How to create realistic characters in your creative writing

The sign of a great character in a piece of creative writing is when you can’t believe the character isn’t real. Your central character should most definitely be just this realistic, especially since she’s the star of the narrative. The startling truth is that if you make a character credible, she’ll also be more lovable. This is because people relate to characters with depth and humanity as opposed to those who aren’t well developed.

How to develop well-rounded characters

You can fashion complex, well-rounded characters swiftly by asking yourself questions about what type of person you want to create. For instance:

• Where does your character come from?
• What does she do for a living?
• How old is your character?
• What family background is he/she from?

The here is a list of questions which you could ask yourself regarding your character:

• What does she look like?
• What is your character called?
• How does your character deal with conflict as well as trouble?
• Are there other individuals in your character’s life? How does she relate to them?
• What is the objective of your character in this text?

Once you’ve got your characters plotted out, you can turn to the conversation and creating a realistic and interesting dialogue between your characters.

The sign of a great character in a piece of creative writing is when you can’t believe the character isn’t real. Your central character should most definitely be just this realistic, especially since she’s the star of the narrative. The startling truth is that if you make a character credible, she’ll also be more lovable. This is because people relate to characters with depth and humanity as opposed to those who aren’t well developed.

How to develop well-rounded characters

You can fashion complex, well-rounded characters swiftly by asking yourself questions about what type of person you want to create. For instance:

• Where does your character come from?
• What does she do for a living?
• How old is your character?
• What family background is he/she from?

The here is a list of questions which you could ask yourself regarding your character:

• What does she look like?
• What is your character called?
• How does your character deal with conflict as well as trouble?
• Are there other individuals in your character’s life? How does she relate to them?
• What is the objective of your character in this text?

Once you’ve got your characters plotted out, you can turn to the conversation and creating a realistic and interesting dialogue between your characters.

How to write convincing dialogue

Writing fabulous dialogue takes practice as well as observation. People tend to over-dramatise or understate, in each case, leaving the reader with a sense of disbelief. Conversations play a great role in bringing narratives to life and, if handled correctly, can assist with creating a beautiful piece of art.

You can make your writing seem genuine and colourful by following these tips:

• Listen to how people talk – You’ll seldom find a priest swearing, or an English Professor making use of slang. Look at the way people speak and note down any interesting figures of speech that they might use. Good writers are often good eavesdroppers too.
• Cut down on extraneous words and phrases – Real speech doesn’t flow as smoothly as it seems to on paper, but most readers don’t care to read unnecessary words like “err…” “uh…” and “oh,” between dialogues.
• Use action to highlight your dialogues – Remind the reader that the characters they are reading about are as physical (theoretically) as they are. ‘He said’ ‘she said’ dialogues get monotonous if they aren’t broken up with movement.
• Don’t cram in too much information – It should not be obvious that you are using dialogue to communicate information. In general, apply the three-sentence rule: give no character more than three uninterrupted sentences at once. Let the story unfold naturally.
• Avoid stereotyping your characters through dialect – this is not only offensive, but it also challenges the reader’s intelligence. Just as all Irish do not have red hair, similarly not all English says, “I say, old chap.”

No matter how much tension you pack into the pages of your creative writing, readers won’t care about your story if they don’t first care about your characters. After all, there’s nothing page-turning about a predictable protagonist playing out a predictable plot. If you would like readers to invest in your characters and their journeys, then you must craft characters that readers can believe in — characters so well-developed and realistic that they seem to spring to life on the page. But crafting a cast that moves beyond caricatures and cardboard cutouts can be difficult.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

If you would like to learn the best way of crafting a cast of characters that is unique and jumps off the page, then you need to check out our National Diploma of Copywriting. For more information, please follow this link.