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the picture and coloring in all the facets that help the reader to get to know your characters.

NOTES

Notes are exceptionally helpful in drawing up characters. In a recent book, one of my characters was an elf type character, though I wanted to give him certain characteristics that I was already familiar with like mischief, fun and a certain sense of irony. By keeping notes on what he looked like, and how he would act in certain circumstances, I came to be his friend, and was able to describe him without difficulty, just as you can describe those people you know in the real world.

Getting to know your characters intimately helps you create a wide range of people and to decide how they intermix and weave together to form the fabric of a story.

BACKGROUNDS AND TYPES

There are a million different types of people, and this doesn't stop at character itself. Look and observe or if writing historical fiction, study and take notes of the following:

*Background and where they come from
*How they dress
*How they laugh, smile or look sad
*How they interact with other characters in your book

The background of a person makes a difference. It is where people come from that makes them as they are now, and by developing whole characters with real histories, background, education, thought processes and prejudices caused by past, you can get inside the heads of your characters and make them make more sense. Given that the only means you have of letting your readers see your characters is words, by studying who they are and where they came from, you get a deeper understanding of how to portray them so that they come out of your book as crystal clear real people.

LOGICAL CONCLUSION

The logical conclusion of carrying out the exercises above is that before you even take pen to paper or switch on the computer, you already know your cast. These are the people that play their role within your written work. Knowing them helps you to bring them to life. Talking about characters that you hardly know comes out like half baked fiction with colors missing, and the picture incomplete. By practicing the above exercises, with children, men and women, people who touch your life with misery or with happiness, what you create is sufficient diversity to make your written work a picture that readers can share and enjoy.

Learn more about this author, Rachelle de Bretagne.
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