So last Article I ended suggesting that I was going to be thinking about Characters.

Villain’s you might look to old school Media Empires, along with Financial Guru’s or indeed modern Internet Types if set in the present day.

If you are creating a historical fiction, then you would probably take your modern day characteristics and impose them on some ancient setting, maybe relabelling them as Religious, Royal or Political Figures. Likewise for Future based fiction, you would still probably take modern day characteristics and impose them on future settings.  Both instances allow for differing powers of attributes & values ancient allows for possible witchcraft & sorcery (for example) whilst future might allow for science and genetically superior beings or androids etc.

What of a hero? Superhero? Sports Star? Former Military?

Yes, in many ways you can simplify your efforts, by investigating current people as your sort of baseline, and then reinventing them for your fiction, whereby some grain of truth or familiarity (or otherwise) works its way into some shape & form of relatability, in the minds of your audience.

Sidekick: experts, pseudo-scientists, people seeking redemption?

Politicians

Journalists

So whilst I have selected mostly male characters here, I would do exactly the same research for females, and you simply transition the various traits, attributes, values and so on, for female characters and again, possibly transition to a historical or future time and place of your own choosing, depending on where & when you are setting your story.

There are of course other characters that you might want to consider such-as henchmen & love interests, though if you select some small group of primary protagonists, that you provide greater story & focus too, you can often find that secondary characters and background character requirements, make themselves obvious as you progress in your design.

The further you investigate such things, the more you might actually develop an appreciation for those every-man or every-woman idea’s I have written about on occasion, in the sense that many of us have shared history of having been entertained via similar historical storytelling mediums – whether books, stage plays, radio, film, TV and internet and so on.  Hence so many coming to the conclusion that it can be better to be the hero of your own story (within reason) than a background character in someone else’s – although of course when you think about these things, you come to see that everyone external to your own mind and body (inc. thoughts, feelings, behaviours etc.) is background to your own story, in the same way as you are background to theirs.

Conflict of course can arise, when people feel they are being miscast, though we all have the choice & option, as to whether to engage, become involved, debate etc. or where we prefer to focus our own thoughts feelings and attention.

So that is a basic set of Principle Characters to think further upon.

Thank you for reading, God Bless and be Well!