Intro

Characters are the reason why I write. I come up with an awesome character and want to tell their story, and then the rest of the process starts from there. It always starts with the characters. 

Obviously, not every fiction writer starts their process like this, but that’s how it’s always been for me, and I’ve got no complaints about it. Even if the story itself doesn’t work out, I still usually end up with a pretty fleshed out character who I can then plunk into another story, either as the main character or a side character, so it’s worked out for me so far.

So, how do I create my characters? Like all creative processes, my way of doing it isn’t how everyone does it, or how everyone should, but it’s what works for me—and, chances are, it could work for you too, if you’re here looking for tips on how to create a character of your own.

All that aside, let’s get down to business.

Character Inspiration

All ideas come from somewhere, even if you aren’t always aware of where that somewhere is. Character ideas don’t come out of nowhere, even if it sometimes feels like they do. 

I happen to play a lot of games, mostly video games and some TTRPG, and a lot of the games I like are fantasy ones where you pick your class and species and all that. I also happen to write primarily fantasy at the moment, so a lot of my character inspiration comes from the characters you can make in those games. A lot of my character ideas just start out as something like, “I want this character to be an elf rogue,” and then I just build on it from there, adding personality and backstory until they’re fleshed out enough to use in something. Some of my characters are even just variations of MMORPG alts of mine and characters that I made for Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, just with any copyrighted material swapped out and oftentimes with slightly different backstories too, just so that they fit in better with my own worlds.

It certainly isn’t the most traditional way of making characters, but that’s how I do it. And it’s worked out great so far!

In some cases, though, my inspiration comes from elsewhere. I’m an artist along with a writer, and quite a few of my characters started out as just nameless people that I drew once just for the sake of drawing something different. Sometimes, the result is a really awesome character design that I end up wanting to use for something, so I start to give them a story after that. 

For me, it’s usually one of those two things that kicks it off. Once I have an idea that I like, I move on to the next stage.

Character Bios

Character bios are usually where I figure out the most basic things about the character’s appearance, personality, and backstory. Mine vary in detail a lot of the time, but they usually follow the same basic idea.

Here’s a short bio that I did for a character of mine that I’ve never actually used for anything—yet—so that you can see an example of what I mean:

As you can see, this one doesn’t really have much in the way of backstory, but I do come up with that separately a lot of the time. This is just where I get the bare bones down so that I have something to work with going forward.

I usually go through multiple bios for my characters—especially if I know I want the character to be the main character in something. Once I’m happy with the basic details, I really start to think about the backstory.

Character Backstories

Backstories can obviously be very different from one character to another, so figuring them out can be very different for each of them as well. Some characters have lengthy, multi-page tomes that are their origin stories. Others only need a few paragraphs. 

But, different as they can be, there are some backstory elements that I try to make sure I figure out for every character, such as who their family is (or were, in many cases…), where they came from, and how they got where they are—physically and/or mentally—when the story begins. 

While coming up with backstories, I also try to take factors such as age into account. Obviously, older characters have been around longer than younger ones, so there’s a high chance that they’re going to have more backstory than, say, the teenage protagonist. I especially find this with mentor characters, who have usually already lived an exciting life before the story even started, so they usually end up with the longest backstories just because they’ve been around more. 

That said, there are definitely exceptions to this. Chances are, the aforementioned teenage protagonist’s life has been utter chaos since the day they were born, so more has happened to them in a shorter span of time, resulting in their backstory being longer. Basically, the length of the backstory just depends on how many life-altering events the character has experienced and how in-depth I want to go into them.

I usually devote most of my focus to the protagonist’s backstory, for obvious reasons. Regardless of the number of life-altering events they’ve had, theirs is usually much more detailed than those of the other characters—who I sometimes don’t bother giving backstories until I’m actually in the process of writing them in the story, for better or worse. I try to figure out as much as I possibly can about the protagonist before I even start writing, because they’re the main character I’m going to have to worry about, especially in the early stages of writing. As the story progresses, I usually start to give a little more attention to the other characters, further developing them until they get to the point where they seem believable. (I usually find out that it’s happened when they suddenly decide not to act in accordance with my outline, leaving me needing to improvise a bit. But I can’t really complain.)

Once the backstory is in a place where I like it, the brainstorming is pretty much done, and the character is story-ready. I might find little things that need to be added or altered while I’m actually writing them, but the vast majority is done.

Outro

So, that’s it for this one. I hope you’ve found this interesting and/or helpful. Thank you so much for reading, and be sure to check back later this month for the next reading recommendation post!