A2Z Blogging Challenge

Welcome to 2023's AtoZ, this year I am posting about one of the most important things that you can have in any story, the Character. I will be looking at various ways of creating, fleshing out and using characters.

Todays Letter is 

Alien, Humanoid, Supernatural, Animal, Sentient or Non Sentient item/creature/device/- How do you choose your Character.

This really does depend on the genre you are writing in, and if you already have a plot or story idea.

Now I want to say here that you don't have to have a story line in order to create a character, sometimes it works out that you create a character and then build your story and world around them.

As mentioned before, genre can sometimes dictate what kind of character you will come up with, some manage to cross genres, others are very much particular to what you are writing, if that's Fantasy, then we are talking mages, knights, lady's, warriors, Dragons, Elves, Fae, Dragons etc., Sci-Fi goes for Androids, Aliens, Sentient clouds and humans. Horror tends to have monsters, mummies, vampires, werewolves etc. Thriller/Mystery/Murder tends to be more Mortal/Human bound but if you link it with Sci - Fi, or Fantasy that could be anyone of the above that I mentioned. Non - Fiction can run along the lines of History / Biography / True Crime, where Humans alive and dead are the Characters (not an exhaustive list).

For me, it's the Fantasy Genre, that crosses many dimensions. This allows me to use characters such as Sorceress', Mages, Vampires, Werewolves, Fae, Changelings, Voduns and several different kinds of Aliens amongst my cast of many. 

My first novel came to me years ago, I had a vague idea of a woman at the end of her tether, a mage and his friend rescue her from a windswept cliff top, and it turns out that she is destined to be a great evil. That changed over time, and expanded, the woman became a Sorceress, and she was sent to kill a Mage who is the great, great grandson of her stepsister Reigh. Reigh had killed their parents and the unborn son. Later again the Sorceress became an agent for a dimensional group who patrol the dimensions sorting out trouble. There were more changes until it came to where it is now as the published book on Amazon.

But it all started with the woman, short dark hair, green eyes, and in a great deal of anguish. For the story of the time and then later she was perfect.

My second novel basically had the what if a human from a world of non heroes ended up in a world full of them, and not only that, what if they were her favourite graphic novel heroes? For that I created a woman who was older, with grown up children, she has the advantage of remembering the comics she's read. She's blond, blue eyes. The spin off story in that novel has a blue skinned Alien with no mouth, who is seven foot tall and stands out like a sore thumb amongst the steam punk Goblins she's involved with. I chose the Alien because I wanted a juxtaposition with the 2/3ft tall tiny creatures. She (the alien) is also a telepath with minor telekinetic abilities. All important when she is later attacked. 

Created by me with Canva

It's not all about how they look, but their back stories, and their connection to the plot, these I'll discuss later. But for now, I hope that this first post has helped in some small way towards the understanding of how to choose your character for your novel.  

TWW