Making Your Characters Realistic

Realistic characters for me are the ones that have realistic problems, especially ones that the reader can actually believe that it could happen in a real life person (of course I'm not talking about fantasy stuff). If they don't have the perfect personality, if they make mistakes that the readers disagree with, even better. For example, Peter from my original story, Mirrors from Afar, makes choices that the readers disagree with, on purpose. I don't want him to be perfect. I want him to be far from perfect, because that is realistic to me.

As for the dialogue, yeah, I put 'um's and 'ah's and pauses also. I usually have the dialogue in my head and imagine how the characters would say it before I write it down. Depending on the topic of the dialogue, those things are written accordingly to put the reader in the character's shoes =)

It sounds a little bit crude, but I've found that examining the people in my life in an unbiased way really helps to identify personality traits and habits. It's interesting to apply that to my own characters and it also helps me with their reactions because I can just visualise the person whom the trait belongs to and what their reaction would be.

For example, I know people that are extreme people-pleasers. They don't walk up to me and say that they like to please people; I know this because they really dislike being criticised and are overly apologetic. That's something that I can make evident in a character without stating that trait.

I think dialogue is vital to characters. Not only does it reveal their thoughts or past or opinions but also parts of their personality, like the style in which they speak. When that's vague or rounded, the characters all begin to blend together, but when dialogue is distinct between characters, they seem to jump out from the page.

A way to test it is to leave names and he-said-she-said out of a passage of dialogue and see if a reader can still follow the conversation and know who's saying what.

WEll, when I write bandficition or real celebrity fanfiction (which I recently started doing), I usually look the information on the band and maybe look at the pics of them and ask some fans for their opinions of them and then I just start writing from there.

Like with my fanfic on Phil Collins, a lot of his songs/lyrics show that he is a romantic and possibly a kind person, so I'm portraying him as someone who would a treat a girl (or whoever would be his significant other) right. He would be the one to jump to their defense and be loyal to them. But he could also be a bit shy and not very good with confrontations unless he's the one doing the protecting. He also has a small temper that gets him into trouble a lot.

I don't know if that sounds realistic for a fan's portrayal of a famous person but that's how I see Phil and I try to make him as realistic as possible just like with my original character that's his romantic interest, who is a bit of a hard head and likes to do things on her own.

I like to write out moments in their childhood - the things that would have made them who they are. I don't show them to anyone, but they really help me get a feel for my characters.