My Writing Tips

Characters

Here we get into the fun part- writing your characters.

First is the obvious- what's their name? What are they like? What DO they like? And so on, you get the idea.

There are two kinds of characters- Round and Flat.

Round characters are those like your main and secondary characters, one who show up a lot throughout the story and have a lot of development. A flat character doesn't really show up as much and are often used as filler, plot devices, or extras in the background.

If you're writing a character that appears quite often, make sure they're as developed as possible- meaning you have the majority of their background, personality and maybe even interests down pat. However, when you're making a side character, you don't have to go as deep into developing as your round characters.

One good way to developing an original character is to study some of your favorites, or people in your life, and take some of your favorite traits (both could be physical or personal) to incorporate into your character. One of the people you could base your character(s) off of could even be yourself! (Trust me, it's done all the time. Even I'm guilty!)

If you're not sure how to design your character's personality, decide if you want your character to have a romantic partner or not. This may also help you decide how you want to model your character in a specific ship dynamic. (Whether you want to or not, this part is totally optional.)

There's not exactly a right or wrong way to design a character, but be careful not to go overboard on background information.

For example, if you want a traumatized/depressed character, here's what I think is the appropriate amount for each age group:

For an adult, you can probably safely give them three incidents. (Depending on seniority.)

For a teen, one or two will fit perfectly. Don't do three because it's a little bit overkill and it gives off this sense of, 'holy crap, they went through that and they're not dead? How?!' It's pretty unreal and unnecessary. (It can also get in your way sometimes.)

For a child, only one or none. If you do choose to traumatize a younger character, make sure they don't fully understand it. They may understand parts of it, but not what everything means.

With this scaling, it may help to make your characters seem a little more realistic and scale back on your backstory.

Remember- you don't have to put a character's story up front, hold some of it back and reveal it later on as plot device, this can give the readers something to excite them and theorize about. Somethings to hold back from your readers may include:

Feelings for another character
An important part of the backstory that changed their life
Reasons why they have these little quirks or habits
Or an explanation for large portions of their personality. (i.e, why they're so kind, mean, cold, etc.)

Hope this helps my fellow writers out there! 😁