Write Vivid Character Description and Personalities
While writing character's in your story as well as your character profiles, you want to wrote vivid character descriptions to expand their unique personalities, so here is how you can do that.
When creating strong characters that stand out, choosing traits for them not only advances your character but can help advance the overall story and plot. Your description of your character(s) is woven into the story itself.
Value of Your Characters: As we have discussed in previous lessons, values with your character are extremely important. Your character and plot are linked to each other, and thus the value as well.
When you write your story both your character and your consumer are going throw the narrative together. What are you, as the writer, teaching us about your character? You want to connect your consumer with your character despite the differences. So, look at their core traits and central human expressions and emotions. What are their envies, desires, disappointments, and loves?
Think about the emotional impact that your character can have. You want your consumer to feel for them, to have that emotional connection. They don’t need to have that connection right away, but at some point, it should connect. It’s up to you what you want to have to happen.
An overarching plot that your character goes through as well as the overarching impression you want your consumer to think about and relate to. How are we going to see everything about your character?
Think about: traits, the order you want to share these traits, and manifesting those traits into your plot.
Perspective: I won’t get too into depth about perspectives as I already did a lesson about perspectives and narratives, but what I will say is that you want to know what/whose perspective the story is in. This will give you more room to think about how you can tell your story and describe your characters. If it’s in the first person, how will the story be told if it’s in the third person?
Are we in the headspace of your characters? Do we truly know every detail about them? You must tell the story through some sort of lens.
Plot-Based Descriptions: As the story goes on both the plot and your character should move together. The two go hand in hand. If you don’t have a plot, you don’t have a character, and vice versa. You also want to make sure that your consumer feels as if they're in the story with your character.
When writing you want to weave your character descriptions into the plot as both are growing together. When you choose character traits, you want to think about how they will highlight and push your plot forward. Balance both negative and redeeming traits so your consumer will like, and care about your main character. Ask yourself, what traits do you want your consumer to know? What we learn about a character should change scene by scene.
Where is the character at the start of the story and where are they at the end? How do you get from point A to point B?
Asking yourself these types of questions can help get the ball rolling. You want to build with the character change. Balancing scenes where characters are showing off their strengths and scenes where they are showing off their weakness gives a look into their human nature. Explore scenes where they show off both and ask yourself, which one is more important to show off?
Direct and Indirect Descriptions:
Direct Characterization: The writer straight up tells the consumer about the character and doesn't really show anything or what the character is doing.
Indirect Characterization: This is where the character reveals who they are through the things they do. They show these traits through the actions they do in the story.
This can be shown by the words they say, the things do, and how your character sees the world around them.
Internal and External Traits: This is more connected to what's going on in your character's internal thoughts and how those thoughts can be expressed externally.
Internal Characteristics:
This can reveal;
Emotions
Thoughts
Goals
Dreams
What they want out of life
How they feel about things
Their emotions and mental responses to the things in their past.
How is their past haunting them?
How is their past helping them?
What are their goals in the future?
Their mood at that given moment.
Outer Characteristics:
This can show:
Appearance
How they sound
What their speech is like
The words they use
Behavior we see
Names
Their community and their stance n the world around them.
Best Practices: The best thing you can do for yourself in your writing is try and describe everything, not just what something or someone looks like or what they hear, but what they taste, talk about, touch and smell. Describing things in these terms can make your writing so much richer.
Make sure to research who your character is. Ask questions about them. Your goal is to make them feel real. Get real experiences and stories and dissect them for your character.
~Vocabulary~
Traits: a distinguishing quality or characteristic, typically one belonging to a person.
Advances: move forward in a purposeful way.
Woven: include an element in (a story or pattern).
Human Expressions: of, characterizing, or relating to man and mankind
Envies: a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else's possessions, qualities, or luck.
Desires: a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.
Disappointments: sadness or displeasure caused by the nonfulfillment of one's hopes or expectations.
Loves: a strong feeling of affection and concern toward another person or something, as that arising from kinship or close friendship
Overarching: it affects or includes everything
Human Nature: the general psychological characteristics, feelings, and behavioral traits of humankind, regarded as shared by all humans.