Narrative Basics Lesson 1: Characters

We’ll be looking at ways to describe characters.

You can describe people or animals around you, use your imagination or memory, or use an image (like this one) for inspiration.

All the inspiration images in this lesson, including the ones we used to inspire our examples, come from an amazing Finnish illustrator called Teemu Juhani, who does these kind of naive but rich character portraits.

If you use this image, look carefully at all the details, but don’t be limited by what you see. When you’re writing, add whatever details you like from your own memory and imagination.

Let’s get started.