The first step in writing a book is always the inspiration; the book starts with the author becoming inspired to write their book. Once the writer has become inspired to write their story, they generally begin by writing an outline or a rough draft and then they begin to fill in the supporting details to flesh out the book. These supporting details are generally character creation and setting creation. In my article “The Three Aspects of Character Creation”, I wrote about how the writer needed to create their characters so that they all had a full description of the characters’ appearance, background, and personality. However, that article did not discuss the methods a writer could use to become inspired to create an appearance, background, and personality for their fictional characters.

Books as a Character Creation Inspiration Tool

Not many writers think of books as an inspiration in creating their own unique fictional characters, but they can be a valuable resource as long as the writer takes care not to plagiarize another writer’s content. There are so many different books across so many different genres with their own unique characteristics from which a writer could draw endless inspiration. The writer can even combine elements from different characters from different books in their own character(s). Writers should also check out the reviews of the book(s) that they are drawing character inspiration from as the reviews can give the writer an idea about what readers liked and disliked about the characters. The writer can then utilize this information in order to create characters that will appeal to their own readers.

Appearance

Books provide ample examples on how to effectively or ineffectively describe character appearance. Writers should not just focus on the books that effectively describe character appearances, but also those that do so poorly so that the writer can avoid making the same mistakes in their own writing. For instance, it is generally a good thing for a writer to describe the character’s hair, height, weight, eye color, and general body shape. However, the writer should take care not to bore readers with too much information about a character’s physical appearance.

Background

Background is often one of the main areas writers struggle with and it is one of the best areas for writers to seek inspiration about in other books. Background is often difficult because it focuses on not just what the character looks like or acts like, but on how the character became the person that they are. Some books do a better job of describing character background than others, and many different books show different ways to write about background. For example, the Harry Potter books show Harry’s background with the murder of his parents and then some scenes about his home life; in contrast, the Maze Runner series has the main character, Thomas, wake up with no memories of who he is, thus erasing the need for background information. Books can provide inspiration not only on creating different character backgrounds, but also on how to write about backgrounds.

Personality

Personality can be both one of the easiest and hardest parts of character creation because personality is not something set in stone, rather, it can be somewhat fluid, and a character’s personality can change based on that character’s experiences. For example, a character might start out being trusting and friendly towards strangers, but if that same character was harmed by a stranger, the character might become less trusting and more guarded, depending on the extend of the harm done to the character.