The Epic Lab of Oddities: Creating Captivating and Unforgettable Characters

This is the first in a series on creating your fictional characters. Make no mistake, you are Dr. Frankenstein, creating your own walking, talking creatures.

But where do you get the parts? Where can you find just the right body type? Do you want lean and leggy? Or chiseled and muscular? Maybe emaciated and gaunt?

Most of us focus on the face first, as that’s where we get most of our social cues. Instead of brown hair and eyes, why not caramel or copper hair and cognac or mahogany eyes? They all bring to mind a particular shade of brown that isn’t as generic as brown.

And the face. Where are you going to find just the right facial shape, the right cheeks, chin, ears—all those individual features that make up a face?

Look no further. I have also been creating, dumping endless supplies of body parts, traits, emotions, quirks, actions, senses and more into the Epic Lab of Oddities. And the most amazing random descriptions are popping out. Hopefully, you’ll find some ideas that will spark your own.

I’ve created the Basics generators, giving you alternative descriptive words for your characters:

·      Hero or Villain

·      Good or Bad

·      Strong or Weak

·      Big or Small

·      Tall or Short

·      Thin or Heavy

·      Beautiful or Ugly

Go have some fun with them. The rest of the series will include:

·      Part 1: The One Thousand Dollar Man – from hero or villain to beautiful or ugly (we can rebuild him; faster, stronger)

·      Part 2: The Eyes Have It – facial features and hair

·      Part 3: Bodybuilding Champion – body types and body features

·      Part 4: The Quirk in Quirky – personality types, from bossy to wise

·      Part 5: Cry Me a River – reactions, emotions and body language

·      Part 6: Moves Like Jagger – expressions, actions and opinions

·      Part 7: The Tenth Sense – from sight and hearing to hunger and pain

The One Thousand Dollar Man

While plotting is vital to any story, characterization is also extremely important. It doesn’t matter if it is a plot-driven story or a character-driven story; the character-driven story merely has the character driving the plot.

Many writers map out their characters before they start writing, while others wait to meet their characters on the page. However it works best for you, the words you write to describe them should be as rich as your characters.

Dynamic character creation is vital to storytelling. If your characters are forgettable, two-dimensional or flat, no reader will care what happens to them.

If they’re dynamic and real—someone you would want to meet, be friends with, go on vacation with—they will linger in your mind long after the final page is turned.

Your characters should seem like flesh and blood people with attributes and characteristics of everyday people. They should be believable and real, very much like your neighbors, co-workers and the Starbucks barista.

The more details you provide—the more interesting and real the character becomes to you—the better you can get that character to come alive for your audience.

While some descriptions need to be provided in your narrative, those traits that can be shown through action or dialogue will be stronger and stay longer with the reader. The more dynamic your descriptions, the more unforgettable the character.

Make your reader want to know your characters better. Let them see peeks and hints of traits through their actions or dialogue. What doesn’t flow into those categories can be fleshed out in narrative. And sprinkle those descriptions, don’t pour. Don’t give them so much detail that the reader can’t take some liberties in their imaginations.

General

Good or bad, beautiful or ugly, big or small, short or tall, heavy or thin, strong or weak.

All of these words are subjective; each reader will interpret them differently. Beauty to one reader will be ugly to another. Using more descriptive words lets the reader nail down what you mean.

People are not good or bad, they are degrees and combinations of each. Bad means something quite different than evil or cruel or selfish or just mischievous; but even villains can be considerate or kind in certain situations, making them not all bad.

And your hero isn’t merely good, they are courageous or sympathetic or wise or generous. But they can also be rude or aggressive in the right situation, so not all good.

Giving your characters only good or bad traits limits the scope of the story you can tell. It can make them two-dimensional and not relatable or interesting.

Use your words! You know tons of them, you’ve just forgotten you know them. The Epic Lab of Oddities is meant to give you some alternatives to spark some of your own ideas.

So get to creating your creatures or darlings, I have plenty of material for you. It’s your lab, have fun!