By, Wendiann Alfieri
We sit in the room, asking ourselves the same question. How are we going to make characters for our story? " Well," Liar says, " We should think of ourselves and write about us". We look at her. "What? I'm just sayi-" Liar begins, but I interrupt her as everyone else seems to start talking about their own sub plots when we don't have characters or the entire plot figured out yet. "Listen," I say, " We should think about the situation too, like what will these characters be going through? It's important to know how the situation would affect us if we were going through it and then..." I pause and stare at everyone until they stop with debates on if the story will be too controversial or not. "And then," I finally continue, " then we decide how to shape them. We don't have to base it entirely off ourselves or even make them a sympathetic characters. Just lets think of the main character first and how we'd want them to be perceived. Start with the basics, write down some character traits, maybe start off with traits we have first if we're having a hard time creating them in the first place!" " But what do we do first? You seem to be confusing me," Shy says as she asks the first question. " Well, this is how I would do it, I would think of the basic plot, think of the main events first. Then think of the main character or main characters. Do you want them to be likable or unlikable? Do you want to tell the story from the first person perspective, or second, or third? Then, write down some traits of your own and see if you come up with any thing that might be useful to create an interesting story. Also take into consideration of the point of view your telling it in. If its first, you are right alongside the character hearing their thoughts right from the source. If it's third, you hear the story from a narrator not a character but you still get to know the characters unless your building up a twist for certain events that would not do you good if you revealed too much.If it's second, the character IS the reader, using terms like "you" instead of "I" like in first or "the" like in third. But anyway, continue to write down character traits and based on the things I previously mentioned, build around that". Confused looks at me. " So I get it, but do we need to do those things all in order?" "Not exactly, as sometimes you have a good idea of the character but have no idea what situation to put them in. But if your struggling building characters, then I would do it the way you like, as writing is a flow and maybe starting off with one thing will lead to another," I explain. " So what about character names?" Steve asks. " Well, Shady," I begin. " My name is Ste-" "Whatever. You want to make your character names however you'd like, if you'd want their names to be reflective of their character, or just a name that fits. Or even ironic. The character is your decision and everything I am saying is just from my experience" I conclude. They all look at me and nod. Then they starts to argue about subplots.
-My Advice To Myself If My Brain Would Not Jump Around So Much
