Create a character

How can I create a good and significant character?

When it comes to creating a character, especially one that will be among the most important in the story, many questions can come to your mind...

How can I create a character? How can I make it as real as possible, as human as possible?

I have already felt emotionally attached to one of my characters, as if he were becoming a friend, a confidant. A character is a part of yourself, of the person you are, because he is inspired by many things; your feelings, your beliefs, your fears, your dreams, your desires... I think it is impossible to create a character who is not connected, more or less directly, with our own life, with the person we really are.

Indeed, every writer is inspired, first and foremost, by his own life; what he lives, observes and experiments in his daily life. He gets a part of his novel from the world around him, from the world in which he evolves day after day.

However, I think that there is no "perfect recipe" to create a character... We just have to keep in mind that the character we choose to create will become like a friend; he will be the person we constantly think about, the person for whom we will write the adventures page by page, the person who will live next to us every day, throughout the writing of the novel, until the last point comes. Then, it is obviously possible to become friend with one of our characters, given that we feel his emotions, fears, doubts, but also because we experiment with him every situation, positive or negative.

"More than a paper being,

He becomes a friend, a confidant,

A part of ourselves, through which

We understand our own existence."

(Chloe Barthez, 2019)

This would be the hidden purpose behind the character's creation: to create a duplicate of ourselves to step back from our own lives, understand our choices, the decisions we have made and finally see if the life we are building is in harmony with what we really want.