Creating a Fantasy Character

Creating a fantasy character involves your imagination, a creative landscape, a video game or a good author. Fantasy characters are important subjects of artists of all types. Fantasy characters can come from all walks of life. They can be products of classical imagery, urban legend or modern sensibilities.

Angels are popular fantasy characters in modern fiction.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a fantasy character created straight from Joss Whedon’s imagination. In interviews, Whedon described the creative process as imagining the blonde victim in all the horror movies being able to turn around kick the monster’s butt. The manifestation of his imagination inspired a generation.

Authors like Patricia Briggs, Kelley Armstrong and Kevin Anderson rely on their imaginations to create fantasy characters that others can enjoy. In modern fantasy, the most popular characters are elves, angels, demons, werewolves and vampires.

Modern writers rely heavily on Tolkien’s imagery when creating an elf. Elves come in a variety of forms from high to wood to dark. Dark elves or drow are often related to evil. They live in darker places; have dark skin and pale white hair. In World of Warcraft, the Night Elves are not evil. They are more closely related to the wood elves. Their cousins, the blood elves are twisted by their magic and turned to darker pursuits to survive.

The common thread of all elves is that they are creatures of magic. They may be connected to the fairy courts as they are in Laurel K. Hamilton’s books or in Jim Butcher’s. Elves are most often portrayed with arched ears. In Star Trek, Spock’s Vulcan ears are a nod to Elven origins and the mysteries of logic rather than magic.

Angels are incredibly popular in urban fantasy and paranormal romance. Author Nalini Singh has created a romantic hero of the angel Gabriel while Thomas E. Sniegoski embraces the hosts of angels in the war of Heaven on Earth with his nourish detective novels featuring Remy Chandler. Creatures of Heaven, angels are depicted as obedient warriors with no free will. They are the servants of God and do His work without question.

Demons are either darkly twisted humans or fallen angels. Most often, however, fallen angels are just that: fallen. They are not described as demons. Eric Kripke, the creative mind behind Supernatural uses angels, demons and other creatures of fantasy and lore in his show about two brothers, fantasy characters in their own right.

Ultimately, all fantasy characters must have an element of realism. They reflect a facet of humanity, even if that facet is alien in concept. Angels are comparatively beautiful, but their lack of free will and compassion makes them alien indeed. In contrast, demons are often the very image of emotion - wild, primitive and unrestrained.

To make a fantasy character that is believable, you have to ground the character’s human traits in such a way that others can empathize with it. In fantasy artwork, for example, the artist may use the eyes to convey a deeply held human emotion amidst an alien landscape or an utterly human gesture that sparks a memory.

Creating a fantasy character begins with an idea, a simple what if, but delves deeply into the human psyche inspiring emotion as well as imagination.

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