Story people should portray someone who could be your grandmother, the old man next door, an
old teacher or a neighbor, in other words, real people, people you would like
to know or personalities that remind you of someone.
This
goes for physical attributes, too. If the heroine thinks of herself as
exquisite and beautiful, she’s probably not someone we’d like to be friends
with. Besides, those are usually point of view issues. A person doesn’t look in
the mirror and think of her own feet as tiny or that her lips are shaped like
rosebuds. More likely, like Stephanie Plum, she looks in the mirror and thinks
her hair looks like a Brillo pad. Let the other characters do the observations
while you’re in their heads.
The
most efficient way to write a walk-on character is to use stereotypes, because
the reader already has an impression. This, of course, depends on the length of
your story and the importance of the character.
