Are you a writer struggling to develop a character? Well, there are several ways you can develop a character. You can look up the different sixteen personality types and base your character on people you know. I tend to instinctively base my characters on real people, and today I will tell you why it is one of the best ways to create characters. After all, who doesn’t want realistic characters that feel like people?

Perks of Basing Your Characters on Real People

You will know your characters well.

A perk of basing your character on a combination of real people you know very well is that you will know your character instinctively and deeply. This will help you decide the actions your characters are going to take. It will avoid the trap of you forcing them to do stuff that is not consistent with who they are, simply for the sake of the plot. Your character’s actions, hence, are going to feel much more natural.

Your characters will not fight your plot.

It will not feel like your character is strong-arming the plot away from you. Instead, you will know your characters well enough to actually know what they will do in a given situation. This is as opposed to creating a situation, wanting a particular outcome, and forcing your character into it.

I will explain further with an example. The current story I’m writing is about a mall where characters get stuck, and one of the characters is based on one of my best friends. This has helped me make realistic dialogue for that character because now I know how this character speaks. It has also helped me have a set of ethics for this character. While the character is not completely based on my friend, the portions of the character, the reassuring nature, for example, which I have taken from my friend, has helped me develop that character into a round character instead of a flat character.

Your Character Will Be a Round Character

A round character is a character who changes when external situations act upon them. A flat character stays the same. A flat character, for example, would be someone who has strong enough ethics and morals that no matter what happens, those ethics and morals, despite being challenged, do not change. While this can be a good thing in your story, most interesting stories have round characters because they are more dynamic. We see them grow, and we can give them character arcs. We need a few flat characters sprinkled throughout the story, obviously, but usually, our protagonist is a round character. And you can get a character that is dynamic- by making a character who is like someone you know!

Your Character Will Be Unique

Now, basing a character on a real person is difficult because you don’t want to rip someone off and put their exact personality in a book. You can do that; however, if said person gets to know, they might not like it. Plus, interesting characters usually tend to have unique traits which are often eccentric. That is by no means a rule, though.

What I tend to do, instead of basing my characters on a single person, is define the role of the character, yes, but also base them on a mix of people. When you’re basing a character off of a few people, you’re not taking traits from just one person. You’re taking traits from a pool of people and mixing them. You get a really unique character. Remember the eccentricities I mentioned before? Now, you have a bunch of them to choose from. Just do not go overboard and make your character accidentally unrealistic.

A Parting Note

All writers have their own ways of developing characters, from basing them on real people to using character archetypes. If you are struggling to create a character, one way you can develop a realistic, dynamic character is by basing it on a few people you know. Another way is to take traits from people and trust your own instincts. Instead of putting a character in a situation where you know the outcome and want the character to act a certain way, no matter how inauthentic it is, you will know your characters well enough to know whether that outcome will be reached by them naturally or not. A good writer knows this and thus makes an effort to get to know their characters. Whether it be through character sheets, basing them on another fictional character, or using real people as templates for characters, most writers who like to plot their stories tend to get to know the key players in said story.

Will you be basing a character on someone you know well? Or will you be trying another method? Let me know in the comments!

Editor- Sangya Nigam

Beta Reader- Divyanshu Ojha

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