Nano Gift No. 5 + Petit No.2: Extraordinary Characters

"My Love"
Sia

Characters are the movement of the novel. They are, for the most part, what keeps your audience tied to your words until the very end. Edward and Bella are on my top ten list of characters who have taken a hold of an audience, and left them breathless in wait for the next installment! I read this novel when I kind of stopped believing that characters could affect readers in such a way; it's changed how I look at character development...FOREVER!!!! Yes, I studied how Stephenie Meyer fleshed out her characters, and I learned that you have to treat them like a person you're meeting for the first time!

Here's my own list of character development do's/questions to ask yourself about them:

1. Do they feel real to me?
2. What kind of person are they? Do they love opaque nights, or are they most alive when the sun rises? What do they eat? What kind of person would they love? (feel free to add on to this list as you 'interview' your characters).
3. Are they round, and if I desire them to be fuller, what obstacles do they need to encounter?
4. What's special about them?
5. Why should their story be told?
6. What is their backstory? (even if this never gets exposed in the novel)
7. What are your inspirations for them?
8. What do they sound like?

While your thinking about how to further develop your characters, check out this post on characters by acclaimed YA author Lisa Schroeder.

{Dedicated to all of the Twilight fans out their who've experienced this epic day of Breaking Dawn filming in Rio!}


Source: We Heart It