Quick Tips On Writing Better Characters

Quick Tips on Writing Better Characters

Here are a handful of quick tips to writing stronger characters and understanding them better as a writer.

Give your characters a title. This can help with worldbuilding and placing your protagonist into the environment. What do others call your characters? The emperor, the bastard son, the Grinch, the chosen one, the class clown, the evil witch, the popular girl, etc.

Use your settings to enhance your character. You can use the locations of your novel to mirror or contrast your character. Do they blend in or stand out? What they focus on can say a lot about them (ex. a fearsome character mishearing things on a dark street, a princess in a ballroom only focused on the exit.)

Know your protagonist's motives and goals before you start writing. What is something they need that fuels their actions throughout the novel? Money, freedom, an artifact, food? To protect their sister at all costs and survive the Hunger Games?

Now that you know their motive, make it more complex. A character's motive can be made more complex by putting them in high-stake situations that force them to make decisions. For example, Katniss wants to protect her sister, a very common motivation. However, present-day conflict makes her to do it in the most extreme way by volunteering in the Hunger Games. The plot forces her to make an extreme choice fueled by her motivation.

Your protagonist should be active. It's okay to have your story's events sometimes happen to your character (this is referred to as the character being passive, ex. a tornado sweeping them away) but your protagonist should be active a majority of the time. This means they should always be making decisions, thinking, reflecting and progressing through obstacles.

Instagram: coffeebeanwriting

More Posts from Feed-the-trash and Others

feed-the-trash

1 year ago

My fav thing to do when thinking abt plot points for a story is trying to figure out the most emotionally damaging thing that’ll either make or break my characters from then on

REBLOG IF YOU ARE HELLA BORED AND WOULDN’T MIND SOME CURIOUS ANONS.

479K notes View Post

feed-the-trash

1 year ago

Tswwwit’s Masterlist 2.0

Hey, everyone! I decided to put together my own list of @tswwwit‘s stories!

This contains most, if not all, of the stories they’ve posted to their blog! Including things that weren’t previously on their masterlist. I’ve recently updated it to be even more organized!

It’s very long, so the list is under the cut!

Keep reading

537 notes View Post

feed-the-trash

2 years ago

SpyxFamily Manga Inside Covers

17K notes View Post

feed-the-trash

3 weeks ago

I am God’s original character and I pray each night to make it canon that fine shyt is my love interest. #no doomed romance pls #laughing tracks every time I make a joke and it flops #u can’t say this post doesn’t have tags #just look at all this

0 notes View Post

End of content

No more pages to load