You must Prepare and Learn First

Yes, prepare and learn. To write well, you need examples, many examples, of what's out there. Books, manuscripts, short stories, everything. So I recommend a few things to do before you actually start writing and creating characters.

1. Read- Yes, it's a simple task, but a important one. To create a character, you have to know your backrounds, races, a races characteristics, what they look like and such. Also, you have to see how to describe things, how a character's personality effects everything. So before you write, you must learn. I reccommend the following books to read, as to get a idea of what your dealing with:

A Tolkien Bestiary- I'm not sure of the author, but it explains all the fantasy races in detail, and with wonderful black and white hand drawn pictures. It's a really good book, on the old side i might add also, and a tad lengthy, but a good book to read non the less.

The Harry Potter Series- Oh dont laugh, these books are very well written. JK Rowling took fantasy and blended it with reality, while not having details clash. A world were fantasy and reality blend and coincide with eachother. Very good books to start. They also show very good representations of character personality, and how it can change with age. wonderful books overall.

Any Tolkien Novel- His descriptions are impeccable, it creates a picture in your mind of what you're reading, very good books to learn from.

2. Play- Yea, play. Video games or the old D and D board game. to get a feel for the world your characters live in. The more you can relate to it, the more you can describe it. I started out playing Doom, WOW, and Everquest. They're fun, easy to play, and a good learning tool.

For now, do those, and you'll be on your way to character creation nirvana!




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