Taking It From The Begining – Part 2

Characters are so important. They can make or break a book. Strong characters with clear motivations and faults are what readers come back time and again for.

A word about creating characters. It’s okay to base your characters on someone you know personally or a television show character, as long as he/she is only based on them. It is wrong, wrong, wrong to lift someone else’s work. For instance, in the last post I talked about getting inspiration from the television show Supernatural. I’ve decided to base one of the characters on Dean. Base him. I’m giving a nod here to the creators and writers of Supernatural who have done a brilliant job of character building! Way to go, guys.

I’ve taken a look at the character of Dean to see why I like him so much.  He is a wise guy, he is very physical and hides his emotions from others. That’s what I’ll use. While Dean certainly has flaws of his own, I’ll give my hero his own flaws. For this book, my hero will be fatalistic. In my book, he will believe that in the end, he will fail. He will let people down. Something in his past has made him this way. Maybe he had a fiancé who he let down. Or something happened to her. We’ll talk about that in the next blog.

Check out this website for a list of some flaws – http://www.darkworldrpg.com/lore/flaws.html

For now, I’ll give my hero and heroine names. For this book I’m going to name my hero Kurt Rollins and my heroine Quinn Palmer. Keep in mind that names can always change.

Still with me? Think about your hero. We’ll explore him more in the next blog.