Where to Find the Characters

The old injunction, "Look into thine own heart and write," may always be followed with profit. Without transforming himself into his characters, the writer can imagine his own reactions to the stimulus of different situations, can fit himself — while retaining his own per¬sonality — into the time, the place, and the incident, so perfectly as to be aware of what he would feel and think and do in the circumstances. Then, if he is not able to perform so simple a feat as to turn himself inside out and write himself up, be had better adopt some profession whose first pre-requisite is not creative imagination.
Persons whom the writer knows in daily life may serve as models, or suggestions, for the characters in his story. Their dialect may or may not be reproduced; the condi¬tions of their lives, liberties, and pursuit of happiness may lv,•1 altered: the mannerisms of one may be grafted on the personality of another — but a mental or an actual note¬book should be kept to preserve their characteristics for future fictional use. The best characterization is not a matter of portraiture, of slavish and faithful copying and reproduction of traits in one's self or others. The author's models must be molded and re-created by his own fancy. Then he must put himself into them.
Sometimes a character will spring into the mind, full- grown, spontaneously generated to fit some dramatic incident — the right one in the right place — and to the writer such a character will have a reality as unquestion¬able as his own existence. But oftener it must be built up with patient care.
Category:Character