The ultimate character crafting guide

I am currently in the middle of the early stages of planning for a novel, and I am sure that I am not alone in finding it to be a rather daunting process. I have always found that planning for any sort of fictional writing is the most successful when I start with my characters. Most often, the finer details of my plot take shape around well-crafted characters that aren't flat on the page but actually resemble a complex human being (or creature, depending on exactly what you're writing!). So, I turned to this book for help, and I sure am glad that I did! Not only is it incredibly well-structured (I basically read it from start to finish, stopping and going as I wrote about the characters I was developing, rather than having to jump around and get lost in the text), but it offers so many insights into character development that I had never even knew existed before! The book presents classic archetypes derived from the traits of the ancient Greek gods, showcasing how these mythic models allow present day writers to branch out from the basics and create characters from all sorts of eras, backgrounds, and worlds. After presenting these archetypes that allow you to have a certain outlined idea of what a fleshed out character could look, act, react, and be like, the structures of the narrative feminine and masculine journey follow. These journeys are presented in steps to be able to help authors see the relative inner and outer journeys that each male and female take within the most classic stories. Obviously, every female character isn't going to have the same descent that brings her towards an inner transformation, nor does every male character have the same exact goal in mind when he sets out on his quest. But these steps act as guides to essentially insert the characters you crafted based off of the archetypes into the basic gender journeys to help you make a more authentic character as a whole, a character that faces real hardships and comes out on the other side with real reactions and scars. This book is also great about inserting plenty of examples of characters and journeys from famous pieces of literature (and even movies and TV shows) to really help you get a feel for what archetypes and journeys look like in action. All of this to say, if you are in any stage of planning for any sort of fictional project, this book is worth your time. It eased a lot of my beginning jitters in terms of taking on such a big project as a novel. And it really is true that characters are what make stories, not the plot -- at least I think so. ;)


The archetypes I ended up using for my five main characters (if you are curious :):

Persephone - The Maiden

Poseidon - The Artist

Hestia - The Mystic

Apollo - The Businessman/Traitor

(Side Character) The Investigator/Shadow

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