Excerpt from Creating Characters Kids Will Love by Elaine Marie Alphin

Story characters can come to life for the child who reads about them.

Remember wanting to go on escapades with Pippi Longstockings? longing to escape down the river with Huck Finn? clutching your notebook and yearning to find out everything about the people you saw, like Harriet the Spy? These characters became your friends. And you want your characters to befriend the children who read your book or story.

But where do these characters come from? If you sit down and start to write, who will you write about?

Potential story characters are all around you. You see them walking to school; you see them shopping in the mall; you see them biking or skating down your street. If you close your eyes, you see them in your memory-the child you once were, the friends you remember, the children you've raised, or the children you've known. Believable characters are born from real people and revealed to readers through your writer's craft.

When you do this well, your reader will identify with your main character, and she will feel that character's fear and elation as she struggles to succeed in the book. As the characters in your story grow and change, the reader will share that growth. In order to make this magic happen, you need to believe in the characters whose story you're writing. You need to know them intimately. And you need to show them to your reader.

The first step in bringing a character to life is deciding what the character will do in your story. Characters are rarely passive; they take action. And the reader, as well as the other characters in the story, forms an impression of this character based on his actions. When you meets a new kid for the first time, you pay attention to what the newcomer does. If the new boy runs screaming to the teacher when he gets tripped in the school yard, you label him a crybaby. If the new girl shows off her rows of pierced earrings and her spiked hair and her ticket stubs and backstage passes from the hottest rock star who only played New York and Los Angeles, you know she's a braggart, and you wonder if she's really telling the truth. These actions reveal the personality behind them.

When you write a story, you probably have an idea of how the plot will develop, but you're still getting to know your characters. Suppose you decide to write about a boy sneaking out of a locked house to meet a friend-he'll have to climb out of the window and down the roof. At this stage, you as the writer are moving your character around, like a playing piece on the vast gameboard of your plot. You're directing the action. If you leave it at that, however, you'll end up with a cardboard character who's about as believable as a rook in a chess game. In order to make that boy believable, you need to look inside of him, and make him want to take those actions.

After you direct the larger action of the story, plan out what specific actions your character will take in order to develop the plot. Now transform your role from director to actor. Ask yourself how your character will perform these actions - with the skill of a third grader tying his shoes, or with the hesitancy of a kindergartner writing his name on the blackboard? If your main character has to climb down a roof, how will he do it? First think about the series of actions needed to climb down a roof, from opening the window to climbing through and across the roof's surface. As you sit at your keyboard, move your arms and legs, stretching them as you imagine you might if you were climbing. Make note of these actions.

In order to show your character's actions in the context of his personality, you'll have to know some background about him. Ask yourself questions in order to find out what experience he's had. Has he climbed down a roof before, or is this the first time? Is he scared of heights, or does he revel in them? Then think about his motivation - why is he climbing down this roof? Why is it so important to him to meet that friend? Is he climbing down the roof because he likes the idea of taking a risk? Does he want to see what it will feel like? What's at stake - what will happen if he doesn't succeed? Is his reason compelling? If not, will he decide partway through that he's had enough and he's turning back?

Read the Pros
1. Read the opening chapters of Chaim Potok's My Name is Asher Lev. Asher is a small child who will grow up to be a great artist. See how he describes the people around him, particularly his parents, solely in terms of their actions. Potok doesn't tell the reader the conclusions Asher will later draw from these observations; he just shows the actions and lets the reader bring Asher's parents into focus as Asher does.
2. Read Chapter 2 in Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt. See how much Voigt shows the reader about Dicey's brothers and sister though their actions.

Try it Yourself
1. Write your own scene of a character climbing down a roof. Make the character a ten-year-old boy doing it on a dare from his friends. Then try it again, making it a fourteen-year-old girl climbing down her roof while her room is on fire. Choose another reason why a youngster of any age might climb down that roof, then let him or her make the climb.
2. Write a conversation between two characters without any tag lines or action. Choose a particular situation: two boys waiting to be picked for soccer teams, a small child talking with an older sibling, two girls shopping at the mall.
3. Now write the same conversation, choosing one character to be your main character, and adding in that character's thoughts and feelings.
4. Rewrite the scene again, using the main character's thoughts and feelings along with the dialogue, and add in the action. Show each character as he or she moves or gestures. Use facial expressions to reflect their feelings. Your characters are the sum of what they do, what they think, what they feel, and what they say.

Copyright ©2000 by Elaine Marie Alphin