Nebula's Guide to Wattpad: How to Write Books Like a Boss!

Building Characters

I feel that we don't necessarily need the whole backup story about character development, but what we do need to cover is things that help lead up to character development, such as backstory and things like that. This means you need to think about exactly what each character looks like, where they came from, how they speak, what their strengths and weaknesses are, whether they're the reluctant hero or just a trigger-happy gun nut or something of that sort... Basically whether the reader is meant to like them, admire them, hate them or whatever your sick heart desires.

The best way to do this is to write a character sketch for each of the main characters before you start writing (being totally real with you, I have to do this ALL the time). This way, you can get to know the characters and also make sure they behave consistently throughout your story. These characteristics aren't set in stone and you can come back and change things later if you need to, but it's useful to have this written down somewhere so that you don't find your characters acting inconsistently as your story develops. And of course, you'll also need to work out how exactly you're going to reveal this information about your characters to both the readers and other characters.

Going back to our example, a good zombie story isn't just about blood and gore as people get ripped to shreds by hordes of flesh-munchers (I admit it's an important part but there has to be more to it than that if your book is going to be any good). You also have to have compelling characters so your readers care about what happens to them. After all, it's all the more gut-wrenching when a well-liked character falls victim to the undead. Similarly, there's nothing better than seeing a hated character finally getting what was coming to them. What you don't want to do is leave your readers not caring whether your characters live or die or, worse, cheering for the zombies (unless that's your particular twist, but that might be a prime example of an idea that's original, but not so much on the good side).