How to create characters when you just start writing novels?
First of all, it is suggested to write a biography first.
A complete and detailed biography can prevent the characters from deviating from the set track, keep the characters personalized, and not write all the characters as one person. Biographies are not immutable. According to the story and the growth of the characters in the novel environment and events, the characters are also changing quietly, but these changes are all around your biography.
With biographies, you can create characters. There are many ways to create characters in novels, such as portrait, detail, language, action, psychology, front and side.
* Portraits of people
This is easy to understand, that is, people's appearance, clothes, limbs and demeanor.
For example, if your character is a rude man, we may describe his portrait as a small white face. Although there may be situations where a pretty boy is rude in reality, writing in a novel like this will not highlight the character. We can imagine what a rude man looks like in a general novel. He is five big and three thick, unshaven, dressed in casual clothes, with scarred hands and wide eyes.
* Details
Details can be reflected in words and actions, and should be placed in events.
This doesn't seem to be easy to understand. For example, Sister Xianglin in Blessing always says "I'm so stupid ..." This is a classic example of detail description, so that anyone who has read this article can remember such a person. When someone says "I'm so stupid", it's easy to think of Sister Xianglin. When someone talks about it, they will say, "Why are you like Sister Xianglin?" This is a successful case of expressing details in words.
There is also a description of the details embodied by actions.
For example, Yan Jiansheng in The Scholars is a miser. When he died, he saw two wicks burning in the oil lamp. He refused to die until his little wife saw through his mind and chose a wick for fear that he would spend too much oil. The movements of his two fingers and the whole thing are a detailed description, which shows his meanness to the fullest.
* Language (dialogue)
Speaking of languages, there are many things to share. Careful observation shows that men, women and children speak differently. People of the same age and sex speak differently from those who are pungent and cowardly. As the saying goes, "You know who he is by the sound of his voice".
Therefore, the language of a character must conform to his personality characteristics. In order to highlight a character's personality characteristics, sometimes exaggerated language description may be used.
For example, the hero of your novel is a cultural person, and his language can pay attention to the writing of words and write his sense of elegance. For example, Kong Yiji, written by Lu Xun, is carefully chosen, which makes people half-understand. "How much is it?" Not much. "It's unforgettable.
Another language description is spoken language. If a person speaks in a common spoken language, then this character will be well distinguished from other characters, but not everyone can speak in spoken language, so the novel can't be read.
Sometimes when we first write a novel, we will write all the people as ourselves. Although we try our best to write portraits, movements and manners, readers still can't tell who is who. Why? Because we write all the conversations the same, basically talking to ourselves.
If the characters in your dialogue scene happen to be two people with opposite personalities, then this dialogue is very easy to write. For example, if you describe a conversation between an extrovert and an introvert, the extrovert may talk more and the introvert will talk less. Extroverts can say two words, introverts can answer one, extroverts can say twenty words, and introverts can only say ten words. In this way, the two characters are separated and the characters stand out.
This is a prominent personality characteristic. Especially multi-person dialogue, comparison is more practical.
For example, there are four people, one is funny, the other is wise, the other is cold and the other is dull. In an emergency, whoever says the first sentence is usually funny, because he talks a lot, but his words often miss the point. So the wise man came out, he thought of a solution to the problem, and then the cold man came out. He finally concluded that he either agreed with the wise man's plan or refused. What about the slow man? Follow. You can say it or not, just describe it with action.
In this way, the images of the four people are distinguished, which is in line with the character.
However, it is impossible for the characters in the novel to make their own characters into paper. The characters in the novel are three-dimensional Generally speaking, there are similarities and differences in their personalities. A single character can't be shaped from dialogue. It needs to be shaped from appearance, clothing, movement, manner, psychology and reaction to the same event.
:: Action
Actions, like language, are designed to highlight people and serve people or events.
For example, in "The Back", my father's series of actions are "amazing" ... slowly tilting ... climbing ... shrinking ",which shows the difficulty for a fat father to buy oranges and highlights his love for me.
If the author's movements are not staggering but fast, not slowly leaning but turning over, not climbing but jumping, then he can't conform to the assumption that his father is a fat man, so he can't write how difficult it is to buy oranges, and he can't highlight his love for me.
For another example, if your role is two people riding a horse to perform a task, the thin man may fly on the horse, indicating that he is thin, light, or good at flying. Then if the other person is fat, or the martial arts is not so good, he must turn over and get on the horse, or be more clumsy, so that the characteristics of the two characters are highlighted.
* Psychology
Psychological description, like language and action, must conform to people's design.
For example, a five-year-old child broke a vase. From the child's point of view, at first he was afraid, and then he might try to escape or excuse. Such psychological activities are more in line with children. If you write this psychological activity directly: It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter if I break the vase, as long as I honestly explain the situation to my mother and apologize, I will be forgiven. This is not in line with the thinking of a five-year-old child, except for one case.
How can we accurately grasp the psychology of characters? There is no other way. See more and think more. If you substitute yourself into a character, you must put yourself into the character's heart and put yourself in their shoes.
* Front and side
Positive description refers to positive description, such as writing that a girl is beautiful and describing her good-looking, good-looking, eyebrow eye and figure. This is positive description. Introduction and description are written by others' dictation, comparison and behavior. For example, the old lady next door has been chanting "I have never seen such a sign in my life", which is to describe the beauty of this girl in other people's languages. Or "if she were alive, she would be ashamed to see her", which is also a side.
These methods are generally used to shape characters, but not everyone needs these six methods. Just like twins, portrait description can't better highlight the characters and distinguish them, so we use language, action and psychological description to shape the characters. You don't have to paint his portrait or his personality, but it is enough to make a person's image lifelike through language, action and psychology.
My most commonly used methods of shaping characters are language, action and psychology, and I write different people through the change of proportion.
Give two examples and share how I shape my characters through the proportional changes of these three methods.
* Portrait of the same person
For example, to create a reckless person, the description of his behavior is greater than language, and language is greater than psychology. Such a reckless man appeared who started fighting without caring.
For another example, to create a dark person, psychological description is greater than action, and action is greater than language. The dark man's psychological activities are very rich, his psychological description is very important, and then his actions, what terrible things he has done, which he often does not say, so the proportion of language may be the smallest.
* The shaping of different people.
Create two people with the same or similar personalities and look for them from their reactions to specific events.
For example, two characters have the same personality, both are quiet and introverted, and like to be alone, but one is smart and the other is stupid, so their behavior will not be the same in the same event.
The earthquake is coming. Smart introverts will take action or take preventive measures, while stupid introverts may cry and don't know how to ask for help. To separate two people in this way is to distinguish two people with similar personalities.
It's still a different event. Smart people met an earthquake and stupid people met the senior high school entrance examination. Then the former can also describe his behavior, and the latter can write more about his psychology, how he struggled, what to do if he failed in the exam, what to do if he failed in the exam, and so on. This one focuses on action description and the other focuses on psychological description, which is different from characters.
Of course, these are not absolute, and should be written on specific events or based on what methods the author chooses to shape the characters.
There are many interesting ways to create characters in novels. Welcome to discuss with me.