forum I'm basing my characters off of PJO and Lunar Chronicles characters. Any ideas?
Started by @ravens
tune

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SolarisBlond

Girl names: Kiara, Violet, Darby, Grace, Esme, Trinity
Boy names: Hunter, Colin, Elijah, Nayland, Joaquin, Christian
Places: Austin Texas, West Coast USA, Africa, England

Elle F. Wade

You don't want your characters to be hollow copies. Take a moment and think about those books and their characters. Why do you want your characters to be based on these other characters? What characters do you like specifically in those works? What exactly do you like about the characters?

If you like that a character perseveres in the face of uncertainty, keep that trait. If you like that a character is sassy, keep that trait. If you like that a character is morally ambiguous, keep that trait. Put those traits all in a list and pick a couple per character. Let them inspire you. Don't try to borrow a character and change their hair and name.

@ravens

Thanks y'all! I'm not looking for names or references (etc.) so much as traits. Like, for example, Percy's (or Leo's) sarcasm or Cinder's bravery or Iko's… Well. Her fangirliness, would you call it? Although names would be appreciated. (I can't think of names whatsoever.)

This novel is going to be set in the future. Not as far as the Lunar Chronicles, but maybe a century or two. I don't want places and cultures to be that different from how they are now. So…. yeah. Thanks for your help!

@Natasha

Well, what is your story about? I will be able to help you more if I know the general idea of what you are aiming for. For example, Is there going to be a group of teens that are friends(or maybe they don't know each other.) that have to stop a threat? (Like Gaea or Voldemort) Is there someone who they need to save, or stop, or something? Also where does it take place?

@ravens

My story is slightly similar to Marissa Meyer's novel Renegades, because there are people with powers (the Rarities) and people without them (the Ungifteds). Most of the main characters are based off of my friends and I, but there are some based off of characters that already exist. (Obviously.)
I haven't figured out where it happens, but it's somewhere in the United States. Also, when the story starts, it's set in 2068. (Which is only 50 years in the future, so hopefully it isn't that different than it is today.)
So anyway, these people are teenagers and they are learning how to control their gifts, because the average Rarity receives their gift at age 10. (So they don't burn/flood the world as toddlers, you know?)
But one night, the character based on me (Autumn) dreams about her best friend, her cousin, and somebody else who I don't know yet are trapped in a huge lake at the top of a mountain. (These people have been missing for months, and this is the first clue as to where they've gone.) When she wakes up, she runs to tell her family, but nobody believes her. (Everyone thinks the missing people are dead, and they've given up on the search.)
I haven't quite figured out the rest, but that's the main gist of it. I will try to update the copy of the story for Notebook.ai (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qUmDsYh_lon3tpclzzjUd5j313G0rrpJh4LpGA1HQv8/edit) weekly –because I have two and my personal copy has random things written all over it– but I probably won't get around to it very often.
um yeah that's it so far :)

@FlowersForBrains

A friend of mine told me to imagine yourself in a room with your character, and start asking them questions, first very impersonal ones like whats your favorite color, but then digging deeper and asking questions like who would you die for and imagine the character reacting to the questions. I usually ask their greatest fear and things like that because those are the questions that get the biggest reactions to me. Hope this helps! Creating believable and alive characters feels impossible.