One of the best parts about writing is creating the characters that populate my stories. I love the process of bringing each new character to life.I’ve developed a character worksheet that I fill out for each main character before I begin writing their story. The four-page worksheet is SUPER detailed and includes physical descriptions, personality, family history, fears, favorite things, and much, much more.
In addition to my character worksheet, I also find online images of movie stars or models who best fit my characters’ descriptions. While the pictures never totally fit, I love to have something I can refer back to as I write to help me visualize and describe the characters more uniquely.
While I try to get to know everything possible about my main characters before I write, invariably those characters reveal more as I start telling their story. They often surprise me with parts of them or their past that I didn’t know existed.
In fact, my characters become so vivid, if a stranger were to walk by and listen to me talking about them, they’d hear my earnestness and passion and believe I was describing real people. (And then when they learned I was talking about fictional characters, they’d promptly think I was crazy!) (Not that it’s ever happened before, eh-hem.)
For my upcoming time-crossing release, Come Back to Me, I especially had fun writing the characters. The heroine, Marian Creighton, is a modern-day research scientist for a pharmaceutical company who has lost her mother to a genetic disease and is now losing her sister. And the hero, William Durham, is a medieval knight, who has been fighting in the Hundred Year’s War over in France for ten years and has come back to his home in Canterbury, England for a short break.
Both characters are complex with lots of baggage. Add in the time travel element, and the characters became even more complex, especially when they collide and sparks begin to fly!
To give you a taste of the characters, here are the images I found for them as well as a few interesting things about them. Also take a look at the trailer that my publisher made! Isn’t it great?
So, what do YOU think brings a character to life? Have you had any favorite characters recently who seemed to jump off the page?
Jody Hedlund
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I think for me personally what brings a character to life is how much of a characteristic the author describes them well. Especially if after you have imagined them and see a picture and it matches.
First of all, the trailer for your book is EPIC!!! Your publisher did an amazing job. Secondly, STEPHEN AMELL as your inspiration for William Durham?? Yes ma’am!!!
Thirdly, favorite book characters who’ve recently jump off the page to me are:
* Marco Dusan – dripping with charisma and ultimate alpha male (from Ronie Kendig’s Droseran series)
* Grandma Sylvie – hilarious and armed to teeth as a former CIA agent (from Jenny B. Jones Sugar Creek series)
* Princess “Meg” Margaret – (based upon real person) humbling devotion to God (from Tamara Leigh’s “Boundless)
Very much looking forward to reading your book and thanks for sharing your characters as I always like to see how authors envision them. And again… STEPHEN. AMELL!! 🙂
Your character creation process sounds exactly like mine, Jody! And that trailer is WONDERFUL!
Your process for creating your characters sounds so fun! I would love to see and read the pages for your characters! Now every time I read a book I’ll be thinking of the list like what you do with characters! Thanks for your writing!
Love the trailer and looking forward to the journey through The Waters of Time series! Thank you for sharing some insight into your creative process. I like the photos of the characters. It helps to have a snapshot of the characters when reading too.
Amazing how in depth your character creation process is. I’m always intrigued when an author says the character takes them in a different path than was intended.
A character that jumped off the page for me was the female journalist in Sarah Sundin’s When Twilight Breaks.