How do you choose your characters for your novel?

by Adrian Sroka
26th July 2012

Are your characters based on real life people, complete invention, or a mixture of both?

Are there particular books that have influenced your characters?

Replies

The MC of the story is always me. What I would do. How I would act react. A big part of me always goes into all of my MC's in all my stories.

All the other people the MC interacts with are never actual, real people. It is always a mixture of real people + a bit of invention of my own, or a complete invention from scratch. It just works better that way for me.

What I also noticed is that weirdly enough the villain of the story, the bad guy behind it all, is also me. That character is also usually based on me, but the evil me. What I would do if I was the bad guy, if I wanted to win. And that always seems to create a great clash between good and evil. The ultimate one I guess; the one inside us all.

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Christophoros
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Christophoros Demetriou
26/07/2012

I wrote a first draft entire, following my heroine. When I got to the end, I realised she was not really the hero. A minor character was, who outclassed and eclipsed her. I needed to start again.

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Katie-Ellen
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Katie-Ellen Hazeldine
26/07/2012

Lol I quite agree with Jonathan there, I must admit some of myself does go into my characters and sometimes they are who I would like to be, especially when they are bad and outspoken! :-)

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Gilly
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Gilly Ansell
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