Character Appearance

Morning everyone!

If you’ll recall, when creating settings I like to find pictures online which can be used to form my own fully realistic worlds. Now, there’s no problem with doing the same to create the appearance of your characters. It actually works quite well if you can think of an actor or model who would easily suit the role.

But the process changes drastically when you’re creating a character that is not human, and is not so similar to any creature that comes to mind.  

Step 1: Make a List of All the Things Your Character Will Need to be Able to Do

For the purposes of this exercise, I’ll be creating a character for a story I’m currently writing, called “Cedwig: The People of the Vines”©

Step 2: Male, Female, or Neither.

You should know your story well enough to know whether you want to be writing a male or a female for whichever roles, so I'm not going to go over this in detail. 

(Stick with your gut on this: I’ve had to give characters gender changes before, and it’s a very annoying procedure).

As for my character, Cedwig females are the most powerful, therefore the character must be a female. As the leader of a village, this makes the most sense. 

Step 3: Humanoid, Animal-Like, Mythological Creature, or Extraterrestrial.

This step is a fun one. Depending on your story, you should know by now what type of character you’re creating. If it’s a semi-aquatic creature, you could base it off an angler fish and a basilisk. If it’s extraterrestrial, you get to let your mind run rampant. If it's mythological, I suggest Wikipedia or some such other online resource.

As for my character, she’s a humanoid. I created the Cedwig to be humanoid so that they could be relatable to humans, who are also in the story. If your story doesn’t contain humans, you won’t really have to worry about this element—but you’ll have to make your characters much more believable. 

If your character is a mythological creature, then you've practically finished deciding their appearance (rather, it was decided for you). Congratulations, you won't need to follow the last two steps! Unless, of course, you'd like to tweak things. 

Step 4: Skin, Fur, Scales, Exoskeleton, Etc. 

In answering these, you’ll be able to decide on the skin color of your character (or fur/scale/exoskeleton/feather/etc. color, depending on your story type). Obviously, if your character lives underwater, they should have scales of some sort.

My character is tied to a forest setting, so she needs to appear as though she belongs there: therefore, she has deep tan human-like skin, with dark spots for camouflage. If your character is one who is not tied to a particular setting, you have a lot more freedom here. Think about the things you want them to be doing, where you want them to be going. Don’t give them a skin color that clashes greatly with the colors of the settings they’ll mostly be seen in.

 Step 5: Features.

This is absolutely my favorite part. Obviously, humanoids don’t look exactly like humans, and extraterrestrials look practically nothing like them—so what do they look like?

Use your imagination here.

Does it have tentacles? How many legs? What color are its eyes (don’t let them clash with the skin tone)? For that matter, does it even have eyes? What does their hair look like, if they have any?

My character has a prehensile tail to help her climb through the trees. She has long legs, to assist with the running I mentioned earlier. She has a big mouth, therefore a bright smile. Her teeth are sharply pointed (that tells readers that she at least has the potential to be a predator). Instead of hair, she has vines (by including this, the reader begins to understand that though she isn’t human, she isn’t entirely animal either: she’s partly plant). She is abnormally tall, also adding to that plant-like notion. Her nostrils are actually deep slats where a human nose would be, three on either side of her face (these look something like gills, which illustrate that the character could, perhaps, breathe underwater).

And you’re done! The basis of your character is complete. Of course, you’ll still have to name them, and you’ll have to decide on their personality… But we’ll get to those in the coming weeks.

Thanks for reading! 

{Rani Amber}