by Elton Gahr

Created on: April 19, 2009

One of the stranger bits of being a writer is how attached you can become to people who don't actually exist. This is a vital tool for the writer, but there are also pitfalls to having your character become your friends and children. This birth of characters is a useful way to examine some great ways to create interesting characters as well as some of the pitfalls of creating characters.

One of the important things that thinking of characters as children being born helps us to understand is that characters do not spring fully formed from your head. Most characters, just like children, come as a tiny spark of an idea that mixes with another spark of an idea and begins to slowly grow. Over time it grows larger and soon it begins to become recognisable. You can pick out fingers and toes.

Even once it is born onto the page though you must be careful to understand that this character should not be treated as an adult. This means that it should be expected that the character learn and grow as it lives its life out on the page. This happens by creating a character who has plenty of room for growth. Flaws and mistakes are a necessary part of childhood.

As it grows to adolescence nearing the middle of the book the character begins to become more rebellious. It is at this point that you must face the understanding that this character may not always do what you want. Sometimes you come to a crossroads and you are certain that the character must go left but this rebellious teenage insists on right. Just as a teenager it is important at this point to allow the character some freedom to choose its destiny but not so much that it will lead it to disaster. You are ultimately the parent and know better than your character.

By the end of the written book your character is nearing graduation. At this point it is often more them than you who is deciding their ultimate fate. Typically if you have raised them well they will make good decisions that lead to a satisfying and well rounded place but not always.

And then they go into adulthood as you begin to send them out into the world to stand on their own. There is little left for you to do for them as they visit publishers and agents but hope and pray that you raised them well.

Where this analogy of the character as child begins to become a bit darker is when you begin to understand the need for a good writer to "Kill their darlings" this bit of advice is actually meant for beautiful passages of prose but it is an equally important point when becoming attached to your characters. You must remember as you move forward that no matter how much you may like this character your job as a writer is to make bad things happen to him. Becoming so attached to a character that you are unwilling to allow something negative to happen may seem far fetched but as you become closer to a character it becomes a more real concern.

No matter if you consider your characters to be friends, enemies or children at some point if you write enough they will begin to become at least a little real to you and as they become more real your writing will become better for it.

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