How to build literary characters

One of the most difficult tasks faced by a writer, especially if he is a newcomer, is the creation of characters for his story (story, novel, fable, ...). On the creation of these, their interaction and the personality that they give off in the course of the story, it will depend on whether they more or less engage one type of reader or another.

To make this part of the creative process a little easier for you, or at least try, we are going to give you a series of tips and tips on how to build literary characters that work in your story. Keep reading, we will reveal them below.

Tips and advice to follow

• If you are a writer, it has to be almost mandatory, good reader put yourself in the shoes of that reader to go read your work. Before creating a novel, in the initial steps of it, you must rethink what audience your book is going to be aimed at. We give a clear example: if your novel is juvenile, you must create characters that attract the attention of this type of audience (adolescents, fantastic characters, transgressive people, with typical adolescent problems, etc.).
• Your characters have to be interestingRegardless of whether they are nice or tyrants. If you create an interesting character out of nowhere, with a hook, it doesn't matter if he is the meanest or most charming guy, who will end up liking the reader.
• You must create yes or yes to secondary characters that do not have as much prominence as the main one or the main ones but that they do complement your story. You can play with them to tell the same story from several different versions using these characters, it is something that they tend to like a lot.
• From the beginning, before starting your novel, you have to be sure of the main character, but it is not so important to have the secondary characters, or at least, not all of them ... As you write the story you can create new characters that adapt well to the initial story or the changes you add.
• Their ways of talking, their ways of acting they must be natural... You must give them life in your mind, so that they are not forced characters but that they remain as natural as possible.

Do not forget the most important fact that you must take into account ... You learn to write by reading and writing later. Look at the great geniuses of literature and learn from them.