Bringing characters to life is one of the essential foundations to a good story. First of all, there is no story without conflict and you can’t have conflict without people or some other sentient creature. You have the protagonist as the main character and hero. The antagonist, the villain who actively opposes the protagonist. Many mediums have a deuteragonist and a tritagonist. They are the second and third most important characters respectively. Usually they are a family member or loyal friend. Stories have short and flat characters. Round characters have layers and depth to their personalities, so they feel like real people. So audiences or readers feel deeply invested in them and their goals. Stories also need flat characters that seem one dimensional but they still serve a purpose to further the plot such as a minor antagonist, like a bully or bank robber. You never want too many flat characters, you need a balance of round and flat characters. Now that you know some of the types of characters, let’s learn how to bring them to life.
write your characters like people not objects!
Infamous best-selling author Stephen King wrote in his ‘Memoir of the Craft on Writing’ an important rule for writing characters. “I have never demanded of a set of characters do things my way. On the contrary, I want them to do things their way.” This stuck with me because I always thought saw characters from a creator perspective. Only when I read that characters written the way they’re supposed to be made for the best books. I mentioned writing characters like people. This means not making them black and white, since people are morally grey. Sometimes good people do bad things and bad people do good things. This is where characters like sympathetic villains or antiheroes exist. They often have traumatic events that make them jaded or angry. There are many personalities, goals, and motives for characters to act the way they do. What helped me was writing characters loosely based on people in my life and direct them from there. I still have a long way to go to writing fully fleshed out characters, but everyday I try to improve my creative abilities. I hope you learned a thing or two about bringing characters to life.