by R. M. Ziegler

Created on: April 27, 2008

You can find characters anywhere you look. They live in your house, in your neighborhood, in newspapers, or anywhere else. The sources are limitless.

Sometimes we're blessed with characters who intrude our minds and all we have to do is let our imagination take offor let them. Or we might meet someone on the street or at a reunion who sparks an idea for a character or story. It might be someone we observe in a checkout line, in the park, in a classroom. We start asking "What if?" and a character is born. Listen to anecdotes or people willing to tell their life stories. Mark Twain's story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was inspired by an actual story he heard when he was covering gold miners in California. A lot of Hemingway's stories were based on real life. Joyce Carol Oates, Flannery O'Connor, and Anne Tyler said they found inspiration in newspaper clippings.

Use your dreams. They may not always make sense, but dreams always have a basic conflict. For instance, I have a recurring dream about returning to school and getting lost. Sometimes I lose my schedule and can't get another copy, or I get lost in the labyrinth of halls trying to get from chem. lab to English. The basic conflict is getting lost. It can also be a major or minor character trait. Expand the conflict and here are some possibilities I come up with:
My character is a housewife who's been newly widowed and gets lost on her way to a first job interview.
My character decides to run away from home but ends up getting lost on her way to her destination.
My character is a new kid in school and has trouble finding her way around.
These are just a few possibilities. If you're inclined to do dream analysis or consult a dream symbol book, by all means, go ahead. You might discover more situations and conflicts.

Read as much as you can. Read newspapers. There are characters lurking in feature articles, wedding announcements, obituaries, and classified ads. Scan the personals. Read the obituary section of any newspaper. Usually they list the decedent's occupation and interests as well as their surviving relatives. Choose one or several that catch your eye and create a character sketch from one or a combination of several. (Be sure to change the name.) Whatever is not included in the obituary, use your imagination to fill in the details. What is the conflict? Did your character die by accident, illness, or his own hand? Did your character accomplish what he wanted before his death? What

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