Indie Authors & Fans of Indie Books discussion

How do you create the characters of your stories? Do they take on a life of their own?

To start, it helps if you're right brained. Second, I have a bit of an advantage of being a professional actor/director/acting coach for 40 years. Write a backstory of your character from birth. I have my acting students acquire a copy of "The Little Giant Encyclopedia of the Zodiac". It can give you a thumbnail of a character's positive and negative characteristics based on their birth sign. You get to play God and pick when your character was born.
And yes, they take a life of their own. We create a scenario and let the characters figure it out. Sometimes they surprise even us.
www.tinyurl.com/thenations1 - The Nations
http://tinyurl.com/7hqw6ge - BEF Sacred Mountain
http://tinyurl.com/befeos1 - BEF Eye of the Storm
http://tinyurl.com/StarF01 - BEF Starfighter

Available in print also.

That's good and very interesting. Thanks for sharing Ken. They just develop on their own for me with attributes from actual people I've met over the years. Sometimes get quite the surprises.

Robert, as an acting coach, I wrote a book I require all my students buy for class as their text book. "Acting is Storytelling". It has three chapters devoted to creating characters. I'm publishing it, after years of being ragged by my students, through CreatSpace in a couple of weeks. I found out it works just as well for writers as it does for actors. After all, isn't writing (we write fiction) also storytelling? Look for it soon.

Robert wrote: "Thanks, Ken. I will look for it! Hope you'll add some links and discussion about the book here too when it's available for purchase."

Will do. Have had several writers pick up a copy when we did a book signing at the Spirit of the Cowboy festival. I'll let you know.
K

Ok, children, here is the link to my book, "Acting is Storytelling", superimpose "Writing" is Storytelling.
Three chapters on creating characters and a 900 word
Dictionary of Emotions. "The primary tool of the Writer is Emotions."
http://tinyurl.com/pagact

J.B., I had a bit of a leg up as I had been writing screen/teleplays for twenty years. Being a writer/director/actor...I think screeplay when I write. I have to see what the camera sees and what the sound engineer hears when I'm writing a novel. I still coach acting and require all my kiddos (anyone under 50 is a kiddo) to buy my acting book, "Acting is Storytelling", superimpose "Writing" for acting.
The only hard part in writing novels after years of writing/re-writing screenplays was watching my tenses. Many of our reviewers have said reading our books is like watching a movie. Don't know, don't think about it, it's just the way I write.