How to Create Your Own Literature Character Team
- 1). Decide on a purpose for your team. A team dedicated to solving mysteries will require much different characters than a team which has to defeat a violent secret society. Deciding what your literary character team is doing will make it easier to select characters based on their attributes.
- 2). Pick public domain characters. Fan fiction websites are routinely served with cease and desist orders when copyright holders disapprove of content. If you want anyone to read what you've written, it's better to save yourself some headaches later and pick characters that aren't owned by anyone. The list of characters in public domain is long and includes such iconic figures as Huckleberry Finn and Sherlock Holmes.
- 3). Balance your team. Your team may need two strong men, but it definitely doesn't need five. Similarly, a team that has nothing but brains may be lacking in areas like diplomacy and networking. Remember that to make your story interesting, you'll need to have your team encounter challenges. Select characters with a variety of attributes so that you can vary the hurdles they must overcome.
- 4). Select personalities that create dramatic tension. If you pick characters who would naturally get along with one another all the time, you're cutting off a key place for the creation of dramatic tension. The fight against the external enemy is only part of the story. The other part is the rivalries that exist within the group. Pick characters who will sometimes--or always--rub one another the wrong way.
- 5). Get to know your characters. Once you've selected characters, become as familiar with them as you can. Your readers will allow for some amount of "reimagining." But remember that there's a corpus of work that you have to square with. It's alright to emphasize Sherlock Holmes' drug abuse in your story to give a different take on the character, but you should not invent new traits out of whole cloth.
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