Characters

Characters are the backbone of a good story. Its important that your characters feel alive to the readers. You want your readers to be emotionally involved with the characters whether it be positive or negative. Even if you have a character that everyone hates, that's fine. The reader is invested enough in your story to actually feel an emotion toward it.

When creating characters, you have to make them feel real. They need to behave like real people would behave. They need to have flaws like real people would have. Perfect characters are going to be dull and lifeless and your readers will quickly become disillusioned.

It's also vital to keep your characters "in character". When deciding what a character will do or say, try to think like the character. These characters are supposed to be real people and they need to think and act like real people. When a character does something that would be unusual for them, you need to have a reason that makes sense.

This leads me to the topic of character development. It is ok for characters to change during the course of the story. However, you the change neds to make sense. This could be something like a change in environment to something from the character's past that has come back. Creating rich histories for your characters gives you more fuel for the character's development.

As I start mapping out my own novel, this has been at the forefront of my planning process. I want characters that come to life right off the pages. I want my readers to feel like they actually know the characters as if they had actually met them. This is not an easy task, but I'm not going to shy away from it.

-Eddie