How to write a story/ -3

Good tips

Find inspiration from real people. If you have trouble understanding or finding attributes of a character, turn to your life. You can easily borrow attributes of people you know or even strangers you notice. For example, you might notice someone is always drinking coffee, they talk in a loud, booming voice, they are always typing away at the computer, etc. All these observations would together make a very interesting character, and they could easily be attributes of real people.

Know your characters. For a story to be believable, the characters have to be believable and realistic. But here are a few strategies to create characters.

Write a list, titled with the character’s name, and write all the attributes you can think of, from their position in the orchestra to their favorite color. You should know as much as possible about your characters, from what their central motivations are to what their favorite foods are. You won’t include all this information in your story, but the more you know, the more your characters will come to life, both for you and for the reader.

Make sure your characters personalities are not perfect. In real life, nobody is perfect. Everyone has their flaws. Of course, that extends into the realm of storytelling, too. Every character needs to have some flaws, some problems, some imperfections, some insecurities. You might amuse that people wouldn’t like to read about a character whit a lot of flaws, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth! People can relate to characters with problems, as that’s realistic.

They definitely can’t relate to perfect characters. When trying to come up with flaws, you don’t need to give your character some huge, bizarre issue ( although you definitely can). For the most characters, try to stick with things you know about. For example, the character could have anger issues, be afraid of water, be lonely, dislike being around other people, be sad etc. All these could be taken further in development.

There are three main points of view from which to tell a story: first-person (“I”), second-person (“You”), and third-person (“he” or “she”). In first-person story, a character in the story tells the story; in second-person the reader is made a character in the story; and in third-person, an outside narrator tells the story. (second-person narration is rarely used)

Keep in mind that first-person narrators can only tell what they know ( which will be limited to what they see or are told by others), while third-person narrators can either know everything and explore every character’s thoughts, or be limited to only that which can be observed.

As you write your story, you may want to turn your plot in a different direction than you had planned, or you may want to substantially change or remove a character. Listen to characters if they tell you to do something different, and don’t worry about scrapping your plans altogether if you can make a better story as you go.