In this, the first in a series of three articles on Character and Voice, I will be looking at the fundamentals of character creation: where characters come from, their role in a story, character types and what goes into the creation of a fully rounded character – of course, not all characters need to be fully rounded, but we’ll get to that later.
The subsequent articles in the series will cover more about characters – goal, motivation, etc – how to reveal character through action and dialogue, and techniques to bring your characters to life through the technique of Show Not Tell. In the final article, I will take a detailed look at Point of View with reference to your characters and how the Point of View and Tense you choose to write in are just a couple of the elements that make up your unique Writing Voice.
Tips and exercises will accompany each article, hopefully helping you create some fantastic characters of your own.
Okay, let’s get to it...
What are characters?
The act of writing fiction is the creation of the illusion of reality. The job of
