CREATING A CHRACTER FOR YOUR STORY
- chamorrisonwrites
- Sep 14, 2022
- 3 min read
Part One: The Basics
Chaley Morrison
In this post I'd like to go into the basics of creating your characters for your story! On my YouTube channel: Chaley Morrison, I did a video talking about the basics!
Here I will talk about and provide examples of the basics for character creation! These topics include: Sex, Gender Identity, Age, Race, Ethnicity, Physical Appearance, Where they're from, and Lifestyle.
Creating a Character | Part One | https://youtu.be/oeJWjp1L8bU
Sex and Gender Identity
The first thing you should do is decide on the character's sex - the chromosomes they were genetically and biologically born with. Once that's in order, you are going to determine their gender identity.
Do remember, sex and gender are two different things. Gender identity could be a character's struggle if they are unsure or if they receive backlash for it from other characters. Understanding your character's gender identity and struggles is important.
Age
Your character's age should be determined as well. The age of your character could affect their personality and outlook on life. This could also raise questions regarding their experiences and skills as the older someone is, the more they would've logically learned.
Race and Ethnicity
What's your character's race and ethnicity? These elements are important when describing your character and the roots of their culture. Especially if your character is from a fantasy world and you've created entire cultures or religions to go along with alien or fantasy species.
Lineage is important - whether your character is from Germany on Earth or they're an alien from a planet star systems away. Either way, understanding your character's lineage and culture is vital to their history and describing said history.
Physical Appearance
What is the character's weight? What about their height? What's their body type? Are they petite or stout? Eye color and hair color? What does their face look like?
How does your character feel about their appearance and how does it affect them? The character's appearance should not dictate how they act.
For an example, and I will be referencing Dungeons and Dragons for this...
A character could appear small and frail; unable to defend themselves or appear strong. But looks can be deceiving as that petite person could be a Barbarian or Fighter with enough strength to be a one man army. This is totally not in reference to a specific Dungeons and Dragons campaign I have running as of this moment.
Where are they from?
You should try to have an idea at the very least of where your character is from. Are they from our modern world on Earth? If so, then what country, state, or county do they live in? District?
Do they live in a kingdom? Dystopian society? Perhaps your character's home planet has several continents; but which one are they from?
You don't necessarily need to have the government and hierarchy aspects fleshed out at this point as that comes with world-building, but at least grasping where the character is from for their story could be essential.
Lifestyle
The lifestyle of your character can and will affect the way their personality and perspective on certain matters. If they're in college, are they a partygoer and a slacker or are they a reserved hard studier? What's their financial situation? Who do they surround themselves with? Do they have a job and if so, how does that affect their everyday life?
How does their everyday routine make them feel about their life? Understand your character's lifestyle.
The Basics
This was all about the main basics to help you get started on creating a character for a story idea or novel you've started on! This is part one to a series of tips on this topic! Subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me on my other socials for updates on the next blog post or video!
I hope this post was helpful to some of you and if there's anything you want to see in future character making tips, leave them in the comments below! Thank you so much for reading and I hope you have an amazing day!
XOXO
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