Suggestions for the question of which comes first: character or story?

Asking some authors or even publishers, "Which do I start with: the story or the characters?" Can be like asking, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" Well, this is one time, when I'll say that characters, the central meat of the story, should come first.

The best start to any story in particular comes from its characters. For that purpose, I'm going to recommend the book that's turned my character descriptions from vague comic-book-like script descriptions to real, believable characters. That book isThe writer's digest sourcebook for building believable characters by Marc McCutcheon. I found it at the local library and fell in love with it's character thesaurus. Its character questionnaire is the perfect place to start building characters. The book offers descriptive words, body language, names, clothing styles and a whole mess of great stuff for describing characters. I'd happily recommend it for any young author like myself or even a seasoned author. My character descriptions were good, but this book makes them so much better.

I'm not just writing a book review, mind you, I'm saying this book could take a good, determined author to the next level and help them get published, provided they do all the necessary legwork along the way. Don't think this book will get you an instant publishing contract - that's far from the truth. It will, however, help you improve your character descriptions which depends solely on you and help you get your foot in the door.

This book could be a great help to authors who have trouble describing characters.It could be the difference between saying, "I have two fire bellied toads" and "I have two clever, sneaky, crocodile-like toads with brown and black spots on their bumpy backs and red and black bellies living right behind my computer in a 10 gallon tank that's all-aquatic and has a floating island." The second description is better, isn't it?

Building believable characters has become my writing bible of sorts. It's not super thick, but as the saying goes, "Don't jugde a book by its cover." It's small and very mighty and very worth its weight in gold as far as I'm concerned.