Creating characters that are totally different from each other can sometimes be challenging, especially if most of your characters tend to be a reflection of the way you talk and think.
How do you create characters with different personalities?
Do you take into consideration MBTI personality types?
What about zodiac signs?
Do you give your characters specific interests, such as having them like or hate certain singers, celebrities, or foods?
Do you pay attention to the way they speak, such as having some characters be very blunt, others very diplomatic, some that swear a lot, and some that don’t swear at all?
I kinda just go with the flow. Like, I take a while and think of how I want them to be and think of the storyline… whichever happens first. Then I write and just go with the flow. Usually I find that they’re written a certain way without me having to put much force in, other times I get writer’s block or something because I’m noticing I’m writing them wrong or something.
I base it on their traits and aspects! I don’t really take into consideration MBTI or Zodiac signs, though. Every little detail, I try to give them because I believe that’s what makes them different from each other.
I try to think of traits I haven’t used yet. If I make a character that’s too similar to another one I have, I try to change as much as possible in order to make them different.
Yesss, MBTI really helps in deciding how the character acts and sees the world
Not really, but I should try
Nope, but it does seem to be a good way to develop characters. I just give them a hobby most of the time
Yep, but their speeches aren’t too different. I still have to work on this
I don’t put too much thought into that, it just happens naturally.
Nope, I don’t know enough about those to really add that into a story.
Yes, if it makes sense in the story. Like, in Dreams and Nightmares, one character is crazy about food. Knowing that is important to show why the MC likes to cook for the others but also doesn’t eat much herself.
Not too obvious because I think that always seems unrealistic. But some differences happen naturally and I just let them.
I read something kind of recently where it was a good story but the characters just kinda all sounded the same…
All the good stories I’ve read the characters were just their own people, and you could visualize them so strongly as though they were real people outside of the novel. They existed beyond the perspective which we mainly see them, which is either through another character or the narrator.
They may be depicted one way, but you’re not sure if that way they’re being depicted is who they actually are. Which is how it is in real life, we have views of the people we see and know but everyone will see these people differently than possibly how they view themselves.
I think that’s a good way to go about making every character. Don’t make a character just to exist as the MC’s cruel boss. Don’t make a character just to exist as the love interest to the main character. Don’t make a character to just exist as the “mean girl”.
if you think two of your characters are similar to one another, try to imagine them interacting together
imagine how they’d react to the other and flesh out differences based on that
maybe one character cannot stand the other despite their similarities, maybe they’re uncomfortable, maybe they insist that they’re nothing alike, or maybe they’re relieved to find someone else like them, maybe they immediately take a liking to the other, maybe they get a little obsessed with the other
why is that? what does the reaction reveal?
find the answers to that and keep fleshing out from that