This time I will expose an important point in a narrative story. And it is about the characters presented in it. A character is each of the persons or beings, real or imaginary, that appear in a written work. Those with human aspects or conscious beings of any kind that are imagined to exist within the universe of a work are usually highlighted. But, in addition to people, reference is made to any other type of living beings, animals and gods, and even animated objects that are given life.
These characters are in most cases the focus of fictional texts, especially in the literary field, as well as comics. They themselves in narrative texts can be created realistically, allegorically, i.e. characters representing abstract aspects, such as fables, with animals behaving like human beings to represent greed, pride, or fantastically as fictional beings, often endowed with supernatural powers. These are of utmost importance in the development of the work, because the characters can be main or secondary.
Among the main characters is the protagonist, who is the most important of all. The characters of our stories will be the ones that produce emotions, doubts, hatred, love, among others. We must know them well, know how they are, both inside and physically.
As characters we can find:
- Protagonist: He is the central character and must be present throughout the book, being the other characters who act around him. He does not necessarily have to be the typical hero, but he must stand out for something, either good or bad, something that differentiates him from the others.
- Secondary characters: You may not know how many characters the novel will have, nor what place it will have. What you should keep in mind is that the shorter the narrative is, the fewer characters it should have. A short writing full of characters will serve to make the reading heavier. It should be taken into account that only those who surround the main character can be present throughout the novel. But sometimes this is not the case. There are even those who provoke a certain reaction in the protagonist, a misfortune, a joy, it depends on the story.
- The extras: These are the characters who on numerous occasions must be included, but who may remain in the shadows, unlike the protagonists who are clearly defined and the secondary characters who participate less clearly. The role of the extras is that of assistants in certain episodes, they can be any character who appears at a given moment and briefly, such as a waiter, a receptionist, a saleswoman, the cashier of a supermarket. The reader does not need to know their name or attributes. Be careful not to add characters that are unnecessary and tell information about each one, this would make the story boring.
In that sense, for many writers the characters are the most difficult thing to imagine and develop. This is due to the enormous difficulty of getting into a skin different from our own. Indeed, we adopt points of view that sometimes have nothing to do with our own. It doesn't matter if it's about opinions, values, feelings or simply the way of seeing the world in general. Such characters are those mysterious and sometimes even strange creatures of our own consciousness. However, we need to build them well if we want to bring our story to life. Because a story without the right kinds of characters is an empty and insubstantial story.
Finally, characters are at the service of a story and authors are at the service of characters. If the characters do not fit in the story, if they are not credible, if they do not combine well with the conflicts we have imagined, if they are insufficient or superfluous, if the protagonist or the antagonist do not reflect well the theme we intended to develop in the narrative text, we will not have made any progress. The creation of characters is then one of the most important, interesting and fun tasks to perform when creating a narrative. And that is why there are many things we must take into account to make them incredible.
Have you ever wanted to be the main character of your favorite story?
P.S.: I am taking a course on the creation of novels, and I decided to share with you through my publications, the knowledge I am acquiring. That way we can learn together.
Dear readers, your opinions are very valuable to me, I will be very attentive to your comments. Thank you for investing your valuable time reading my post, best regards.
Disclaimer: I would like to let you know that English is not my mother tongue, I may even make some mistakes in the elaboration of sentences in my posts. Feel free to correct me attentively. It will help me in my learning process.
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Developing unique characters in the story is very difficult especially when the genre is common. I find it special when an author produces a good development for each characters. Thanks for this article!