How To Fictionalize Real People In Your Creative Writing

Your characters are the emotional key to your story and the route into your readers imagination. You might have the most perfectly structured, brilliant plot on the planet, but if your characters are flat and lifeless then no-one will want to read it. Bringing your characters to life is essential to a good story. But how do you create brilliant characters?
There is a huge temptation to build your characters on people that you know within your day to day life. Beware. You may think that you have disguised them well enough but unless you’re very careful some people will still see elements of themselves and end up either elated or offended. It could go either way.
The majority of writers tend to be avid people-watchers, particularly fascinated by the things people do and say, and it’s this never ending study of other people that gives their characters depth and substance. Ask yourself questions about the people around you. Imagining situations about strangers flexes your creative writing muscle and also assists with finding vivid characters and understand their motivations.
When you’re creating characters it’s fine to use real people as starting points, but they should just be a rough model: broad character traits or descriptions. However, their hopes, dreams, fears and motivation all need to come from you – you truly need to be at the centre of your character and basing all your characters feelings and desires on someone else means that you can never do this.
Do some basic planning about your cast before you commence writing. Your characters drive your plot, so if you know them well beforehand, it will help you move your story along. What does your character look like? You might ‘see’ him or her instantly in your mind, or you might need to play around for a bit to get an image that feels right to you. Height, build, age, hair and eye colour – these are all essential to know. Then pay attention to other important things such as how they speak, how they move, what they do for a living etc. You need to be aware of how the character appears to others – they need to be fully three dimensional so that they appeal to your readers.
Remember also that most stories do not need a cast of thousands, the fewer characters that you have, the better your readers will get to know them so don’t be tempted to write in endless characters unless you have a very good reason for doing so. In this case, less is definitely more!
I’d love to hear your feedback about how you bring your characters to life – please leave a comment on Facebook or on my site – the address is below.