A friend of mine came to me the other day and said, “I really enjoy writing fiction, but my only real problem has to do with character creation. How do you name characters? How do you make them unique, interesting, and memorable? How do you make the reader care?”

These are the questions I’m going to cover in this blog.

Giving credit where it’s due: I did not invent this knowledge, but I do employ it. Some of the original ideas for these concepts come from Brandon Sanderson, and Orson Scott Card.

Naming

A name should be interesting and unique. This is especially true for main characters.

Quick Tips:

Choose a unique name that fits, and change/add one or two letters.

Example: Steven could become Stavane, or Stav for short)
Make all the main characters names different from each other, and make them start with different letters.

Example: avoid using names like William and Winston together
Chooses names based on the phonetic sound they make.

Example: The name “Dumbledore” from Harry Potter sounds similar to “bumblebee”. J.K. Rowling chose the name because she imagined him the type of wizard to walk around humming to himself.
Help avoid reader confusion by using names with different syllable counts.

Example: Crato (2) would pair better with Hephaestus (3) than Jemma (2)
Depending on the theme/setting of your book, you can look at foreign names, and their meanings for inspiration (a quick google search for names + the nationality you want will do it).

Example: Khalil from Recreance is Arabic for “Friend” – a translation that works phonetically and in character personality.

Exaggerate, Investigate, Twist
 Exaggerate

Whether your inspiration for characters comes from distant relatives, old friends, or just people you witnessed briefly in the grocery store, they often become more interesting with some personality exaggeration.

I was in the grocery store last week when I noticed a frail man approach the service desk. He purchased a scratch-and-win, and soon after began shouting and waving his arms in the air, gesticulating wildly. Wisps of white hair danced above his liver-spotted head as he flailed about. The young clerk gasped, holding a hand over her mouth. She was frozen on the spot, too shocked to react. The man tried to climb up onto the counter, but an overweight security guard trundled over and grasped the assailant by the shoulders.

This story is an exaggeration. Yes, I was in the grocery store, and yes I saw a man buying a scratch-and-win, but I exaggerated his frustration, and the result.

Take your characters and exaggerate them a little – just not too much, or they’ll begin to resemble a caricature.

Investigate

Ask your characters questions about their motivations, and don’t immediately accept the first answer you get.

Why was the old man so upset?

Perhaps he is senile, and forgot to take his medication that day?

Maybe he’s someone’s grandfather with Alzheimer’s that slipped out the door and walked to the grocery store.

Maybe he spent his last dollar on the scratch-and-win, desperately hoping he could win enough money to pay for groceries.

These answers are plausible, but they are also easy, and somewhat shallow. Let’s keep asking…

Perhaps the old man is not senile, and the young clerk swiped his winning scratch-and-win to support her drug habit.

Okay, a little more interesting, now let’s twist it.

Twist

The old man is not senile, nor did the clerk steal his scratch-and-win. He became enraged once he recognized her face. It belonged to the driver responsible for hitting and killing his wife three weeks ago. The same driver that sped away in a light blue Pontiac, tires screeching, as he watched the woman he had loved since childhood slip away on the cement sidewalk.

The twist is a fantastic way to add some depth and interesting backgrounds to your characters. As with the investigation, you should not immediately go with the first twist you think of. Come up with a few and pick the best one.

Character Traits – Pick 2

There is a lot of information out there when it comes personality traits of your characters (see end of this post for some resources). One strategy for choosing character traits comes from looking at three main characteristics:

Active
Likable
Competent

As you may have guessed from the title of this section, take two of these, and deprive your character of the third. Imperfection makes a character more interesting. It gives them depth, and gives you somewhere to go with their development. Is your character Likable and Competent? Then make them hopelessly unmotivated. Some of the most famous characters ever written possess these traits (looking at you, Bilbo).

**If you’d like to check out some resources around character development, I recommend Elements of Fiction Writing – Characters & Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card, and Brandon Sanderson’s writer advice video series.

 

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