rambles ❈

#2: how to be successful on wattpad: THE CHARACTERS

ello ello ello lovelies

so for today's chapter I will be exploring CHARACTERS! How to choose the perfect names, face claims, personality, description, and character development.

This might be confusing cuz I'm bad at explaining but here we GOooO.

NAMES AND FACE CLAIMS

- for the name of the character, I think everything sort of ties into determining that such as the personality and physical appearance.

- to start it all off, I plan out the girl's personality, because that sort of ties in with the story because while I plan the plot of the story I simulataneously decide on the personality traits of the characters. So once I've gotten the personality of your character down, then I move on with finding a face claim and name.

- I always need a face claim for my characters, I'm not someone with a vivid enough imagination to conjure up another human being just from descriptions, so cast lists help me a lot. Since there is this lack of diversity with female characters (which is fading away now so it's all good) I decided after Kill & Run to make my female leads WOC.

Now you don't HAVE to do this. It is perfectly fine if you want to use a white, blonde girl as your female lead. I don't think people should really be bashed for not including POC in their cast lists because really that's how the author imagines the characters and you as a reader are not obliged to imagine the characters like that too.

I got shit for not having POC in Kill & Run, and I never even realized that I didn't have any POC because I only thought about using the celebrities I loved the most and I saw fit the character the best. Yes it's a shame none of them were a person of color, but it is what it is.

But yeah, basically choose who you think fits the character the best personality wise, or looks-wise if you have like an idea of how you want the girl to look like. I also take ethnicity into consideration, because that's always somehow important in my books like with Reina in Heavy Crown being Moroccan in real life so I chose her because I wanted like an arab lead to portray the "foreigners" in that book. So it all depends on you and what route you take to design your characters. I go with personality first and then find a face claim that matches the ethnicity I have in mind, and then I move onto names.

- to find face claims, I usually go on instagram for the WOC leads because that's where all the pretty gals are at y'all. There's an account dedicated to just beautiful women of all nationalities and ifoundbae so check that out.

- for the names, I try to find names that 1. matches the girl's personality meaning-wise and 2. her ethnicity 3. matches the face claim. I do the ethnicity thing more often than the name matching personality thing. For example, Adriana from True Colors, her name means Dark which sort of matches her personality and past, plus it's like a Spanish/Latin name and she's Mexican sooooo it all fits innit. plus I decided on the name after I found the face claim for Adriana which is Sophia Miacova, and even with her she had to fit Adriana's like mysterious, alluring personality you know, I didn't want a girl who looked cute and bubbly because that's not her personality.

- Finding the names for me is a meh process. Once I have the ethnicity down I'm like okay, google: mexican baby girl names. Literally. For fantasy stuff like Heavy Crown, searching names for the kingdoms and all that, just type something like 'Kingdom Name Generator' and bam you've gotten a name. They have a name generator for everything.

DESCRIPTION

- okay with this part I might go into too much detail with how to describe the face and shiz so I'll just give a few general tips as to how I got better at describing appearances.

- I always sort of do it from start to bottom when describing a face, like for example Harry, I would either start with like his hair of his eyes and then say like framed with eyebrows then structured face: cheekbones and jawline and the famous heart-shaped lips. Like, pick out the striking parts and talk in detail about that if that makes sense.

- for me I got better by reading a lot of like other books, which is basically how I got better at writing in general. like look for a few books or fanfics that have really good, detailed, descriptive writing and just like notice the way that author describes their characters and pick out of a few things. don't copy shit, but like get an idea of how to describe your characters better you know??

- plus when it comes to describing stuff like the character's complextion, there's a ton of websites and like blogs that break down how to describe skin color online so always look to those. Google is like your best friend when it comes to writing.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

- right this is often a tricky thing to do because you can mess it up so easily. often times in fanfics, harry or something would be hella rude and cocky and disgusting and immediately switch after one fight with the girl or even after the girl says you can't be like this. there needs to be a lot of time and patience taking into developing a character.

- you have to plan ahead sometimes, and plan out events where you can say okay this is the first time the character shows a little vulnerability or this is the first time the character shows this side of their personality. you need to know your character in and out, and take time with the development of the character. you need to help the readers know your character in and out by doing chapters that help establish their view of the character's personality.

- to help the readers understand that characters better IT'S ALL IN THE DETAILS. The details including the way the character interacts with others, the decisions they make, even their physical appearance counts! This way your readers will get more and more hints on the personality of the character.

this then leads to when you make the character do something that shows improvement in their development, the readers will notice this and be like omg character development. but remember you can't do it too early, because it's not realistic then. you need to take your time with establishing the personality of your character first with a couple of chapters, and then plan out events and scenarios that help change the character bit by bit.

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I hope this all makes sense !! if there's anything i missed out on please comment here and tell me! and also comment what more you'd like to know about this series, and how to be successful and all that !!

THAT'S ALL FOLKS