Other - How to Create Realistic and Believable Characters How to Create Realistic and Believable Characters 1. Before you think of your character, you need to think of your character's purpose. Is their purpose to hinder your character? Help him? Is he the main character? 2. 3. 4. Quick Tips: · The most important thing is to treat your character like a real person. · Remember that your character is not a real person. · Make sure your main character changes through his experiences. · Give reasons for your characters' personality traits. · Stay within the boundaries of your character's personality!
Mary Sue Test Background A Mary Sue is an unrealistic type of literary character commonly created by inexperienced authors. Although they vary, a typical Mary Sue has an unreasonable number of cool or special traits, especially ones the author wishes he or she had, and they tend to accomplish things too easily, solve problems too neatly, and become the center of attention whether they deserve it or not. This test aims to help authors evaluate whether their characters are in danger of becoming Mary Sues by drawing attention to potentially problematic traits. When taking this test, be honest, but keep it in perspective and remember context. The test has seven sections: This test comes from this thread in the Writer's Block subforum on TV Tropes. Section 1: Author Avatars There's nothing wrong with using yourself as the basis for a character. Generally, items in this section score one point each. Scoring -28-0: Your character may be an antihero. 1-10: Your character is understated. Return to top
Personality Traits List We've heard this line many times from friends, family and others, "Oh that's just the way he/she is. It's in his/her personality to behave that way." We use the term 'personality' so loosely that we have forgotten to analyze what it truly means. Wouldn't the world be absolutely dull and ridiculously boring if we all were of the same personality type? It gives us all a sense of individuality, separating one from those who do not possess the same traits that would solely define you. List of Personality Traits There are all kinds of personality traits that a person can possess, making us very different from others. Active Austere Anxious Awkward Angry Arrogant Attentive Amiable Animated Aggressive Annoyed Alert Boastful Brilliant Bashful Bad Brainy Babyish Bossy Brutish Brave Bold Bright Blunt Careless Committed Charming Confused Clumsy Confident Cautious Critical Consistent Conceited Cultured Crafty Cheerful Candid Clever Creative Capable Caring Calm Civilized Diligent Disloyal Decisive Dark Dreamer Dishonest Dutiful Devoted Distressed Dull
Names for Villains: 5 Tips to Help You Choose a Name for the Baddie When creating villains, it's all too tempting to give them a name that embodies their evilness. It's important, however, to keep in mind the normal conventions of naming. Names tend to reveal something about location, year, ethnicity, or nationality-not whether a person is destined to be a tyrannical overlord. Always think about the villain's parents. Would they really name their kid "Diablo?" That doesn't mean you need to saddle your villain with a name like Ted or Mary, but think about plausibility before naming your villain. Names for Villains Tip 1: Picking a neutral name Like I mentioned earlier, choosing a name based on traditional factors is the easiest way to achieve plausibility. But let's face it. Names for Villains Tip 2: Using evil-sounding names or names with dark meanings Do you want to slyly suggest to your readers your character is a sadistic bastard? If you want to reveal something about the character through their name, keep the villains' motive in mind. Conclusion
Basic Tips To Write Better (And More Likeable) Badasses Yet another character type that is often poorly-written by amateurs, many badass characters end up becoming completely unlikeable or even despicable. Here are a few tips to keep these characters from going this route. Your character needs to be more than tough and talented. Strong, sexy, smart, skilled, and sassy are all great character traits, but on their own they're going to leave you with a character who is at best forgettable, and at worst completely unlikeable. You build a good badass the same way you build any other character type - by creating a complex, three-dimensional, nuanced character with believable emotions, fears, hopes, vulnerabilities, hobbies, quirks, etc. Stop and ask yourself: if you took away the skills and talents that make your character badass, do you think anyone would care about or want to associate with your character? Don't create an unstoppable kickass machine. Be careful that your character doesn't become an amoral/self-centered jerkass.
How To Write A Novel Using The Snowflake Method Writing a novel is easy. Writing a good novel is hard. That’s just life. If it were easy, we’d all be writing best-selling, prize-winning fiction. Frankly, there are a thousand different people out there who can tell you how to write a novel. In this article, I’d like to share with you what works for me. This page is the most popular one on my web site, and gets over a thousand page views per day, so you can guess that a lot of people find it useful. Good fiction doesn’t just happen, it is designed. For a number of years, I was a software architect designing large software projects. I claim that that’s how you design a novel — you start small, then build stuff up until it looks like a story. If you’re like most people, you spend a long time thinking about your novel before you ever start writing. But before you start writing, you need to get organized. Step 1) Take an hour and write a one-sentence summary of your novel. Some hints on what makes a good sentence: Shorter is better.
Guide for Writers: Characters Most stories are remembered for their characters, not specific plot points. If you want to write a memorable story, create memorable characters. They do not need to be believable — they need to be dramatic. It Takes Two Often, the best stories are deceptively simple: there are two main characters for the reader to follow. The central character is the character a reader or viewer “follows” through the story. The opposition character can be “good” or “evil” depending on the role of the central character. Grand Central Characters A grand central character is a complete character. What is the character’s active goal? An active goal is a specific, measurable goal. While the goal is known to the character, his or her emotional need seldom is. The reason the character fails to see a need is usually a character flaw. Finally, as the story progresses you should reveal the backstory of the central character. Creating Characters Character creation — and development — requires the hubris of Dr.
Basic Tips To Create Better Characters With Tragic & Traumatic Backstories First, ask yourself why you're giving your character a tragic or traumatic backstory. Are you giving your character this backstory to build up/explain what kind of person your character is now? Or are you doing it mainly to make readers or other characters feel sorry for your character, or to make your character seem more badass/tough for having survived the ordeal? Or are you doing it mainly to give your character a reason to run away from home and/or have nobody to be attached to so xe can go hang out with the cool characters with nothing to pull xir away? The first one is a legitimate reason to give your character a tragic/traumatic backstory. The rest are spurious at best. Even worse, trauma/tragedy often is used as little more than a device to give an intended love interest a reason to want to lavish care and affection on xir. Benjamin Linus from Lost is a good example of a tragic/traumatic backstory used to good effect. The trauma/tragedy should make sense in-universe.