How Do You Create A Character?

There are a lot of ways to create story characters.  It all basically depends on the type of stories you write and the type of characters who’ll be starring in said story.  For me, I usually have a pretty good idea of the characters in my head as I start out, but I let them grow as the story goes along.  And like any other person, they have their good days and their bad days.  It might not be the right way, but I’m not sure that there is a right or a wrong way to create a character.

When I start out writing a story, I think about the characters first.  Who are they?  Why are they in the story?  What kind of people are they?  Once I’ve figured out the basics of them, I interview them.  Yes, I sit down and do a mock interview with my intended characters.  It helps me in shaping them into realistic figures that readers can believe in.  I don’t want a story filled with goodie-two-shoes, even if the story is about those types of people.  They have to have some flaws.  There has to be something about them that makes them human.  After all, none of us is perfect, so why should the characters in our books be so.

I do the same types of interviews for both the antagonist and the protagonist.  I also do this with all the lesser characters.  It’s how I get a more 3-dimentional feel for them.  It helps me come up with physical traits as well as psychological ones.  It even helps me create some emotional issues that may not even come out in the story.  But for me, knowing that those things are there, help me to create a story around the characters that are believeable.

What types of characters do you enjoy reading about?  Do you like the perfect never-done-wrong types or do you prefer your heroes to be a bit on the flawed side?  Do you want your villains to be a little bit sympathetic or should they be just down right hateful?  How do you create a character?

A Cool Place To Gather

Ever wish there was a place you could go hang out at and post all your fictional ideas and maybe get a little feedback at the same time?  If so, you need to check out Gather.com.  I love this site.  I’ve been a member for just over 3 years and I’m still amazed at the number of people I’ve had the pleasure to meet and mingle with over that time.  Though I don’t hang out there as much as I used to, I still pop in to get my freewrite on.

There are all kinds of writing groups on this site.  Some are meant to help the fiction writer, so to help the poet, and others are just there to help you build points.  And why would you want to do that???  Well because if you earn enough points, you can cash them in for all kinds of cool things including Paypal cash cards.  I’ve never earned that much myself, but I never really tried either.  I wasn’t there to try and make money, I used it as a way to find my personal voice and new people to hang out with.

There are 2 basic kinds of people on Gather.com.  Those that you’ll love to hang out with and talk about everything under the sun, and those that will harass you relentlessly and drive you absolutely mad.  And trust me, there are quite a few of them.  However, you don’t have to accept their friendship requests and if you accidentally run across one of the types of people, just unfriend them and you don’t have to worry about it anymore.

Gather.com is kind of like a social network for writers.  And I mean writers of all genre, all walks of life, all personalities, and everything in between.  Whatever you are in this world, or whatever you want to be.  It’s all good and it’s okay because when you join up with site, you’ll find that you’ll look forward to the times you show up to Gather.

Read Books Online Free

Before I get into tonight’s post, I have to give a huge shout-out to Ty Johnston for being the coolest dude EVER!!!  A few days ago, I told ya’ll about an awesome list of sites for writers that Ty was adding on his site.  I casually mentioned that I’d be honored to have my other site, The Prompt Writer, listed among those sites.  Well, not only did he add my site to his list, he actually sent me an email and interviewed me about the site and my own writing endeavors.  I’m very humbled by the experience and I want everyone who reads this to head over to Ty’s site, buy his books, and read my cool interview.  Okay, I now return us to our originally planned post.

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How many times have you found a site you really wanted to check out because it said “free” only to find out it was anything but free?  It seems as though every site you find anymore has something that’s listed as free, but there’s always a catch.  I find those sites all the time, so I’ve gotten a little leary over the years.  So when I found a site online that said I could read any book online for free, I went looking for the catch.  And guess what….I couldn’t find one.

The site is called ReadAnyBook.com and they claim that you can read any book on their site free of charge.  You don’t have register, but if you don’t, you’ll only be able to read portions of the books.  I figured that that was where the free part came in.  I figured there would be a charge of some sort when I registered, but none.  It’s a free membership.  Okay, I can dig this.  I figured the books would be either very old books or books nobody had ever heard of before, but again I was wrong.  They offer titles such as Twilight, the entire Harry Potter series, and even Dan Brown’s latest novel, The Lost Symbol.

The really cool part, in my opinion, is that the books are read on the site via what looks like an actual e-reader.  It’s really cool.  Furthermore, there are thousands of titles to choose from.  I was very excited and will be back to finish reading The Lost Symbol.  It looks awesome.  So go check it out and see if there isn’t a book or ten you’d like to read.  Up to this point, I couldn’t find any catch to the site.  But if I do, I promise to come back and tell you all about it.