I, like any passionate writer, really love characters. And before I wrote tragic backstories, draining developments, and colorful personalities, I actually drew them! I wasn’t serious about drawing and writing until fourth grade, but drawing was definitely my first love. I wouldn’t say I was any good until eighth or ninth grade, but I was unbelievably passionate and I think that’s what really matters here. I would draw countless characters and somehow intertwine them with crazy storylines. I would make comics, animatics or animations, and fill my sketchbooks with shocking speed.
Eventually, when I did try my fourth grade hand at seriously writing for a personal hobby, my first vivid memory of this was in my math class after I finished my morning work. I opened my composite notebook and wrote about three full pages throughout the whole class with a story where I was the main character and I described my adventures as a famous Youtuber. Honestly, it was really cute. I was nine years old writing about being best friends with my favorite Youtubers and living out my dream (that may or may not still be my dream eight years later).
With my first experience of seriously writing being, more or less, self-insert fanfiction, this started a deep connection to my protagonists. I mean, my first protagonist was literally me. I was writing from my perspective, what I would do, and how I would react. So when I did, thankfully, move onto original work with characters that I didn’t suspiciously share a name with, I found myself exploring the main character a lot deeper than I thought I would’ve. I absolutely believe that this was because I wanted to match my knowledge of my protagonist to my own knowledge of myself. It was a strenuous method of developing my characters but it’s definitely helped me later down the line.
As I write more short stories, more little worlds to dive into and explore, I’ve been admiring the art of creating a fictional world. It’s an unbelievably beautiful process and, at least in my life, it’s not talked about enough.
Of course, there are many different ways of creating a fictional world. Creating a fantasy world from scratch is completely different than a modern day story in the U.S. but the only thing that’s different is (insert random event here) never happened. Worldbuilding is still a craft that I haven’t learned much about. The thing that I’m really interested in is character.
People say if you base your characters off of people you know in real life, it makes them seem more real. Regardless, you’re still creating a new character. This is a new life you’re breathing into from an idea in your head.
The relationship between the author and the protagonist is something that’s infested my mind for a few months now. The protagonist, if we’re excluding metanarratives, doesn’t know of the author’s existence. And the author knows everything about the protagonist. The protagonist goes on about their life, perhaps believing in another religion in their world not knowing their real creator is, for (totally not a specific) example, a teenage girl in art school sitting on a unicorn blanket in her dorm…
There’s something specifically intimate about being someone’s creator. Outside of art and religion, there’s not many areas of life that reflect this. Motherhood is the only one that comes to my mind and, yet, as someone’s mother, your child will eventually grow up and become their own person that you can’t control and may not know the full extent of. Creating a fictional character does just that. You can control them, know them more than you know yourself, and you get the privilege to say they’re yours.
I love creating new characters. My favorite ones usually come from stories that I haven’t even fleshed out yet or stories based on my favorite games or media. As I’m preparing for national novel writing month and even getting ready for a personal project in December, lots of characters have been on my mind. And, of course, I’m trying to get to know them better than I know myself right now (which shouldn’t be hard). Some ways I do that is through making family trees, Pinterest boards, Spotify playlists, and “headcanons” even though they’re my own characters so it’s just… “canons” even though that’s not very fun. One thing that I haven’t been doing, though, is drawing them. Hopefully I can return to visual arts again when I have more time. I miss my first love (drawing).
I’m so glad I was able to finally talk about this idea. The relationship between the protag and author is something that’s been rotting my brain since the beginning of this school year. It took a lot for me to not research for this blog and use my own input because I was afraid I would unintentionally rip-off someone’s ideas. So this is completely from my own head and I’ll probably research more for my own sake. This blog was a lot more laid back than I thought it would be but diving into the anxiety-inducing intimacy of being someone’s creator just isn’t what I want to talk about so I substituted that for how much I love making characters.
