Vera's Blog life: How to: Create a Memorale Character

This is a paper i did last simester in my English class, it's quite good if you ask me ^_^

I’ve been doing this for quite a while now, seven years to be exact. I have been creating all kinds of good characters and bad characters, and both come up good. Creating a character is very similar to having a baby, they become your children. I pretty much know what I’m doing. If you read a few of my stories, you should know what I’m talking about. I work on my characters very thoroughly and research them deeply; many of them are memorable till this day. 50% are tragic characters, and I abuse them quite a lot. Like poor Lucifer (AKA luci) from “A Silhouette Soul.” I put him in quite a lot of drama; it has more drama then happy moments actually.
So, let’s say you are sitting at home one day, and you have a story idea. The plot is set, the research is done, and everything is set basically, but you are missing the characters. I’m here to help.
The first thing you do is determine who the character is. For example: you decide it is a male, tall, handsome, green-eyed, black haired prince. Give a little background about him at the beginning He lost his fiancée three years ago, and now he goes around, looking for someone to console him; he is accompanied by a posy of five hundred men. That’s your start.
What I do with my characters is throw them in some sort of a setting and you get to know them bit by bit, it makes you feel god-like really and By the end of the story, you know all about them.
Then you give them a desirable name; usually try to research names on Google or any other search engine you know of. That’s what I do with my 19th century based stories. My newer one “Kamijo” was like that. Please choose an easy name and a name you like, so don’t name your character Xsugmalup, because the reader would stumble on the unfamiliar word. Therefore, he’ll stop reading the story. Let’s say you named him Armand (last names are optional, depending on the story.)
Then the fun part comes. You create his history, his past and present, and most everything you and the reader/readers need to know about him. Give your character strong traits and a weakness. Ask yourself this, when you write, why he is the way he is? It’s all up to you. Refer to books, or TV to create somewhat of an idea for the characters past. Again for my story ‘Kamijo’ I borrowed the stage name of the vocalist of the Band ‘Versailles’ Kamijo was sort of a womanizer in my story, and he wanted Lester’s Fiancée. (read it, it’s really good =])
Create an antagonist using the same method, and let the villain terrorize the protagonist. If you want to include a secondary character or a side kick, don’t let him take over the whole situations; he only has a small part in this. The secondary character does not need to face any problems so do not reveal his tragic life story on how his father was killed and he is looking for a one-eyed dragon etc… his parts are minor. Keep that in mind. None of my characters—(no…Guilt from my ‘Misericordia’ series, has a servant, there’s not much about him, unless he is talked to.)
By the end of the story, the protagonist must survive a struggle or a moral dilemma. The character must undergo a change for the better; in most stories, that’s how it works. He might have a different view or perspective on things or overcome a weakness. Whatever the change is, make it noticeable.
When you have all these little things in place, you’ll create very memorable characters. I think both my “Misericordia” and “Kamijo” stories have these things, there fore; they both have very memorable characters.
(If you’d like to read any of them, go to www.fanfiction.net/~mygothiclover)

Here are some of my Most Favorit Characters:

(Suou Tamaki from OHSHC )

(Mello Of Death Note)