Coming up with ideas for characters is one of the most invigorating and creative processes I enjoy. There’s such a vastness to the human personality pool that sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint what kind of characteristics I want my protagonist and secondary characters to embody. Having a basic plot is a huge help and so does having named the characters (more on that in a future post); however one extra tool I love to use is figuring out which actors I would love to see play my characters if ever there was a movie made based on my book.

I really enjoy movies, and I really hope that one day my book is made into a movie. So, you never know!

Here’s who I’ve chosen for my main characters:

Evelyn Richardson- Emmy Rossum

Carl Richardson- Richard Armitage

Gerald McCrae- Gerard Butler

Once I’ve chosen the actors, I think about their body of work and pull snippets of characteristics from the different characters that they’ve played. Somehow I incorporate what I’ve thought about into my original ideas and voila! It’s done. This is one little trick that I love to use! What do you do to help round out your characters? Do you have some unique tool you use?