Four Part Blog Series: Beginning a Novel: Part 4: The Characters

Before you want to write a novel, you’re going to want to know your characters pretty well, right? I mean, you don’t want to write bland, wooden characters at the beginning of your novel and then by the end you’ve got your character down. No, you want to have them nice and rounded already before you start writing!

1: Names

Before you begin, you want to start by carefully giving your characters a name. You don’t want to sit down to right and then be like ‘Oh shoot I forgot to give my character a name.’ and then make up something totally random that you regret later. Trust me, I know. It happened to me before. Several times.

So, first give them a name. You don’t have to make up a name, or do something like that. You can pick an already made name. In fact, that makes it even easier for the reader to be able to pronounce the name, and for you to make it up. Of course, made up names are cool but you totally don’t have to do that.

Then, there’s the stereo typical names, that you DON’T want to have. Overused names are…well just totally overused, and very boring and bland.

2: Personality

Give them lots and lots of personality. Give them their likes and dislikes, favorite foods and worst foods, favorite colors, friends, their view on the world, the things happening around them, as well as their view on the theme of the book. Give them their own good dialogue. I made a post about dialogue quite a while of go. Go check it out! This step is sometimes tricky to do, but it’s fun to be creating someone that feels really real.

3: Motivation

And most of all, give your characters motivation. Everyone has a goal, a path, a distant light at the end of the tunnel. What does your main characters have for their motivation? What is your antagonists? Your antagonists soldiers? Your other characters? Now, not each one character needs a very complicated motivation. Most of the time you don’t even have to think about giving your character’s motivation because they already do as you naturally create them, but to be safe, double check. Their motivation could be something as simple as “the soldiers want to free their country” or, “these people work for so and so for money”. Or something like that!

---

And there you go. Four part blog series is finished. I hope you enjoyed this and found it useful for your writing journey. I hope I explained all the pieces well and that you are able to use this for your writing. If you want to learn more about writing, keep in tune with my blog, and if you don’t want to miss a post again, receive writing updates from me, and get two exclusive short stories along the way, join my email list here!

Have you done all of this stuff before? Was there anything useful in here that you were able to pick up? Happy that I created this blog series? Mad that I created this? (Goodness, I hope not!) Please talk, I would love to know everything! 🙂