Dream High's characters had great structure and growth.

As we're talking about Fan Fiction, this comes in two parts: the O.C.'s and the Idols. Right here, I'm going to be talking about creating your own character; how to portray the idols will come in a different section.

Honestly, a character idea can come from anywhere. It can be a song, a story, an object, a picture, or even a conversation. The best stories are made from constructing your character(s) before you even begin to think about a plot; that keeps you from trying to create a cardboard-cutout character and trying to paste them in.

There are five different kinds of characters:

-Protagonist
-Antagonist
-Secondary
-Background
-Walk-On
 

You've heard this since Middle School English class: Protagonists are the main character who goes against the antagonist. The protagonists are the good guys and the people we like, while the antagonists are the people we don't.

A secondary character is a person like the sidekick, the mentor, the best friend. In action stories, the secondary character is the character that usually ends up being the major victim.

A background character is your comedic relief, red herring (something or someone that distracts from the relevant or important issue), minor victim, ect.

A walk-on character is basically your cameo. This is the waiter, the person that your main character bumps into and yells "hey!" as the go on their way, ect. These people you hardly have to think about and actually, you shouldn't even describe them, because they're just people that your main character isn't ever going to see again.

Your major characters that you want to spend the most time developing are your protagonist and antagonist, obviously. This person should have a story before the story, have goals, have motives, and have prejudices. Your minor characters will typically only have traits or characteristics, which I call "character tags" (See "Using Description in Your Stories").

A bad or unbelievable character has one or more of the following:

-Lack of history
-Reactive (just goes along with whatever is happening) and not proactive
-Makes random decisions that don't match their personality
-Lack of growth
-Has an unexpected change of heart (Ex., Is sitting in a room with someone they hate, and five minutes later they're making out)

If you have a character you're creating while you read this, or even after you read this and you're coming up with one, consider the following to evaluate:

- Is he/she the clear main character?
- Do you like that character? (If she's a brat, you're going to get sick of her, and so is your audience.)
- Does that character have flaws? (Remember in my "Writing Romance section, readers can't relate to someone who's perfect, so they won't care about your character if they don't have something to cling to.)
- What is your character going to learn?

The best way to keep your characters alive and vibrant is to create a "Character Bible". I'm not sure why they use the term bible, but that's the phrase used by authors universally. This is where you keep track not only of physical traits, like hair color, eye color, how to spell their name, ect, but it also tracks your chatracter's motivation, their background, the direction they're headed, and how they're going to grow. This may seem like a lot of work, and to be honest, lots of stuff you'll put on there may not ever end up in the story. But it's stuff you have to know, because the better you know your character, the more you'll sound like you know what you're talking about. This keeps you from randomly adding in different subjects to make them interesting. (For example, the shy sweet girl is, five chapters later, a tae kwon do legend. -_-;; uuuuuummmm....)

Another great way to come up with characters is to look at pictures of people. Just by hitting tumblr, I've come up with great character ideas. Even though the girl's face may be a little rounder than I imagine, or the boy's nose is a little longer than I pictured, great ideas stem from looking at real people, because that's what your characters should be: real people.