[hippokrene]

Ah, characters. They're the heart, soul, and earlobes of fiction. But how do you create characters with character?

No, I don’t want advice you read out of a book. Tell me about a character you've actually written (or are currently writing about) and how you made that character. Tell me how you first came up with the character and how you use or formed them over time, and tell me what you did to make your character’s character apparent to the reader.

Slap down excepts from your WIP if it helps.

[Diane]

Hahaha... which character to showcase....

I suppose I should go with my favorite in the work I'm working on. Rathmel. He's a master assassin with a flare for the overly dramatic. In modern times he'd definitely be a theater major. He has an over inflated ego and only enjoys his own wittiness.

He formed from a strange portion of my personality (his sense of humor, not his interest in killing). One society mocked into hiding. Maybe it went bad after laying in wait for so long...

Rathmel followed the corridor soundlessly. The trip thus far had been completely disappointing. The dozen guards he had found died without even blinking. There was no challenge, no thrill. Recklessness seemed to be in order. It was the only cure for the tedium. It would take a little extra work. He stopped stalking and stood in the hallway. It required several practice steps but eventually he managed a good squeak on the floor with each step.

In developing his character, Rathmel's first appearance had a major hand in telling me who he is. His interactions with another character, one he both mocks and respects, taught me and the reader alike to expect anything from him.

I love him. He embodies my love of irony, humor, and melodrama :). He shines best when interacting with characters his polar opposite. He's on a lot of people's kill list :cool:

[tyriseus]

Great subject.

Last year I wrote a trilogy that was based around a single character. His origins date back a few years prior to when I started writing. I was reading Salvatore's Drizt books and it triggered a dormant desire to write. With this inspiration I created an additional character and imagined various interactions he could have wth Salvatore's bunch. I even played with the idea of writing a book (which I guess would be fan fiction) but felt it wouldn't be right. Instead I waited and for the next two years the character would change and evolve until he was nothing like his original. I you ever read it I doubt you'd even guess that this was where he came from.

Over time I created a supporting cast and before I fell asleep each night I'd imagine various interactions and adventures until I knew him intimately. It would take some time to outline how he developed during this period but essentially it was trial and error. I put him in differnt scenarios, battles, character conflicts until slowly his strengths and weakness became apparent. After some time I realized I wanted to get him out of my head and then started to piece together a tale to allow me to. A lot of the scenarios I'd played with became part of the plot but many more were discarded having served their purpose. The story seemed to have a life of it's own when I wrote it. I liken it to releasing him into the wilds of a strange world and then just writing down how the people responded to him and how he in turn reacted to his treatment.

So in essense I created an imaginary friend to play with...one that I've grown to love more than most would consider healthy...especially as a 32 year old...but then there's a reason most people aren't writers. The writing of my story was really just a desire to show him off to allow others to fall in love with him like so many of the great characters I've read about before.

[Holbrook]

I try to write believable characters rather than "colourful ones." If you throw too much into the mix readers can't identify with them, or get bored.

As for characters I have written.

A mage who has totally fallen off his trolley, and can't remember much of anything.

A shell-shocked WWI officer who talks to ghosts.

Currently

An RAF bomber pilot that sees small, nasty creatures that are trying to take over the world.

A Lord, who is also a Police Inspector, who owns a demon skin coat.

A robin and a cat trying to stop the end of the world.

[tdnewton]

Two kinds of characters I love to write: outcasts, and people who go against popular thinking. If I can combine the two traits in one character, I win.

[Jon Sprunk]

The mc for my trilogy is Caim, a loner assassin who lives and works in the decadent capital city of a nation in decline.

The idea for Caim came to me pretty much out of the blue. I was reading a lot and trying to come up with ideas for a new series when Caim popped into my head. At first he was a cat-burglar-style thief. Changing his profession was the only significant alteration I made before I began writing.

I'm not 100% sure how I make his character apparent to the reader; I try to put myself in his head and go from there. Hopefully, what comes out is a well-rounded, interesting person (you'll have to tell me if I succeeded).

[E_Moon]

I prefer complex to 'colorful' because 'colorful' can come to mean easily caricatured--broadly painted--and thus simple.

Minor characters can be 'colorful' in the conventional sense and still work because they don't need to have (shouldn't have) quite the depth of main characters. OTOH, a strong main character can incorporate elements of 'colorful' and add the depth that's needed.

Arvid Semminson (from the Paksworld books) insists he's not a thief but is high up in the Thieves' Guild as an enforcer. Suave, sophisticated, multi-lingual (including nonhuman languages, though he's just met one he doesn't know), prefers to dress in black, and to his own surprise capable of (even impelled to) generosity and saving lives from time to time. He is appalled at the idea that he might be destined for some heroic role, since he sees himself as an antihero. (And in the section I just wrote "And how's that working out for you, hmmm?" might be an appropriate question for someone to ask him when he's lying on the ground in a freezing rain, having been beaten, robbed, and hauled off to die by another branch of the Thieves' Guild he'd expected to receive him with honor.) He had no POV sections in the earlier books, but unexpectedly showed up to spirit the unconscious protag out of a really bad situation, and killed the person who would've killed her while she lay unconscious. The protag then suggested that the gods might have plans for him. Recoil. In the new books he has POV sections and is sort of slouching towards Bethlehem to be born, as it were. Backwards. It will be interesting to see how he turns out. (No, I don't know. Characters grow. Letting them grow keeps them lively and interesting.)

From the most recent SF series: Grace Lane Vatta. Aunt Grace originally appeared as a fussy, bossy, nosy old lady in a print dress scolding the protagonist for swimming nude in the family pool. The kind of prissy great-aunt that nieces and great-nieces hope not to see very often, and whose unsuitable presents they scorn. Little did I know. Aunt Grace has used that persona for years, but she isn't just that, and her penchant for baking very special fruitcakes (the kind with surprises inside) is equal to her penchant for commercial/industrial espionage and, when necessary, lethal violence. She had no POV sections in the first book, but over time her role expanded and her POV sections became necessary (and fun to write.) She's a war veteran who had severe post-combat symptoms after she discovered she liked killing, and was confined for a time as mentally ill. She took up fishing and tying her own flies as a way to convince the wardens that she was now sane again and not a danger to society. Not until someone tries to wipe out her family.

From the Familias Regnant books, there's Goonar the trader and his cousin Basil...Goonar's a widower and his large family wants him to remarry, so Basil is on the lookout for suitable women...one of whom happens to be a member of a theatrical troupe which is hiding a fugitive from the Compassionate Hand (Sicily in space, more or less.) Which gave me a chance to write a light opera in the mode of The Bartered Bride so she could star in it and its stage set was available to disguise...well, read it. Goonar was such fun that I kept him on for another book. He and Basil were particularly good to write--the family dynamics, the difference in personalities, the division of labor on the tradeship...very much precursors to some of the Vattas, perhaps particularly to the protagonists in "Say Cheese", which deals with the youth of two men who die in the second book of the series--brothers, this time, rather than cousins.

Also from that series was the weapons scientist with a frolicsome sense of humor and membership in a historical re-enactment group--fount of ideas, at least half of them nonsense, but some of them absolutely brilliant. The problem is...at the rate that he spouts them out...which is which? Drives more conventional and slower-reacting colleagues crazy sometimes, but no one denies the brilliance. (Yes, yes, I know people with some of those traits, and I had also been reading Feynman's autobiography and thought how annoying he might be in a crisis situation.)

[Stephen Palmer]

Advice from Gene Wolfe - if in doubt, make 'em colourful.

[goldhawk]

This is from my Ideas files. First the names came to me; they sounded good together. Then, I thought up their profession. So I wrote the following to capture those thoughts. But now they sit there not doing anything. I don't have a plot for them and only a vague idea of how they make a living, but still, it's a neat idea.

And it's still in draft, so it's English isn't the bestest. ;)

Lloyd, Watts, and Small: Reality Adjusters

Lloyd was a tall, thin man who did not have a firm grip on
reality. That was Watts job.

Now, a Scottish engineer is a cliché. But that's what Watts
was, a cliché, all the way from his red hair and muttonchops
to his fake baroque accent. It was his way of dealing with
people. But beneath his stereotypical façade there was a
top-notch reality engineer. Lloyd supposed that any
engineer, even reality engineers, couldn't quite cope with
full-blown, raw reality. If they could, they wouldn't be
good at engineering.

Small was their token female. She was also big. And black.
That meant she didn't take no sass from no-one. And she had
the muscles to make her opinion felt. Painfully felt when
necessary. It was a partnership that he could live with.

Lloyd was the people person. That's why when the blond
bombshell walked into their office, he knew she was trouble.
She was a perfect beauty. Now, perfect beauty was the last
generation genemod. Exotic beauty was the current rage.
That meant she couldn't afford it. That meant she was
probably planning to use her feminine wiles to persuade him
not to charge full price. Not that he minded her trying but
Lloyd never let his hormones interfere with business; hence
trouble.

[Chainzen]

My main character Angelo Juno is an angry and hopeless loser in the beginning of Heroseed, but he eventually becomes an arrogant drunken warrior....so....he only gets worse from there. I made Angelo as an extention of myself, including traits that I will never have the guts to display in public. He may have a rough exterior and a foul sense of humor, but on the inside he has a heart of gold and a care for his friends that makes him refuse to give up hope. I know that last part may of sounded corny, but thats partly how I write.