How To Become a Fantasy Writer: Meeting your Characters

As in any narrative, the characters are the vehicles for the words and actions that we want to introduce into our story. It is for this reason that we must know them well!

On many sites you can find the old tactic of interviewing your characters. However, they end up being quite repetitive.

Personally, I ended up adopting a similar technique, but it gives me more freedom and ends up working on the visualization of scenes. I speak, of course, of the noble art of drinking with them!

Nightlife, more than recreational, is a human social act, and that's where you really get to know the people around you these days.

When you go out at night, the characters you find there are endless.

There are the kind of people who pick you up at your house and accompany you to the agreed place and there are those who go there alone without telling anything to anyone.

There is the type of person who gets beer for everyone and another who spends the night drinking things paid by others.

There's the type of person who just wants to hook up (and who is successful and doesn't brag) and the one (the so-called microwave) who talks to all the girls, but it is others who end up taking them home.

There's the drunk, the dealer, the saint, the pickpocket and the wrestler. There's the intrigue girl, the sly, the choir girl, the slut and the party queen.

And everyone knows each other through an ever-changing network of interpersonal relationships!

So choose your poison and head out into the night with your characters!

All kinds of stereotypes, tropes and personalities appear in this space. Take the opportunity to write down the characters that interest you and that you would like to know more about. You can develop them later with the help of the cheat sheet that accompanies this article.

From the sentences above, I already gave you the Best Friend, the Lone Wolf, the Altruist and the Freeloader. However, I don't want to focus on any of them.
I want to talk about narrative importance and, for that, I want to highlight 3 characters to which you should pay special attention.

Antagonist

It is imperative that you first know the antagonist of your narrative. Often called a "Villain", without this character your story will be static and uninteresting. The Protagonist will be affected by the Antagonist's actions, which will catapult him into the midst of your narrative and your world. This one makes things happen.

It is therefore advisable to find out, at least, 3 things about him, which I think are essential: Who, Motivation and Why now?.

Who: The Antagonist can wear different skins like the Dark Lord, the Dragon (US TV term), the Traitor or simply the Villain. It is important to know who he is and where he came from. What experiences made him who he is today, at the beginning of your narrative.

Motivation: Choose what motivates your character's actions. Over the ages, authors have used any and all reasons, such as revolt, revenge, love, power, ambition or the cold beverage that the Protagonist's grandfather offered him 100 years ago and left him with a sore throat. Try to understand what makes him/her so motivated...

Why now?: The question speaks for itself. Why did the Antagonist only decide to act now? Perhaps because he wanted to move up the army's chain of command or increase his power in the court of a foreign King. He might even have waited for everyone to forget about him or heal his throat.

Examples to study:
Sauron or Melkor/Morgoth (Lord of the Rings/Silmarillion)
Zuko (Avatar: The Last Airbender)
Joker (Batman)
Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs)
Darth Vader (Star Wars)

Try to understand what makes these examples so memorable.

Protagonist

The Protagonist, or Main Character, is who our narrative follows as well as the POV (Point of View) character, through which we look at the different scenes to develop, either through the character's eyes or over his shoulder.
(There are more POV's but in Fantasy these are the most used)

I would like to point out that a narrative can have more than one Protagonist.

This character is the one that makes our narrative move forward, through his adventures, misadventures, obstacles and personal dilemmas, and that's why we follow and see a physical and mental growth in the course of our story.

There are many types of protagonists but in Fantasy there is a trope that is often used for this character: the Farm Boy; and rightly so. With this character we can introduce the reader to the World, the Magic System and the Plot, while explaining them to the character itself. In most of these cases, the protagonist is an orphan or becomes one during the First Act, which leaves him with no substantial ties to his homeland.

Examples to study:
Frodo/Bilbo (Lord of the Rings/Hobbit)
Aang (Avatar: The Last Airbender)
Bruce Wayne/Batman
Harry Potter
Luke Skywalker (Star Wars)

As you can see, the more memorable the Antagonist is, the more the Protagonist stands out as well. Try to create a symbiosis between the two.

Mentor

Although in Fantasy/Sci-Fi there is a great tendency to attribute an old hermit to the farm boy as a mentor, which is used to dump information, we can still find some good examples of the Mentor's character.

The Mentor doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't have to be on the right side of the narrative conflict, or even serve as plot armor for the Protagonist. It can happen, and bad Mentors tick all those boxes, but good examples always have something that reminds us that they are "human" and that they also make mistakes.

Gandalf doesn't want to be tempted with the possibility of having the One Ring, Dumbledore has committed horrendous crimes, including against his own family, and Uncle Iroh was one of the main Generals responsible for the deaths of thousands of people, during the Fire Nation Invasion. However, that doesn't mean they are bad people. Just that they are people and that they make their own mistakes.

Dumbledore was Harry Potter's Mentor.

Obi-Wan was Darth Vader's Mentor.

Iroh was Zuko's Mentor.

Give some thought to these three variations of the Mentor and you will see three versions that are very useful for your narrative:

Good but Imperfect Mentor helps Good Protagonist.

Good Mentor helps Good Protagonist who becomes Bad Antagonist.

Good Mentor on the Bad side helps Bad Antagonist who becomes Good.

Examples to study:
Gandalf (Lord of the Rings/Hobbit)
Uncle Iroh (Avatar: The Last Airbender)
Alfred Pennyworth (Batman)
Dumbledore (Harry Potter)
Obi-Wan Kenobi (Star Wars)

If you think about these 3 types of characters and frame them in your story in a structured way, you will see that you have a good basis for your entire plot, as the important thing for the reader is to feel that the characters they are reading are "people" like him/her, and it is that literary empathy that leads us to read more and more fantasy books. So that we can escape our world and, at the same time, connect with people who are going through problems similar to ours.

Conclusion? Get drunk with your imaginary friends and you will have rich and interesting characters for your books.

Want a cheatsheet to create your own characters? Click here and download it now.

Now, just go write...