How to create a character in a work of fiction from scratch. Where to start drawing your character Ideas for creating a character

Many ficwriters ask the question: “ how to make a character interesting»?

Let's try to figure this issue out.

We all love to read works on ficbook, like them, send gifts to the authors, or write admiring reviews. Many newcomers go to the page of a popular author, look with envious eyes at the number of gifts and think: “damn, I’ll never achieve this.”

Hey newbie, pull yourself together!

Give yourself a mental (or not) slap in the face and start creating.

Your work won't be interesting if you write about girls who are looking for true love and dream of living on the shores of the Cote d'Azur, or men with a midlife crisis. And even better - these are ideal main characters who are drowning in a drinking binge because of unhappy love.

Sounds boring, right?

How many such works do we know?

That's right, sit down - 5!

In order for your main character It seemed interesting to make the reader fully feel your character, to give him some unique quality. Let's skip the moment of introducing the character itself (name, age and character). This has all been said and written before me a hundred times, I think I won’t say anything new. If you want the reader to terrorize your personal message every two minutes with messages “where is it on sale?” or spent ten hours rereading one chapter, then I have only one phrase - there must be heroes interesting.

Descriptions

1) Try not to describe the girl in a standard way, telling what her “ Perfect eyes blue, in which you can drown or choke at just one glance.” The only thing I want to choke on is the same text. It's all a template. Show it through another hero - what he experiences when looking into the heroine’s eyes, what emotions and thoughts come to mind. Then the melody will play differently.

It is no secret that the most informative and eye-catching thing is a person’s face. And the main thing that is reflected on him and expressed in facial expressions is emotions.

Descriptions vary. If we look through Tolstoy, Turgenev or Goncharov, we will notice that they described their heroes from a receding hairline to thumb on the left leg. Never forget that we are ficwriters, not Russian classics. You can present the character to the reader in detail, but do it gradually. Let your second character notice a mole behind his right ear or a scar on his foot. But present it in such a way that this small detail is noticed accidentally. The leg should not be exposed and brazenly spin around in front of the face shouting: “Look, see?!”

Most often, authors describe their character's eyes. Why? Because eyes are the mirror of the soul. And what just happens in these eyes: either they change color through the chapter, then they are associated with food (why food?), or they burn like two coals in a fire.

In general, here you can swing to the fullest. The main thing is not to bring the text to the point of absurdity. Re-read sentence two, three, or even more, write several options and choose the best and most suitable one.

Hobby

2) No one will be interested in reading a story where the main character collects stamps or coins, buys the most expensive cars or he has an endless wine cellar. But, if you are a sworn numismatic and see at night how your character collects coins, then change the strategy - make a character atypical.

How do we represent a numismatist? A middle-aged man with glasses on his hooked nose. With a dim table lamp in personal account you can see a small receding hairline and gray hair. There is nothing interesting in his life except the coins that he dreams of every second.

I'll fall asleep now, that's the truth.

Do typical atypical. Let your big guy, the hired killer and the threat of all the streets grow violets on the windowsill, and let the formidable teacher, from whom you only hear: “sit down - 2!” shaking over his beloved chihuahua. And finally, give this damn dog a stupid name.

The most important thing is that the “zest” is chosen correctly.

Situation

3) Each person behaves differently in a given situation. Someone will walk past a fallen old woman and not even look in her direction, someone will help her up and silently leave, and someone will completely lift her up, take her home, and even offer compensation for her tripping over a pebble.

So, let the hero behave unpredictable. An eternal villain who dreamed of enslaving the world suddenly finds an abandoned child and becomes a caring father, or a young dreamer who sleeps and sees that she is being kidnapped by Superman turns out to be even that lecher!

Heroes usually have one distinctive feature, but are you the author, or who the hell are you?! Destroy this system, show the reader your character from the other side. The main thing is not to overdo it.

Don't you know what I mean? Let's take another example.

You created interesting character with everyone the best beautiful ones qualities. And then the hero had the urge to make lemonade. He takes out a glass, ice, water, sugar, reaches for a lemon... But it’s not there! There is no lemon in the refrigerator! He dresses lazily, takes money, goes to the store, buys a lemon, and in five minutes the lemonade is ready.

I'm sleeping again.

This story is boring, like my life. There is nothing interesting in it, just a sequence of events.

Now let's look at it from the other side.

The main character wanted lemonade. He takes out a glass, ice, water, sugar, reaches for a lemon... But it’s not there! He realizes that he wants lemonade more than winning at the skating rink. Everything would be fine, just get ready and go to the store. But our hero turns out to be a social phobe! Now he has to overcome his fear and make a plan for going for the lemon.

Such a character, and the plot itself, no longer seems trivial.

Character

4) Add a little negativity. If your hero is handsome, smart, attractive, well-mannered, charming, a jack of all trades, every woman dreams of falling at his feet, then he will bear little resemblance to real person. None of this is appropriate unless you decide to write a Mary Sue.

Give him a few vices. Write in your usual manner, adding his ideal qualities along the way, and then hop, and rain from a clear sky. Veil the plot in such a way as to show that the character also has “skeletons in the closet”, and even more than one. He can already open his own museum!

Compose a biography on a separate sheet of paper, try to think through all the facets as best as possible. Make sure that an exemplary boy has his own dark past.

Eccentricities

5) Good, and most importantly interesting characters turn out to be eccentrics or even crazy.

Let us remember the wonderful story of Lewis Carroll “Alice in Wonderland”. Why do we all love this story so much, besides the endless moral?

That's right, again - 5!

There were interesting characters there. Hookah smoking caterpillar, disappearing Cheshire Cat, “out of my mind” Mad Hatter and many other bright personalities.

Not convinced yet?

Everyone's favorite Luna Lovegood from Mom Ro's Harry Potter. A very mysterious and strange character. I want to get to know her again and again. And I'm sorry that so little time was spent on her and Xenophilius Lovegood. Harry and Neville are perplexed by Luna, she infuriates Hermione, Ginny sometimes has difficulty holding back laughter in her presence, and Ron openly calls her crazy. This character with radish earrings causes bewilderment, but attracts with incredible energy.

And Sherlock Holmes? At night he plays the violin and injects himself with morphine.

Weirdos the characters are colorful, eccentric, paradoxical, self-willed and a little grotesque. Who would be interested in reading about a character who is always whining about life? Come up with a unique trait for him and bring it to the point of absurdity! Creating a character with quirks is fun and interesting.

But, of course, when creating a character with quirks, you can, dear author, fail. It may turn out to be implausible, unsympathetic or stupid. It's hard to know if you went too far in trying to bring the character to life. It's always risky.

Those who don't take risks don't drink champagne, right?

And finally, I will say that try to find a few interesting facts from the life of your hero. It is unlikely that the reader will be interested in everyday life. To make your characters interesting, give them intriguing backgrounds, intelligence and original views, and some quirks. Don't be afraid to take risks, create fresh, non-standard images.

Whether you write for fun or are about to publish your book, characters are an essential part of any story and any story. To write interesting story or a novel, you need to think through the characters' personalities, but more importantly, you need to really get to know the personalities of those characters.

Steps

Think about what genre you are going to write in. It is fantastic? Historical novel? The genre of the work largely determines the personality of the characters. Even if your character travels through time, crossing the universe of your fiction, most likely he will have certain habits and will be unfamiliar due to the difference in cultures and times.

Determine the main qualities of your character. What's his name? What does he look like? How old is he? What is his education? What is his family like? How much does he weigh? What are his distinctive features? You need to clearly imagine the image of this character.

• Of course, when coming up with the main characteristics of a character, you need to decide whether this character will be a person with disabilities or belong to a certain social group. However, when touching on these topics, you need to be very careful and careful, especially if you yourself have not had such experience. Before you create and write a character with a disability (or a character who belongs to a particular social group), you need to find enough information to avoid writing anything that might seem offensive or ignorant.
• Make sure your character's appearance fits into their world and interests. For example, a professional fighter is unlikely to have loose long hair, because then he can easily be grabbed by this hair, dooming him to failure. IN real life A character cannot have red or purple eyes without certain genetic mutations (such as albinism) or contact lenses. Genetically this is impossible. And if your story takes place in real world, don't explain purple eyes your character's genetics.

1. Identify the main personal qualities your character. Is he a positive and cheerful character or is he always gloomy and gloomy? Is he closed? Excited? Diligent? Or soulless? Think through your character's core personality traits so you have a clear idea of ​​how that character will develop in your story.

   • You can also come up with main interests and hobbies for your character. He is a programmer? Violinist? Dancer? Writer? Chemist or mathematician?

2. Try to better describe the character's personality. Ask yourself a few situational questions that will help you decide on the character of the hero. For example: “What would this character do if his mother died? What would he do if he chanced upon a long-lost relative? What would he do if he encountered a bank robber? What would he do if someone put a gun to his head? These are examples of questions you can ask yourself. Write down the answers to these questions. After this, you should have a certain idea about your character's personality.

   Add negative aspects to your character. If you make it too perfect, people will get bored reading your story. Therefore, you should not create a tall, thin, handsome, strong, honest and smart character if you want your story to be interesting and at least a little real. Add him weak sides, for example, drug addiction or excessive pride. Complicate his character!

   • But be careful, you shouldn’t come up with negative aspects for your hero that will not affect the main conflict of your story. For example, if your character is shy and awkward, these flaws won't stand in his way if his goal is to fall into the arms of the person he loves. A true and interesting flaw would be something like this: “Clara is so shy that she can’t bring herself to say what she really thinks. This gets her into trouble because when her friends do something bad, she can't even say anything." Or this: “Fernando is so clumsy that he constantly gets himself into trouble. While he was on vacation, he accidentally set fire to a curtain with a candle in the hotel where he worked, causing a fire and causing serious harm to the health of those around him.”
   • Don't attribute too many flaws to your character! If you describe your character as follows: “His parents died when he was just a child, and this caused irreparable trauma to his psyche. His adoptive parents locked him in the closet for the slightest offense, he is completely ugly and socially inept, he hates everyone and is terrible at everything he does,” readers will not be able to accept your character and will simply find him annoying, whiny and uninteresting.
   • Also be careful if you're going to give your character flaws such as drug or alcohol addiction, mental illness, or disabilities. Quite often there are problems with describing a character with such characteristics, for example, mentally ill people are often perceived as cruel and uncontrollable, people with disabilities - as completely not independent, relying on other people for everything, although in most cases this is not true (for example, if we we are talking about a person in wheelchair who has no communication problems and communicates easily with other people). These things require thorough study, otherwise you may offend readers.
     • Search online to find more information about how to describe someone with mental illness, autism, and so on.

3. Think about how you would talk to this character if you were next to him. Think about what he hopes for, what he dreams about, what he fears, about his memories. You can even try to imagine yourself in his place to understand what does it feel like- to be in his shoes. This The best way see the world through the eyes of your character!

4. Describe a scene with your character. If you're struggling with an idea of ​​what to write about, find an idea generator and pick the one that sounds best. Be sure to show how your character reacts to different situations rather than just describing them. This will help you better think through the character's personality, and, if necessary, slightly edit the description of this personality. If your characters react in a certain way to the situations that arise during the story, you are doing everything right.

   • The difference between “show” and “tell” is that when you tell the reader about a character, you do not reinforce his personal qualities in any way (for example, “Dasha cares about people”). “Showing” a character to the reader means putting this character in a certain situation in which he will show himself in one way or another (for example, “Dasha reached out to hug the shaking, crying child, took him in her arms and gently muttered: “Everything is okay. Everything will be fine.” "). To make a story truly interesting and impressive, you need to try to “show” more than “tell”.
   • Enjoy! It's no use developing a character if it's a tedious job for you, because if you don't like the character, will readers like him? It is unlikely that in this case you will get a good story.
   • Don't try to make your character perfect in everything. For example, you shouldn’t make him the best swordsman who can shoot a bow, as well as an excellent climber, singer, universal idol, makeup artist, and so on. Don't attribute thousands of talents to him at once. There are no heroes who are good at “everything.” Choose several talents for your hero, think about which of them he will develop most, and just remain silent about the rest. Of course, you want to make your character awesome and interesting, but that doesn't mean he has to be the best at everything, because in reality, no one is the best at everything.
   • On the Internet you can find characteristics that will help you create an interesting character. You can enter the following query in a search engine: “list of qualities of an interesting character” or “description of an interesting character” (without quotes). These lists will help you create a character you might not have thought of before.
   • If you just can’t find an image for your character, but have already thought well about his personal qualities (or vice versa), you can always think of the hero’s appearance based on his personality (and vice versa). For example, if your hero plays basketball, you can make him tall; if you have a twisted plot, you can make the hero short and not suitable for the basketball team.
   • When you write your story or story, b O Most of the story should be shown by your characters, not by you. If you're driving a plot point and you can imagine how the characters, each of whom have certain habits and personality traits that you've created for them, will react, you'll have a great story.

Finding a character image is an interesting and responsible activity, especially for those who are just starting out on the path of an artist. This is an instruction for those who only have an image in their head that they want to draw. Your character is created in several stages. It’s better if you write each of them down on paper.

So, how to step by step?

Stage 1. General features

Here you need to determine the gender, age, date of birth and occupation of the hero.

First of all, we need to decide who we want to draw. “Your character” can be either a five-year-old girl or a seventy-year-old man. When deciding on gender, remember the concept of social education, as well as gender reaction to the hero. In addition, there are purely female character traits that are not characteristic of the male population.

Stage 2. Character appearance

At this stage it is necessary to decide externally character: eye and hair color, hairstyle, height, weight, build, outfit.

Eye and hair color is a very sensitive issue. But most artists advise choosing hair color depending on the type of activity and intended character, and making the eyes contrasting or, conversely, similar in color to the hair.

If height and weight are within normal limits, then they do not play a special role.

Stage 3. Character character

It’s better to start with the character’s temperament: what will the hero we want to draw be like? “Your character” can be a bright and energetic choleric person, a melancholic person constantly with his head in the clouds, a calm phlegmatic person or a balanced sanguine person. After this, it is necessary to work out the positive and negative traits character of the hero.

As a result, we get a holistic image that is easy to draw. Your character will be more alive and original if you take care of every detail of his image.

There are many books and guides for this. Our aspiring screenwriters are too lazy to even read the basics. As a result, we don’t even get second-rate sketches and scripts. Yes, everyone has an imagination and wants to come up with something of their own, but you have to come up with it based on rules and logic.

No one is interested in reading about yet another Lenya Vasilyev, who runs around a dead city and saves the world. Who is Lenya Vasiliev? Why does he run and save? Why is he kind?
These and a thousand other questions arise when reading stories.

Problems arise not only when forming images of the main and minor characters, but also integrity big picture. Now we are reading about the aforementioned Leonid, and then he is friends with Zyrbydykh from the planet Orkhergan. And when Zyrbydykh laughs, he moves his tentacles funny. This is very important point.
Okay, what. Your world - your rules.

Proper names.
So, let's return to the topic of my article - logic and rules for character formation.
Each of you has a name. Think about why your name is that, and not the same Zyrbydykh? Whether you are Alexander or Mikhail, your name has a story. It means something. Onomastics. This word has a huge meaning. This is a branch of science that studies proper names and includes a large number of various directions.
To find out what the name “Alexander” means, we can turn to anthroponymy. Alexander - courageous defender (Greek). Now let's look further. We are writing a script, our main character is Alexander, and having at least basic knowledge, we can write the character of Alexander, how he behaves in situations.
There is no such thing as names being invented “at random”. It happens more precisely, but this is at the discretion of the writer. As I already said, your world is your rules.

How do I come up with names?
For example, I need to come up with positive character who has certain character traits. I write down these traits and choose the most dominant one. Maybe he has a weakness - he is afraid of heights. Next, we go to translators and translate the phrase “afraid of heights” into any language you like. Or better yet, the one that fits most beautifully into your narrative. For example, I chose the Basque language (the people living in the northern regions of Spain and the southern regions of France). We get: alturas de beldur. Now this is food for thought. The character can be called: Alturas or Beldur. Let's add drunkenness to our hero. Drunkard - mozkor. Excellent, Alturas Mozkor: Drunk heights.
Our main character is Alturas Mozkor. A drunkard who is afraid of heights and will always come to the aid of those in need. If he is sober or he was not driven by wolves onto a 10-meter spruce
The foundation for character has been laid.

Animal names.
Hedgehog.
- Look, it's a hedgehog!
- Why a hedgehog?
- Why not? He looks a lot like a hedgehog.
- How do you know what hedgehogs look like?
- Well, I know that’s all. This is a hedgehog, period!
(c) Excerpt from the Greek book “How my friend and I came up with a hedgehog.”

No, that's not how the hedgehog's name was invented. There is also a branch of science - Etymology, which studies the origin of words. Why was the hedgehog called a hedgehog? Why is a bear a bear and not something else? This science gives us answers to these questions.

Who will our Alturas fight with? Of course, with some Dyrgerey. Which looks like a jelly mass. Although no, wait, we have a logical world and logical people?
Let there be Brokebacks.

Feature one: You can form the names of monsters by appearance or abilities.
Thornshot was named that way not because he likes to scratch his ears with his right paw. It shoots spikes.
This is the most common method of inventing monsters.

Feature two: The poisonous hornet is named so precisely because it is poisonous. We take an ordinary animal and add an adjective to it. Wolf. It seems like an ordinary wolf, but you need something more original? From here it comes: Fierce, black, red-eyed (Linuxoid), bow-footed, short-tailed, and so on.
It will look very epic in your game log: Alturas dealt a crushing blow to the Red-Eyed Wolf.

Feature three: Our good old translator. Short legs? Ok, let it be Labourrac. Immediately when you hear the word “Laburrak,” an image of something very large, with short legs, pops into your head, but the massive body and huge blunt head do not allow you to relax and warn that he is not really looking for friendship with you, is it?

Let's return to the Brokebacks.
It will turn out to be a funny animal. A flock of humpbacked birds that bawl (quarrel, scold). Maybe they are not particularly scary and dangerous, but they can even get the dead. Terrible opponent :).

Names of places.
Here is our Alturas standing on the Plateau of the Winds, and opposite it is an army of thousands of Hunchbacks.

- Alturas, are you sure that the Plateau of the Winds the best place to fight them? And why do you need them at all?
“Such creatures have no place on my land.” What if the children hear?
- Look around, what kind of children are they? We are at an altitude of 1000 meters and it is midnight.
- 1000 meters? Midnight? Perhaps you're right. There are no children here, so it’s time to go to the pub.
(c) From the memories of Alturas, who defeated Laburrak.

Coming up with place names is quite easy. Cave of Horror? Hill of a Thousand Lightnings? Lake of blood? So be it. This perfectly characterizes the place.
And if you think this is too banal - translators. Wind - Haizea. Sounds good? Otherwise! Heize Plateau.

No, I in no way force you to turn to translators every time and create thousands of universal names. I encourage you to be logical in your works and maintain a general style.

A little about general style works.
When I wrote the script for Illatiera (I think many people know about this project of mine), it was naturally written in my own style, with my own names, characters, and so on. There was (and still is) one “Screenwriter” who undertook to edit the script.
I won’t talk about the results, but I was surprised by 1 case. When he tried to insert something of his own into the already formed style of the world, people, which came out like the sound of a fork on glass.
When I asked if he was embarrassed by the fact that this was completely out of style, they answered “No, this is cool name" I had no choice but to shrug my shoulders.

Imagine that there are only Lesha, Petra, Vasily around and then suddenly Zimbumba. This will at least cause a stupor. This is roughly what it looks like in the works. You can, of course, say that Zimbumba is from Africa, but this should be said in advance in order to prepare the reader/player.

I told you a little about the formation of heroes and the world. A sufficient number of books have been written about this. Don't be lazy, read, create the right ones and interesting worlds, and not illogical tracings.

Well, I’ll probably end up the same way I started. I love logic. In everything.
And if I need a Russian and generous character, he will most likely be named Robert, not Innocent.
I hope the article will give you at least a bit of useful information.

Hero work of art could be anyone - from a cockroach to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But we fully get used to only the image that resembles ourselves - that is, it has such human characteristics as character, habits, advantages, disadvantages, memories, dreams, plans for the future, etc.

If your heroine is distinguished only by her velvety skin and elasticity of form, then reading about her will only be interesting to prisoners who have already forgotten what a real woman looks like.

Number of heroes in a work of art

How many heroes should there be in a novel? As much as you can hold. In Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace there are more than two hundred named characters. In the tale of the heron and the crane there are only two.

It is believed that three - optimal quantity main characters in genre novel. One character is missing conflict situations: It will be difficult for the reader to empathize with him. Two is better, but someone else is needed to bring chaos to the relationship between the two main characters. Three is just right.

But even the intellectual novel and the mainstream should not be overpopulated. If the reader begins to get confused about the characters and forget who is who, this is a bad sign.

Reader's emotions

When the reader accepts the hero with all his heart, he experiences:

Sympathy - approval and sympathy;

Empathy - the reader easily imagines himself in the place of a literary character.

For this to happen, the character must be charming. Prince Bolkonsky, Carlson, Behemoth the Cat - all these and other memorable characters have the following in common:

Reliability - they are described in such a way that the reader seems to see them with his own eyes;

The ability to imitate - you want to copy the habits, words and style of behavior of the characters.

Heroes that inspire admiration

IN good novel The characters cope with their problems in a way that is admirable. Getting used to the successful literary image, the reader feels smarter, stronger, more charismatic - his life is filled with new colors. And I no longer want to let go of this illusion of another “I”.

An ordinary person as a character

Many people believe that ideal hero- this is a simple person. That's why there are so many faceless girls in the manuscripts that come to publishing houses, looking for love, and boring men with a midlife crisis. And even more - characters suffering from binge drinking and psychosis. The fact is that the authors of such works are not engaged in literature, but in self-medication - they describe themselves and their problems.

Who do you want to spend time with?

One of the leading American literary agents, Donald Maass, invites authors to imagine that they are traveling on a train. Who do they want to be in a compartment with for the next ten hours - a bright, witty person or a dull neurotic?

That's it.

If we want people to spend ten hours with our characters (which is how long the average book is read), the characters must be interesting.

We're not talking about characters like Superman or Batman. It's about charm. And the hero can be either a fool like Forrest Gump or a misanthrope like Dr. House.

How to show a hero with qualities that are difficult to convey in words (beauty, power, fame, etc.)?

If we describe a beautiful girl in a standard way - what color her lips and hair are - it will all look like a template. But if we show her through the eyes of another character, describe what he experiences when looking at the heroine, then the scene will play completely differently. The main thing is to focus on subjective perception.

The same technique can be used in scenes with kings and others significant persons: demonstrate not the imperious sparkle of the eyes, not the noble position of the head, but the feelings of another hero who comes into awe at the sight of the ruler.