Tips for creative writing

IF you have a creative writing project, and you’re getting nowhere fast, check out these tips for generating believable characters.

Method 1 – The stereotypical character

In most author groups, you’ll find people going on and on about how stereotypes are lousy and that you should avoid them. However, if you look at best-sellers, you’ll see that readers adore stereotypes.

For example, the Twilight and 50 Shades series were both based on the “gorgeous virginal girl with inferiority complex” who falls for “handsome, powerful, and seemingly unattainable man who lusts for her”.

Furthermore, traditional theatre survived on stereotypes with classical Japanese and Greek players using masks so that the audience immediately identified each character. So if you want to go for a stereotype, feel free to go for it.

A great place to see outlines is the Stock Character page on Wikipedia at http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stock_characters

Method 2 – Invent someone

This is more difficult but it has lots of advantages.

First, you have lots of flexibility in terms of motivation and style.

Second, you can create rounded characters that develop along with the story. This is ideal if you want characters who change.

The easiest way to go about this is to have a character file.

Write down what the person looks like: height, weight, hair colour and eye colour. Include notes on how they dress. Then give your character a history: where they were born, their likes and dislikes, what sort of experiences they’ve had.

From this, develop a character outline that shows their good and bad qualities. Are they brave, loyal, cowardly, generous, suspicious, forgiving, gentle, short-tempered? Finally, how do they move and speak?

This can reflect their character so that you see at once who you’re dealing with, but for fun you can have a very violent person be soft spoken and nice to pets, or a very sweet person be loud and prone to swearing.