How to create a character from a real person?
Before creating a character from a real person, it would be good to start by knowing what a character is. According to the RAE, a character would be a “fictional being, person or animal, invented by an author, who intervenes in the action of a literary work or a film.” STOCK Market in Hindi
According to Forster, the characters are real “not because they look like us – which can happen – but because they are convincing.
I would expand this definition a little further, and say that a character must cause —in close collaboration with the reader’s imagination—what we could call the “person effect. ” That is to say, good characters must be composed in such a way that they create the illusion that someone (and not something) very specific is before the reader starring in the events. According to Forster, the characters are real “not because they look like us – which can happen – but because they are convincing.”
And I would add one more thing: be careful not to fall into the deception that “characters” are “people.” The moment you introduce your cousin, your mother, your baker or yourself into a narrative, they immediately become a character, who has nothing to do with the real person. Starting from the basis that when we look at someone in our environment (or ourselves) we do not see reality, but rather a very limited portion by our focus and our patterns of what that person in fact is, by introducing it into a story, in that is confined by a certain theme, by a plot, by a narrative approach, by a specific extension, etc., we cannot pretend (and we had better not even try) that that conforms to the real person.
So we have to start from the basis that any character (whether or not it is based on someone real) is nothing more than a part of the writer’s mind that comes to life and autonomy through words and narratively.
Five steps to create your character
STOCK Market in Hindi Let’s now look at some tips that may be useful to create a character based on someone real. tradingviews
1. What draws your attention about that person?
When you (as a writer) are drawn to someone in your environment to the point of wanting to build a story or a series of stories around them, it is because that person acts as a mirror of an aspect of yourself in the world. that you would like to investigate.
The first key would be, therefore, to pay attention to why that person draws your attention. What are the traits that arouse interest and curiosity in you? These traits, undoubtedly, cannot be the fact that he has an athletic build, tall stature and blue eyes, but rather certain characteristics that make him unique (in the case of the Hunchback of Notre-Dame, for example, it is clear what traits would make him They could attract Victor Hugo, both physically and because of his character).
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I propose, then, that you make a list of those traits that interest you in the person on whom you are going to base your character.
2. Transform him into someone original
The second thing you have to do is configure the character as a unique being. There cannot be another like him, so we have to carefully choose those features that define him. And this will already separate him a lot from the person in question on whom you have based yourself, since a human being is, by his very essence, ungraspable, while literary characters are more manageable beings, in which the author can incarnate. without any problem. Remember, in this step, that you do not have to be accountable to anyone, much less be faithful to reality.
I suggest, for this step, that you choose some features from the previous list (those that are most striking to you), and mix them with other invented ones that make it original without betraying the essence of what had initially caught your attention, even emphasizing those peculiarities. tradingviews
3. Observe what story that person has in hand
Another key for any good protagonist character to work, and that you will have to take into account when choosing your model, is that it has to come hand in hand with a good story. That is to say, when we are attracted to someone enough to want to write about them, it usually has to do with that person being involved in something that makes them even more interesting. This will usually involve contradiction, conflict, internal struggle.
Collect on paper all those things that you think envelop that person in an interesting atmosphere that you would like to investigate. STOCK Market in Hindi
To create a literary character from a person: choose the traits that have aroused your interest and curiosity about a person, transform them into someone unique, unrepeatable, observe and collect what story they bring.
4. Observe what that person does
A fictional character is defined, to a large extent, by narrative action. What a character “does” will always tell us more about them than what they think or what they are like physically. It is a thread of action, in fact, what configures the character, completes it.
So write down a series of actions (real or invented) that seem relevant and consistent with everything you have written down in the previous steps. Make sure that these actions point, in one way or another, to the conflict that was outlined in the previous step. tradingviews
5. Pay attention to the small details
To make your character truly come to life, pay attention to the small details or small gestures carried out by the person you want to base it on. tradingviews
It is not the great words or the great actions that will give the reader that feeling that the character transcends the pages of the book. It will be his way of tilting his head when looking at someone, his manias (Carballo—the detective protagonist of some of Manuel Vázquez Montalba’s novels—had the habit of lighting a fire by tearing out pages from books in his library) or his personal tastes (Sherlock Holmes liked cookies, for example).
Write down all the small details and gestures of the person you want to base your character on that come to mind, if possible they have some relationship with everything you have written in the previous steps.
If you follow these steps, not only will you have a fairly complete idea of your character, but you will already have a good part of the plot and plot. And furthermore, you will have distanced the “character” from the “person” enough to feel free with respect to reality. The less tied you are to “what really happened,” the better.
The psychological process through which your person separates from your character and then, once he or she has become someone else, embodying him and exploring him to your liking, is essential for writing fiction.
When your character is based on you
When you want to build an autobiographical character or, in other words, convert yourself into a character, the creation process becomes complicated, since you must first convert yourself into another. tradingviews
It might be thought that, if you want to be one of your characters, it would not be necessary for you to observe yourself as someone else, but that you would simply have to represent yourself as you are – or believe you are -; but it’s not like that. The psychological process through which your person separates from your character and then, once he or she has become someone else’s, embodying him and exploring him to your liking, is essential for writing fiction. Without this prior distance, which will allow you to objectify yourself, the narrative will become a kind of chronicle or diary, something that the reader will immediately perceive, just as we distinguish, to put a visible metaphor, a film from a documentary. tradingviews
The effort that any person has to make to try to see themselves as others see them is similar to that which you have to make to build an autobiographical character. If you manage to observe yourself as if you were another person, although with the same characteristics, as a kind of double or twin brother, you will have jumped the first obstacle.
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Then you have to enter that double (which is no longer you) and tell its story, taking care that at no time does a fusion between creator and creature occur, which would prevent the character from developing with freedom and narrative logic in the achievement of the history. After having jumped this second obstacle, you will have managed to create an autobiographical character. STOCK Market in Hindi tradingviews
A trick to achieve this is to start with an empty character shell that you will fill little by little with your own qualities. To make the process even easier, you can lend him all your qualities and experiences except a couple of them, which will continually remind you that this is another person. You can change your hair color and profession, height or even, always depending on the story you want to tell. This can also affect the protagonist’s family and environment. Although you have three brothers, your protagonist may be an only child, or may have been orphaned as a child, although in your case this was not the case.
I hope that these tips, trying to straighten out distortions that we usually have when writing fiction, will help you create credible characters. True beings that, although they are not the same as the people on whom they were based (nor does it need to be), have a defined, effective entity adapted to the story you want to tell, that captivates your readers and makes them last in the future. his memory.