You are at the drawing board. Imagination is flying like crazy, images are flowing freely, and you’re cruising at speeds of creativity Einstein couldn’t calculate.
You look down at your paper and speculate that it’s completely blank. You have been staring at your dog for the last four hours, instead of starting the fantastic story being born inside your mind – all because you have no idea how in the world to design your super heroic protagonist so the story’s plot line can continue.
Whether you are trying to make a comic book, novel, short story, or you’re just attempting to let out some creative steam, every tale needs a main character, be it man, woman, or dog.
It takes a certain art to be able to make a character up on the spot, but it’s also important to analyze, construct, and sculpt your character, or your story may hit obstacles you hadn’t anticipated later on.
There is a process involved when one goes about making their own main characters, with either a superhero, the favorite anti-hero, or the perfect antagonist.
First off all, you need to have an idea. Whether it came from a dream, daydream, or something your friend said, ideas are the birth to the best stories today, sans the ‘Twilight” series.
Sometimes when you have an idea strictly for your character first, the story part comes easy. Most of the time, you end up locking the character in developmental hell until that one day in the far off future when you find it in your closet again, only you’re bald and ten years older.
Stay organized. The main point of organization is being able to look at your character and categorize all your plans on who this person or character will be, how they live their life – and if you want to get real artistic, what kind of lesson or moral story this character will play through in your story.
Superhero comics or stories have loads of morals at the end of each chapter or issue, and some of America’s most classic books have an ending where the protagonist grows stronger or becomes a better individual, giving the audience reason to think and learn a bit about right and wrong themselves.
Next, to maintain originality, put a lot of thought into your character’s appearance, habits, accents, and so on. Maybe your character is extremely easy to point out because of their crazy-wild curly hair. Perhaps they always seem to be eating sunflower seeds – and you can use what their appearances or habits are to display or symbolize the kind of personality they have.
Artists write pages and pages about their characters – not just the one they want to focus on – to make absolutely sure they have them down. Some directors go as far as writing 30 pages on a single character’s life background story, or writing scenarios and figuring out how their character would act in certain ones.
Anyone can make a distinct character, but the key is having confidence in your ideas.
