Every gripping story needs compelling characters to tell it and as the writer it is your job to create those characters and breathe life into them; you must find your voice and give them theirs.
When you create realistic and relatable characters you will engage your readers and keep them hooked to your pages from start to finish. Your job, then, is to create characters that readers feel are authentic. They have to engage with the people in your story, to root for the protagonists and feel true revulsion for those antagonists you create. To accomplish these strong emotions your characters must be invested with with flaws, motivations, and quirks that make them keep the readers turning the page and coming back, book after book.
Amongst the most under appreciated ways of getting readers to want to engage with characters is your choice of names. Names have always interested me. Throughout the many jobs and interactions I have had in my life, I have come across interesting and different names. I tuck these away in a list in my big red note book so I have freedom to choose the name I feels best reflects each character.
One of the cardinal sins is to have two main characters with the same first letter in their name or with similar names. In an early book I was going to have sisters named Rebekkah and Rachael, it hadn't occurred to me that his might be an issue but now, I realise, this isn't ideal. Luckily at the time I had an excellent editor, Sue Barnard, who is also an accomplished author in her own right. She was adamant that readers would get them confused, and we settled on Sarah and Rachael. It may sound basic, but readers can be easily confused, especially in the first few chapters, so as the author make it easy on them and choose a different first letter for each main character's name.
Another important issue is voice. You need to have a distinct voice and every character needs to have their own distinct voice, too. Even if you have children who grew up in the same household each should have their own voice.
This can be difficult because your experiences, your life, your emotions, and your habits affect the way you speak. To differentiate between your characters, think about cultural references. Think about their age, their backgrounds and aspirations. Also consider that one of your characters may be raised in one particular circumstance but aspire to be in another and that might affect the way they speak. They may speak differently to their friends and family to the way they address someone outwith their social circle too. It can be fun to play with voices, words and accents, but never make the dialect so thick that most of your readers won't understand it.
When you are creating characters, give some thought as to the motivations and aspirations you are investing them with. Consider what do they want most. Everybody has got something. What do they want out of the scene you are writing? Each of your characters are the same.
They all have an overarching ambition and a plan as to how they think they will achieve their goal. However they also need to get through their days, go to work, put food on the table for their family, meet the character they fancy or escape with the stolen car. In your novel you should have a driving goal (for example, catch the criminal!) but in every scene there should be smaller motivations and goals that take your characters on their journey. It may be that they need to break a drug ring, or earn money to buy a house to impress that character they fancy.
It can also be fun to play with the view that what the character needs to meet their goal may actually be bad for them or put them in danger. For example a character with a drug addiction may need to score in order to meet their goal of getting through the day. While this may not be seen as a good goal, it can be a driving need that moves the story forward, informs every decision they make and allows you to create gripping story lines.
I enjoy creating different types of characters to populate my stories and I'm sure you will too.
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