Clusterfuck Draft To Legible Story

Element 1: Character: How To Start?

Character writing

Heya, I am Milejdy (also known as the asshole enforcer) and I have been granted this great honor of writing about characters. What my boss doesn't realize is that this is one long ass theme and she somehow wants me to make this into one chapter. Sigh. Let's see how well I can handle that!

Anyway, before I even start, maybe you could be wondering “why should I listen to this person about character writing?”

Now, while I may not be a judge of my own writing style, there is a little known fact I could let you know of in case you didn’t already. I have been writing a story which has 18 main characters in it on wattpad (self plug here, go read Individuality!).

Now, I am not saying here that I am somehow great at writing characters but what I can say for sure is that I have been creating these characters for over five years now in which I have tried to do as much research on character writing and what works and what not. And in case you don't know, creating 18 characters that are all very different, unique and all have an interesting quirk to them with every character having a big part in a story to fulfill the “everyone is a main character” line, is pretty hard.

So here is all I have learned and what I think is important to think about when creating your own characters.

How to start?

I'm sure you have already read about the ‘elements of fiction’ in the previous chapters. However, the two most important factors that create the ‘heart’ of fiction are story (plot) and characters.

What I find hard to answer is whether it is better to first create the story, or first create the characters.  While this at first may seem insignificant, it does make a difference in how the plot and characters will be developed. Let's say you start by creating the story, you will develop the characters to fit that storyline, while if you first create the characters, you will have to fit the plot for them.

If you're not sure how this would work, here is a brief example of both.

1. Storyline first:

Your idea is that you want to write a story about racing cars, because you have a passion for cars. You want to have drama in between, and you want the story to end the main character (MC) dying in a car crash.

Now, you have to fit your MC to this storyline. First and foremost, he/she has to fit the theme so they will probably like car racing and maybe they want to enter the world car race and win.  Since you want drama, you will make them very angsty and easy to trigger. If you want them to die, it is also good to make sure that your readers like this character so they are sad by the end so you give them redeeming qualities and maybe even a sad childhood.

This would be character writing with the story first in mind.

2. Characters first:

So in this case, you first create the MC. You want this character to be depressing and lonely. You want this character to grow out of their weakness in the future. Let’s say you make this character into an orphan. You choose their favorite hobby to be taking care of dogs. And etc.

With this all in mind, you now think of the story. Because we made this character so angsty, it would only make sense for them to be a teenager, so part of this story should be set in a school of sorts and of course, an orphanage too. You now have to think of all the hardships they should face to become stronger and of course, a storyline that is smooth and easy to follow.

But now the question really is, which one is better?

I feel like most people start with the storyline at first but since I personally created my story the other way around, I wanted to also ask how you, person reading this, personally started? Which one do you think is better? Which one is more effective?

As this should be more of a debate, I will only state what choosing any of these causes. It is basically a good indicator of where you will have more freedom. If you start by writing the story, you won’t have as much open space to make your character whatever you would want as you need to fit them in the storyline. If you start with the character, you have freedom to experiment with them as much as you want, but then the story can't be too out of place and needs to fit the character.

To be continued in next chapter.