how to not write like a moron

characters

Hello I am back with some more shitty advice. In today's lesson we shall discuss characters and how to make a good character.

As stated in the first lesson, if you're writing a fanfiction about an idol, celeb or fictional character, please don't change their personalities too much. Don't turn a shy, bubbly and dorky Jungkook into a nasty bad boy who is rough and mean. Make him into a bad boy who still has those cute personality traits he has; he can be intimidating when he wants, yet crumble and get all blushy when his crush touches his hand. He can smoke and have tats, yet coo and giggle at animals. Keep their best personality traits. Also don't change their physical attributes like height or body type cause I actually want to read about the idol / character I know, not some rando.

If you change the personality to the point where they're someone entirely different, you've done something wrong. And I know some people do prefer this, however, I am just giving you my 2 cents.

Everyone has flaws. Everyone. Including your characters. Don't make them unrelatable, perfect people. Give them negative traits, or bring out their negative traits more. And if they have flaws, or mess up, let them face the consequences of their actions. Don't let them get away with being an asshole, or a creep like how a lot of fanfiction seems to do (I know in my early days, I used to do this too). So I guess what I mean is, if you want your character to have some flaws, like they're too clingy and have some toxic traits, let them suffer the consequences of their behaviour, not just shrug it off and pretend they're perfect when they're not.

Lets use Doyoung for an example, give insight to his boisterous and blunt traits. He says what's on his mind, whether it'll hurt you or not. Use something like this to create tension or fights between characters. Don't just randomly whip out a random character trait out of nowhere and thrust your characters into a fight. Flaws must be drawn out and shown as a trait early on. It can be shown through the way they talk (describe how they talk, is it snarky? Condescending? Sarcastically? Quippy?), the way they act (do they act overly clingy? Do they look down on people as they talk? Do they glare a lot? Do they curl their lip?), and the things they say (are they sarcastic? Do they say mean things? Do they take harsh jabs at people?).

Show, not tell.

As much as a character needs their flaws, they need their highlights, too. What do they excel at? What makes them soft? Who would they fight someone for? Are they a genuine and honest person? Are they selfless?

Like real life, characters are complex. In some extent, your protagonist needs a good balance of positive traits and negative traits, to relate more to your audience. They can't be too flawed, however, because then their actions could be seen as antagonistic. For antagonists, the negative traits need to shine more than their positive ones, along with their motives. Don't make it something convoluted and messy, and try to steer away from cliches, but make it down to earth and relatable (depending on the AU setting).

I apologise for being a bit over the place in my explanations, I think of one thing then stray away from my original point and start a whole new point. I hope I'm making sense so far!

You see with characters, especially main ones, you want them likeable enough so the reader will actually enjoy reading their journey through the story. You should give them plenty of positive traits, but remember they're meant to be human (or at least, human traits), so give them some negative ones. Nothing too much to overpower but enough to be relatable.

Having a main character or protagonist that is disliked, hard to like or just plain annoying can be detrimental for your story. Who would want to read a story about someone who annoys them? That was me with the anime "Beyond the Boundary", I hated majority of the main protagonists, they really got on my nerves and genuinely had no use to the plot despite being the main characters.

Don't do that.

Your aim is to have your main character / protagonist / even antagonist as most people's favourite. So it's best to write your characters with that in mind, questions like "would my readers like this character?", "would I like to be friends with this person in real life if they behave like this?", "would this person be a threat if they were real?" Etc. It's good to thoroughly plan out your characters, Pinterest or tumblr usually always have questions to answer about your character. It's good to fill one out for each main character to get a feel for how your character is going to be.

Unless your main character is meant to be hated. Give reasons for them to be hated, and how they effect other characters in your story. Like in my fic "Psycho" (only available on AO3), I made sure the main character was hated because he was the antagonist who had to be hated for his actions. He wasn't a misunderstood villain, or an antagonist with a good heart but bad ways, he was a bad person and suffered the consequences of his actions, and I made sure readers knew he was not to be rooted for.

Even if they're based on a real life counterpart, you can still answer these questions. How do you think they'd react to a certain situation, or what's their favourite food, or what's their favourite type of weather, etc.

Here's a link to a "character chart" I found on Pinterest. It was a big help for me with creating my personas for the idols used as characters in my stories.

https://pin.it/1tfA8e5

That's all for this chapter. Hoped this helped! Next episode we will dive into character relations aka ships and otps and relationships or whatever. Bye~