Writing Fiction – How to Make Your Characters Come to Life

When writing fiction, it is important to be able to have an interesting plot and several well developed characters that your readers (should you get published) will begin to care about. Characters after all, can make or break a story or novel because if you do not manage to make them become believable entities, why should anyone wish to continue to read? Writing fiction is about providing pure escapism and helping the reader to be able to submerge themselves into your story so that they can forget the trials and tribulations of their own existence. If you are a new writer and are considering writing fiction, you need to really think about where your story is going and how you yourself can start to believe in your characters as this is a required element.

When writing fiction and developing characters, you can make life easier for yourself by paying attention to the following steps:

-          Know what type of story you are going to write. Make sure that you know exactly what is going to happen from start to finish.   You may find that this changes the general direction you have originally envisaged, however as your characters grow within the story, when it happens, it means that the characters are starting to come to life.

-          Think about the type of characters who would be required to support the plot. Your characters also need to be multi-faceted. Let them have some faults or annoying habits, but also give them some positive traits-even the villain of the piece is unlikely to be all bad. Writing fiction is a little like playing god, you will know when you have really started to connect with them because you will have reservations about endangering them or writing them out of your story.

-          Provide a detailed history of their lives before you start writing your story. You do not need to list every aspect of this list to your readers but it does help you as the author to know your character inside out. This way, you can have some element within their past which affects how they react to specific situations. This makes them human….and believable.

-          Throw some conflicting situations at your characters. How they cope with these difficult situations will help them to develop and it will also help your readers to connect with them. When writing fiction, you will find new and improved ideas which will keep both your interest and those of your reader becoming stronger and more influential.

Whether writing a short story or novel, some basic planning is essential as this not only helps the writer to continue the plot through to the end sentence but helps the writer to create believable characters that are alive and kicking and this is an important part when writing fiction.