Characters as Reflections of God

I have started this sentence multiple times and have yet to come up with something better to start the day with. Now I just hesitated on how to phrase the end of that sentence. Oh well.

I am finally beginning to learn how to edit a book better. Granted, it’s only page 2, but at least I have dared to sit down and finally start to change it for the better.

One of the most difficult parts for me to wrestle with, and an aspect that will take time to develop, is the characters. Growing up reading Enid Blyton stories, I don’t think I had the best foundation when it came to strong, well-rounded characters. However, I am also someone who has formed a habit of creating characters based on what I have observed in real life. Is this bad or is this good? Do any of you have ways you form characters?

When writing and marking up the section when one of my current project’s characters goes on an adventure by himself, I actually found that he was the most free to be his own character because I knew the real person he’s based on so little. I was freer to make him into a person of my mind. And this made writing and reading him more fun and lively than any of the other characters so far.

One way of thinking of characters I came across recently was through an article by a Christian arguing against Buddhism. The author emphasized the personhood of God as one factor that makes Christianity appealing. In fact, our characters are informed by His . . . and this can be the other way around, too, for better or for worse. Writers can perhaps use this understanding for their own creations, and some do create characters as an expression of different sides of themselves, as with Ivanna Rhodes, whose book Chosen Ones I helped to edit this year. This is food for thought, which I have yet to understand better myself.