Past Perfect?
Did you know you have a ready-made source for characters, situations and creatures? It’s absolutely free. No expensive downloads are needed, and you don’t need to spend money on it. Sounds pretty good, huh?
You want me to tell you where you can find this amazing resource? The truth is you probably already have it. Just stop sitting in front of your computer (after you’ve finished this post, of course,) and go outside. Go talk to anyone.
The limitless source for your writing? Life.
Everyone has one, even us fantasy nerds. And your own experiences can make for fascinating reading.
Put down that pen. I’m not done yet.
Your own experiences, your own memories, can provide you with an almost limitless amount of raw character, plot, and world details, but your own life, raw and unedited, isn’t going to be of much interest unless it is extremely well-written. So, unless someone besides your parents tell you you’re the next JD Salinger, we don’t want to read a biography.
But, Reg, I hear you ask, what the heck are you talking about?
Pay attention. Using your own experiences in writing can make your characters live, your world pop off the page, and your plot enthral, even if you live in London 2009, and your story is set in a dystopian China 400 years ago.
You need a villain, right? Let’s think. How many unpleasant people have we met in our lives? Enough so that if we put their traits together right, we’ll get a villain that is not only nasty as Indian curry with Worstershire sauce, but feels eerily real to your reader. He’s vindictive like your rival in class, spiteful like that geography teacher, and more of a mind manipulator than that girl from 8th grade.
That was easy, huh? Now, there is a very easy trap for you (the young writer) to fall into. If you can make the villain so exceedingly nasty, why not make the love interest so perfect that everyone falls in love with her just by looking at her? Why not make her such that even the nasty sociopath villain can become good from one kiss from her full lips?
Hang on a minute! This is sounding unrealistic. Mary Sue, please get out of this blog. Thank you. Mary Sue’s (and their male counterparts, Marty Stu’s) are an open pit trap with spikes and crocodiles when you start writing with your own emotions and memories.
The definition of a Mary Sue is a character that somehow gets along well with everybody, even the characters who would rather slash someone’s throat than express affection. As a critical reader, this sort of character can be an instant turn-off, and is a hallmark of shoddy writing.
I wish I could say this would prevent your book from being published, but… Twilight made it, and your book might as well. Characters like Bella from Twilight are so everyman (everywoman?) that they can’t be considered their own person any more. And that is a constant danger.
Write from your own memories and experiences, but keep a critical eye on your characters. You shouldn’t be able to give the book to a friend and they start recognizing you in the hero, your girlfriend (or crush) in the love interest and themselves in the Five Man Band.
Your characters are just that. Your characters. One of my characters, since I began writing her, has gotten progressively more sullen and aggressive, yet I’ve never met anyone like that. She began developing her own character. A dark, emotionally stunted teenager who is more at home with a corpse in front of her than another living human is not at all what I had in mind when I first introduced her, but that’s what she is now.
I once wrote a story with obvious parallels between this world and that, and I gave it to my crush to read. She hated it, all but burning it, because she saw too obviously herself in the main character and me in the other. I’ve never written anything like that again, but I may go back to the world one day.
In the end, your own experiences are a wonderful source of examples for characters, even adaptable to elves or faeries, depending on your fantasy taste. But it’s far too easy to caricature people you know, and from there, it is a short slide to a Mary Sue or Wesley. (Tvtropes.org)
Be careful with your characters. Don’t force them. Let them grow as you write. A cast of static characters is the enemy of a dynamic plot.
Ah, yes, this still needs to be beaten into everyone’s head now and then.
Characters are people. Let’s all remember this. Sure, you can base them off of other people (and do, to some extent), but remember to let them develop on their own. This causes problems (I ran into ENDLESS problems because one character decided that, screw my plans, he wanted a love triangle), but it’s well worth it, just to see your characters develop and mature.