Recently (as in just yesterday), I made a poll asking what sort of thing you guys would like help with the most, and the winner was: Character Creation! Characters are easily the most important part of the story, and if your audience can't relate to them or if they don't feel believable, it can ruin the entire story. Believable characters are vital to a good story and to keeping the readers immersed. But how exactly can you be sure your character is believable? 

First thing's first, be very careful of turning your characters into your perfect little darlings. If you want them to be believable, they have to have flaws and mess up. Sometimes they'll do things wrong and have unpleasant opinions. Maybe they're great at sports but can't write a speech to save their life. Or maybe they're beautiful but have the personality of a rock. 

It's easy to want to make your characters perfect. They become precious to us and we want to create someone so likable that we never want to give them bad traits or even weak traits for fear that our reader won't like them as much as we do. They'll misunderstand the character, or maybe it will turn them off to the whole story. But this is misinformed. If anything, people will be more inclined to read about your characters and the world they're in because of the fact that they are more realistic. It keeps everything unpredictable and more suspensful.

Second, know where they're from. The place in which your characters grew up in, the people who raised them, even the kind of people they surround themselves with will alter their personality. Of course you'll have have your exceptions, but most people raised by conservative parents end up holding conservative views and oftentimes continue to even after those views have been challenged. And if they grew up in a city, they might have a different personality type than someone raised in the country. Someone raised in the city might be more extroverted with a preference for a fast-paced life whereas someone raised in the country might be more introverted and simplistic. 

Never forget to ask yourself what kind of person your character is in sticky situations. Are they calm? Do they panic? Do they take charge or do they blank out? Are they nurturing or do they get angry? Are they comfortable with unpleasant situations or is it very obvious they are not? Or maybe they're somewhere inbetween. How does your character handle stress? Do they have a high tolerance for it? Are they good at mediating a fight between friends or co-workers? 

There are an endless amount of situations that your characters might find them in, and everyone reacts differently to all of them. You should also ask things about some of the more major subjects in life: Love, Friendship, Government, Religion, Work. What are your characters' opinions on all of these? How do they approach something they don't like or don't agree with? Are they opinionated or open-minded? Stubborn or laid back? Curious or blissfully ignorant?

I'll end this blog here with a link to the Character Creation Form/Guide which I will post below as well. In the future, I will make posts dedicated to some of these fields in more detail, but for now, have fun with the form and see what kind of information you can learn about your character!