How To Create Unique Characters For Your Erotic Writing
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The way to create unique characters that are also realistic is to meet, know, and understand real people. This goes from aliens from outerspace to demons summoned to Earth, to the guy next store. If you want them to feel real to your reader, you need to give them traits of real people. Sounds simple unless you’re an introvert, then it sounds terrifying as fuck. Hi, I’m an introvert, btw. When I write aggressive characters, it’s a stretch on my personality. But I bet when you read them, like in:
you can’t tell. I may be an introvert, but I also have a love of people and their many ways (even if I prefer them to not crowd me.)
Maybe you have a market of very educated, refined, academic women you want to tap with your erotic writing while comparing vaginas to flowers and talking about the social political repercussions of prostitutes. Try writing in their voice. Women that love sports, those tomboy types—I’m a tomboy but not a watching sports type unless I’m staring at some nice ass—try writing in the voice of the players they’re emulating, using the slang thrown around in their particular sport. Techy nerds? Go hang out in a few chatrooms and listen to some condescending know-it-all get defensive and tell you how much smarter they are than everyone else because they can code. Don’t bother trying; you can’t impress them.
Observe from life. If you want to have real characters with real reactions, you need to see how real people react. TV doesn’t count. TV people are fake people, especially sitcom people. The ones that never go to work but can afford the huge apartment in the middle of the city while getting into all sorts of hijinks. Not real. And if they’re not real, and they don’t feel real, your reader might not actually care what the hell happens to them in your story. Why? Because your reader is real and they want to relate to someone like them.
How to Create Unique Characters? Find them.
I know a lot of actual tech nerds and they’re socially fucked in their own special way because, like those academic types, they feel the need to prove their intelligence against their bitchy peers and don’t know how to shut it off around anyone else. Don’t ever say the word idiot around either of these groups unless you want to listen to a defensive bitch rant. If I have to hear another rant about a fucking movie because nerd A is determined to convince nerd B that only one can be right—opinion based completely—probably going to stab all my boyfriend’s friends, boyfriend included, at that. I listened to a conversation of two young, beautiful female academics talking in a restaurant about the most boring shit about a dead language and just how relevant it was, neither of them realizing their existence was a niche so small, most people would think they were actual two-dimensional characters in a story only the author would enjoy.
Let’s see… The sports types, also dealing with inferiority complexes on the intelligent front when faced with the academic types, get defensive, brutish, withdrawn and condescending in their own way to retaliate for being put in the stupid box because they didn’t focus on stuffing their head with useless shit their entire lives. These types are usually a pack mentality, strength and confidence in numbers, and when singled out outside of their comfort zone, defensive. Unlike the loner who is used to not having anyone in their life understand them, and tends to be more consistent in and out of group settings—but not necessarily in a way that’s socially acceptable in those settings.
Seriously, you want to piss someone off on the Internet? Indicate they’re an idiot. You can be as subtle as you like, or blatantly assholic. People are so isolated and defensive on social media, most of them looking for a fight while they’re there because they have no way to feed their drama fix, all while fighting their own internal insecurity of feeling lost in the shuffle. They know they have something to offer the world, but there are a million other people online, and those other people are either louder, meaner, or just luckier to get the nice attention. So when their intelligence comes into question, they flip. And hey, no consequences for their actions because they’re on the internet, so they just go over the top, snarky bitch rant. How easy would it be to write a bullying story in an online setting with natural human reactions like that? So easy. The dehumanization the Internet naturally pushes people towards on a daily basis offers a lot of dark twisted possibilities.
Ask a starving artist why they never took a business class and they’ll tell you how much money destroys the soul while secretly wishing they had enough to pay the bills and get out of working foodservice or retail. The fun chick that knows everyone, goes to every party, takes every drug offered and fucks whoever’s looking good enough? Dated her and she was bi, manic depressive, self-medicating, running from some shit in her life she couldn’t face and had no actual support, just superficial acquaintances and rich parents that were at the end of their patience. Hot little boi lesbian that’s all confidence but breaks out with a horrible temper, bursts into tears and cuts herself? Raped, abuse victim turned abuser, time in prison, and can’t face that she can’t get her shit together even though it’s all set out in front of her and is supposed to be so easy. Quiet little goth that is ever watching and never says a word? The possibilities are endless of what fucked that one up and how they’re going to act once they start talking. Maybe, heaven help, they’re actually normal.
Bestbuddy girls, both dark skinned, one Indian the other from South America that seem to have their shit together and so happy with life? South America tried to kill herself by jumping in front of a bus while pregnant, while India keeps stringing a boy along she’s never going to go out with because she likes his obsessive attention. Oh, and you’re not cool enough to hang out with them unless you speak a second language fluently and have great facial bone structure—I had the face, not the language skills. Cute boy you see on the bus to college everyday that seems perfectly fine until you start talking and he smiles and you realize he’s filed all his teeth into sharp points? No clue, but he wanted to tell me all about his girlfriend before I got creeped out enough to subtly shut it down. Alcoholic, abusive father that beats his children when they get out of line? My dad had PTSD from Vietnam, was highly intelligent yet made all the wrong decisions with no one to blame but himself—the last person he actually blamed—was desperate for self control while losing it every time his kids didn’t act like miniature adults.
You meet enough people, watch them interact, get to know them on a human level, and you can use that for great character building, plot points and tension. People are damn fascinating and diverse and so beautiful in their flaws. I love flawed people so much more than those unlived types, even if most I keep at arms length or further because I don’t want their destructive behavior to take me down with them. Even if what drives us as individuals might differ, it still tends to be predictable in the self-destructive or positive end results. But that involves getting into people’s heads and using their voice in your story. Which means being flexible as a writer and growing, and having some fun and changing your voice.
Do it! It’s totally worth the work. You can live a million lives if you just learn to write a million characters. And believe me, people like to tell their story. They want someone to listen to them, to know them as they’re figuring their shit out. I have guys talking to me at the city bus stop; one did time in prison over stupid shit who’s looking to write a book. Another got his ass handed to him when mugged, actually dead in the snow when found by the cops. A couple rushing to get to a wedding, not theirs, the man getting pissed off at me because I didn’t hold the bus because I didn’t hear him until the loud thing had pulled away, but he apologized after his hour rant of us all waiting in the cold. Hustler been around the country showed me pictures of huge found art statutes, another hustler working in the music biz promoting rappers while talking about being worried about being jumped cus he’s white.
I don’t drink, don’t do the bar scene or that shit, but if you do, I bet you’ll find a million stories because people fucking talk when they’re buzzed. People. Beautiful, fucked up people. Love em. When you can get in the head of a stranger, your characters can start coming alive in ways they never could before. And really, we can all do it.
Nature vs Nurture. I’ve been in foster care, I know the life I could have grown up in with my biological family and I know the life I ended up in until my adoptive parents died. Both built me into who I am, and every experience I have keeps building me. If I want to write through the eyes of a rich socialite even though I’ve never lived that life, I get into the character’s head looking at potential bubbles of experience.
Rough Ex. The automatic acceptance of having anything you want, not having to work for it (all kids struggle with no,) things come easy, it’s expected. When it’s not easy, that’s damn confusing and frustrating. Why can’t they have ___? Because it effects that guy over there. Well who the fuck cares about that guy over there, I have a right to ___. Learned behavior following its course. Not always intentionally malicious, just people playing out the course laid before them.
The longer they’re in their bubble of experience, the more likely they’ll be predictable in that experience. Take them out of the bubble and watch them freak, react, change and grow. Best part, imo. Thats why you have a million stories of people growing up. They left the bubble of home and now they’re freaking at the big world and who they are in it. Or changing places stories. They couldn’t appreciate what they saw every day, but could appreciate a new experience. Then when they look back, they can truly see the worth of what they had. First time stories are popular for a reason.
People that have everything take it for granted, especially if they didn’t have to do anything to get it. People that have lost big, fought tooth and nail for everything, they appreciate more and then, eventually, they might forget because we can’t live in an epiphany every moment of our lives. But at least they had one. Beautiful stuff. Find it. Find some people to love and then write a new character.
Then make them have sex because, you know, it’s an erotica blog.
