline often times the conflict will be in direct opposition to the driving force of the character. For example, if the driving force of a character is hope, then a lot of the times the main conflict of the story could be something that destroys or threatens to destroy the character’s hope. Or, if a character has a girlfriend, sometimes a conflict of the story can be that the girlfriend gets kidnapped!
• You need to establish likes and dislikes that have to do psychologically with the character’s driving force. For example, maybe the reason why your character hates pickles is because in the past a man killed his mother who smelled like rotten dill pickles. The event naturally scared him for life, it also explains why the character has a huge driving force to get revenge. It is very probable that your main character doesn’t even remember the reason why he hates pickles so much, you may only ever mention that he hates pickles once in the book and not even explain why to your readers, but it is important that you understand your own character at the deepest levels of his mind.
• What is the favorite music of your character? Hobby’s pastimes of your character and why does he like to do those things so much. These things can also be psychologically linked to the past in some way.
• Keep in mind that there is no such thing as a person in this world who is pure good or pure evil it’s important to know, what are the biggest flaws of your character’s character? If your character is portrayed as either pure good or pure evil, your readers will find it horribly unrealistic, unoriginal, stereotypical, and your character will tend to be outrageously melodramatic. Yuck, just remember that some flaws in even your main character go a long way to make him feel more like a real person.
• Establish a short past for your character that explains his or her driving force; that explains psychologically his likes his dislikes his hobbies and his favorite music. Be as detailed as you need to be. Dig up all the dirt of your main character.
• Ta da! You have successfully created a realistic awesome character. Give him super powers now if you desire. J (Superpowers are like garnish on top of delicious food not a main attribute of your character!)

2-) Next I want you to establish your villain. Your villain though you may not know it, is actually the second most important character in your story. Don’t make the same mistake I did when I was young and foolish. I once tried writing a novel before I had established what my main villain was going to be like. I was something like 120 pages into my writing and my main characters hadn’t even met the villain yet nor, coincidentally, the driving conflict of the story. The result was just a big blah! I found my characters just wandering about doing nothing of real importance to the story line and by that point there was nothing I could do. So please learn from my mistakes plan your villain right now before you even start. Be sure that you remember especially that your villain is not pure evil, and that there is good in him. List specifically those good qualities about him or her. Just repeat the process that you did for your main character with the bullet points above.

3-) Now that you have established your main character you can repeat the process for other main characters that you feel need to be established before you begin writing you may do so now. Admittedly, you can probably be a little less detailed now that you have your main, main, main characters established, your main character and your villain.

That’s all for today. Next time we are going to be discussing plot and story line making. Fun Fun!