How I Come Up With Characters

Hello everyone!

I hope summer is treating everyone well. It certainly has treated me well so far! I’ve been writing of course, although I recently had a creative breakdown and decided to once again put Speck Of Sage back on the shelf to be finished at a later date. What can I say? Sequels are hard guys! So now I’m stepping back into the world of Kelcius, and honestly, I might be better off long term writing a new book that I can try to publish rather than a sequel to a first book that has still yet to be. I’m giving myself a whole other option to try and sell to a publisher, which doubles my chances! So that’s what I’m up to. 

I also started reading again. I’m reading Crooked Kingdom, by Leigh Bardugo. Her style and jumping between POV’s every chapter is exactly the type of style I’m using for Kelcius. Reading truly is my best form of research!

Anyways, I wanted to do something kind of fun and different for this blog. Something I’ve always wanted to do- I wanted to explain my thought process behind coming up with my characters. I figured I’d start with this, and then I might do posts specifically about a certain character later on. 

For starters, I’ll admit that a lot of my characters are spontaneously created mid draft lol. Even with Kelcius, the first time I ever mapped out most of a trilogy prior to beginning writing it, I wound up adding in a sidekick best friend that wasn’t in my notes. It happens all the time, and it’s very fun. But no matter where they come from, or how late into the process they join the adventure, almost all of my characters share traits with me. I gave every one of the Sprint characters from Astrid Outdoors a personality trait that I have. Everyone has a little bit of me in them. While some might say that makes me self indulgent, it actually helps me write them better. I can channel their energies more easily, which is probably why dialogue has always been my strongest writing (I’ll make a whole post about that one day too). 

Astrid herself was inspired heavily by me. I began writing her story during the Covid-19 Pandemic, a time period in which I was very lonely, depressed, and wondering if the world was ever going to be okay again. It’s where the entire concept of the book came from. But Astrid has always had my loneliness. I gave Sage my anxiety. Amin has my good heart. Aella has my fire. Jessie, who was basically me as a character to begin with, has my sense of humor. Rowan got my passion and Hardley got my social anxiety. Yes, they all share traits of mine, but they are so much more than that. I find that adding a little bit of myself to help make them relatable while also giving them so much of their own personality, makes for complex, fun, and interesting characters! 

Creating characters is easy. Making them interesting, complex, and flawed enough to go through arcs is the hard part. I actually find that the hardest question to answer about my characters is “what is their character flaw?” When writing someone like Kira Kelcius,  a simple mechanic with no idea she has a secret power that is destined to free the world of darkness, how on earth am I supposed to make someone that powerful have flaws? It’s tough. But I have found that a lot of times the flaws reveal themselves as I continue to write and evolve them. I asked my friend who read the first draft of Astrid Outdoors to tell me if she felt that Astrid had a main flaw, and she told me she felt she was incredibly self involved- which was the correct answer. Astrid often acts only for her benefit without factoring in anyone else. People aren’t perfect. If they were, books would be incredibly boring. The more flawed you make them, the more satisfying you can make their arc by the end of the story. You can turn unlikeable characters likable. Steve Harrington from Stranger Things is a prime example. Hated him in the first season, but now he’s my favorite character because of his growth and the humbling up he went through. Some characters are inherently unlikeable from the jump and are destined to be that way. (Prince Aegon from House Of The Dragon). Unlikeable characters are sometimes necessary for the sake of a story. You might not stand them when you watch or read them, but chances are neither does the character you root for. The tricky part is when you get a character who is meant to be unlikeable but is actually your protagonist. (Kaz Brekker from Six Of Crows, Walter White from Breaking Bad). I haven’t written a character like that yet, but I have one in my drafts. 

The point is that characters aren’t as simple as “good and bad.” Just like people in real life are truly neither all good nor all bad. We are shades of gray and complex emotions and motivations. Astrid does things that are pretty selfish. Sage treats a lot of people terribly and has an awful temper. Kira doesn’t want to accept her destiny and would rather let war rage on and live in peace. My thought process has always been complexity. I used to think the question you needed to ask was “how does your character change by the end of the story?” But I think that’s too broad, and certainly too limiting because lets’ face it- not everyone is capable of changing.  Some people are the way they are and thus don’t go through remarkable character arcs. So I find that asking “what does this character learn?” is better. Because they may not change, but a character will almost always learn something- usually about themselves. Astrid stops learning to be so self involved and puts her friends and family first. Kira accepts she has to learn to master her powers and embrace her destiny. It’s all about the lessons we learn to make us better. Sage realizes she needs to be a better person to the people she loves. That’s the beauty and fun of writing characters. 

Character creation is pretty nuanced, but it comes naturally for me. It’s one of the most fun parts of this job. My characters are almost like my children. They’re the friends that exist on my pages, and I hope one day they become your friends too! 

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this deep dive! It was really fun to write and I think I’m going to write more stuff like this. Let me know what you want to see! I can do deep dives of certain characters, I can talk about writing dialogue, or how I structure my stories and chapters. Let me know!

Until next time, 

Happy Reading!

Patrick