Character Building

When I was trying to turn Topaz, Rubin, and all the others into beleivable characters, I went looking for as many techniques and tricks to help me flesh them out.  I knew that I could see these characters clearly and that they acted in a perfectly logical way...to me.  My challenge was drawing them with words so that everyone else could see them like I could.  This is an exercise that helped me. 
The next time you have to create a character for a composition at school, try this technique.  The more you know the characters that you are writing about, the easier it will be to know how they will react to the events in your plot.

J.A.G.

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Method 1 —
Write out biographies for your characters before you start writing the story.

Write down as many details as you can think of, such as:

what they look like (people come in many shapes and sizes)
where they were born
who their parents were and what they were like
whether they had brothers and sisters and what they were like
what sort of experiences they had in school
where they learned their trade and who influenced them
whether they've ever been in love, and how did that go
how they deal with anger
and so on