Creating Characters

You may have mastered writing intricate plots, but what about creating characters? If you don’t have great characters, your story is only half done. No matter how exciting your love scenes or action-filled set pieces, your story will still be unsatisfying.

At their heart, all great stories are about characters going through change. To build a great story, you have to understand how characters function and how they interact. What types of characters will fill your world? What character roles does your story need? How do you turn words on a page into something that lives and breathes?

Read on to learn how to develop a character’s personality, how to show that personality to your readers through great dialogue, how to select the perfect flaw for their character arc, and much, much more.

Creating Characters for Your Next Story:

• The Three-Question Method to Creating a Great Protagonist – Once you have a story idea, the next step is creating a protagonist. Get started developing a fantastic main character with this easy, three-question method.
• Types of Characters in Fiction – The Ultimate Guide – Before you begin creating characters, learn to understand their functions and roles and how they interact. Beyond heroes and villains, what types of characters will fill your world? What character roles does your story need? The answers are all here.
• Eight Tips for Perfect Character Names – Even writers who have mastered character development and dialogue still end up staring at the page, wondering what the $%&#! they should name them. Check out some different places you can hunt for interesting names, and how to pick the perfect one for your characters.
• Writing Dialogue – The Ultimate Guide – Writing dialogue can be frustrating. Follow these tips to learn how your characters’ personalities and backgrounds should shape their conversations.
• The Ultimate Guide to Writing Character Flaws – The key to making your stories relatable, moving, and powerful is character flaws. Your characters’ personal struggles is what makes them come to life.
• Writing Realistic Aliens – Creating characters becomes much more challenging when they’re aliens from other planets. Learn how your alien character’s biology, environment, culture, politics, and other elements develop their personality and show readers who they really are.
• Quick Writing Tip – Writer’s Block – When you don’t understand your characters, it can be difficult to decide what should happen next in the story. These character interview questions will help you get to know who your characters are, and help you get unstuck.
• Creating Characters – My latest posts about creating and developing fictional characters.

Want more? Read about building strong writing habits and nurturing your creativity, or just browse all my writing tips articles here.