Character Design

We've all been there. You're reading a good book, you become attached to a certain character, and you are invested deeply in what happens to them within the story and out of it. It's the personality that the characters have that suck us into them. For some, it's easy to like them. For others, it's so easy to hate them. I need not give examples, you're all thinking of characters right now that fall into those categories. But for authors, sometimes creating characters is hard.

That was one aspect of writing The Return of Sinestra that I hadn't anticipated. Lily was so crystal clear to me in how she was to act, and others were a struggle to craft. Then there were those characters that I had initially planned to serve as background placeholders that took upon a life of their own as I was writing them out. I wanted to discuss one of them in particular, because she became so much more integral to the plot of the entire Saga than I was initially planning on: Victoria Holten.

Now, you might be wondering, "Victoria? Why would she be so integral to the entire story? How did she take on a life of her own?" Well, here's how. In my very first draft, I had created Victoria as a placeholder roommate for Lily in the dorms that was just sucked into the chaos that was unleashed by Sinestra. But, as I was drafting out more and more, I began looking to Victoria a lot more to fill in aspects of the group conversations. Then when I began drafting scenes for the other books...well, she basically took over a bit of the show.

I won't give anything away here, but I will say that Victoria holds a huge key to the story, even though she and Lily don't realize it yet. I'll admit, Victoria has grown upon me quite a lot as I've written her out.

But creating characters, that's very difficult. I'm no genius when it comes to creating them, and everyone is different in their approaches to creating characters. But I have found that for me to create a character I need three main things: A physical description, a personality trait, and purpose. If I don't have all three, then the character isn't created. If I had to pick one of the three that had the most important role, then I would say that it would have to be the personality, because, that's what we fall in love with...or hate.