Author Kieran Larwood's Top Tips for Character Creation

By Kieran Larwood | Activities, Author, Family, Guest Blog, Kids, Parents, Top Tips

Kieran Larwood shares his top secrets to help you with your character development

Coming up with original characters can be one of the hardest parts in creating a story. Making a reader connect with them and want to follow their journey's is even harder! Kieran Larwood share's with us his top tips on how you can create original characters and develop them to keep a reader engaged, check them out:

• Change the first thing that pops into your head. You probably have an idea of the world you’re writing about, and you probably have an idea of your main character – but you can make them more interesting and exciting if you switch them around a bit. Change their gender, make them younger, take away the powers you thought of giving them… it will make it more challenging and interesting to write about them, which often makes for a better story.

• Think about the journey they are taking. If you want them to be brave and heroic, make sure they start out as the opposite, so the story is about them having to change. I often draw out a map before I write that shows how the character will grow throughout the story. And also do the same for your background characters.

• Give your characters problems to deal with. If you’re writing about someone with a power or ability, make sure they have weaknesses as well, or that their strengths require lots of thinking and cleverness for them to be used well. I find it very boring to read about heroes who are so amazing, they never have to struggle. The reader needs to feel that there is a very real danger of your characters failing to make the story exciting.

***

Huge thanks to Kieran for sharing his top tips for character creation - why not have a go at creating a character for a story yourself? We'd love to see your characters and read your story, so please do share! Pop an email to [email protected].

You can read all about the fantastic characters in Kieran's latest book Carnival of the Lost which is out now & illustrated by Sam Usher! If you'd like to find out more about Keiran and his work, visit his website: www.kmlarwood.com, and check out his Instagram: @kieranlarwood.