Reading is an adventure, but it’s also sensorial experience. A reader wants to feel something, be it hate, love, despair, hope, or heartache, and what creates these feelings is his or her involvement with the characters.
As a writer, you must create 3Dimensional characters on 2Dimensional surfaces. It seems easy enough: give your character long black hair, a straight nose, an hourglass body, and large black eyes, and you have yourself a protagonist that the reader can visualize. But it’s not enough to create a bond.
Think of the number of people you cross paths with in the street everyday. Think of how many stay with you. Can you recollect one person you saw this morning? Probably not. But if you do, this means the person had something different, something that captured your attention. Did they wear a strange perfume? Were their voices particularly shrill? Was their hair ridiculously teased or slick with gel?
For your readers to know your characters, you must first mold them into someone you can see, touch, smell, feel; someone you come to know inside out; someone you will become as intimate with as a real-life partner.
Begin with the basics.
– age: 17
– gender: female
– origins: South American
Add an image. Browse Google Images with the above key words. Once you’ve found a match, copy that picture into a word file.
Make a list of attributes belonging to this character. Let your imagination run wild.
– height: petite
– scent: smells like roses and Earl Grey
– appearance: wears Goth makeup and has piercings
– favorite clothes: Doc Martens boots and plaid skirts
– favorite activity: reads nineteenth-century literary fiction
– roots: Mom was a Columbian beauty queen – Dad is complete opposite: pale, blond, blue-eyed
– history: lost her mother as a child
– how does she get around: her father’s Volvo Woodie
– voice: deep and raspy, like a bumblebee
– tone: dry, sarcastic
– home: one story house on Maplewood Drive in Greenwich, CT
Meet Corazon Matthews, known to all as Cora, the aloof Goth girl who avoids her peers and is angry at life. She is one of the main three characters in my newest YA novel titled, Ghost Boy, Chameleon, and the Duke of Graffiti.
Go ahead and craft your character chart. Not only will it allow you to be creative, but it will make you consistent, two tools that will turn your fictional protagonists into unforgettable human beings.