Step By Step

Step 2: The Characters

Characters can be kinda easy but then sometimes they really aren’t. There’s a lot that goes into making a character that some people never think about. Every person is different and if people can relate to them, the readers enjoy it more. Each one of your characters needs a lot of thought put into it. Let’s continue with our good girl/ bad boy story to use as an example.

Names: Names can be hard to think of because there’s just so many. You can get ideas by simply Googling “baby girl/boy names” or just “girl/boy names” or anything like that- you get the idea. I’ll put a few good websites in the comments below if you want to check those out. For our story, let’s name the girl Grace and now we need a last name. There’s even a few surname lists out there that can help with last names (also in the comments) so let’s name her Grace Chatfield. And our boy will be Parker Hyde. Of course, you can change the names of your characters whenever you see fit.

Personalities: The character’s personality is obviously important because it affects how they deal with different situations. Will he kiss the girl or run away? Will she laugh or cry? Back to our story, let’s say that good girl Grace Chatfield is a bubbly girl but shy around people she doesn’t know, yet stubborn. Bubbly, shy, stubborn. Simple enough. Now, our bad boy Parker Hyde is arrogant, flirty, but deep down, he’s very caring. Arrogant, flirty, caring. There we go, now we’re getting there.

Family: Who does your character live with? How does this affect them? Let’s say for Grace, her mom died when she was six (we’ll say in a car accident) so she lives with her single parent father and her little brother (let’s name him Max). She doesn’t remember her mom very well but she still misses her. Back to Parker- He lives with both of his parents, but they fight all the time, screaming and yelling at each other and he’s an only child.

Friends: Friends are obviously really important because they’re probably going to help the main character through their troubles- or maybe they can add to the troubles, who knows? Get your name generator back out because we’re going to need it again. For Grace, we can say that she’s kind of popular and she has a lot of friends, but only four memorable ones. We’ll name them Tara Herding, Kylie Wilder, Shawna Gray, and Jo Richards. She needs a best friend of course, so we’ll say that Kylie is her best friend. Parker is a loner, so he doesn’t have many friends. Only two. Andrew Smith and Riley Glover will be their names.

Cast: A cast list is not necessary and even if you want to do one, you don’t have to do it now, it can wait, but it helps to have a picture in your mind of what your characters look like. There are famous people all over the place, just look around!

Organize: Organization is incredibly important. It would be very bad if you start your story off calling Grace’s best friend Kylie and then accidently change her name to Kayla six chapters in. To remember who’s who and the names of everybody, I make a chart. In each row will have a name in it. I start with the main characters and I’ll give each important character a row. In this story, we’ll do Grace, Parker, Max, Kylie, Tara, Shawna, Jo, Andrew, and Riley. And then in each column will be something that you need to remember about each person.

Column 1. Their name.

Column 2. Who are they?

Column 3. Which celebrity plays them? (if applicable)

Column 4. An extra description box for important details

There’s an example of this kind of table on the side, if you want to see an example I made for this made up story.