Making Your Characters Stronger

Making Your Characters Stronger

A lot of people confuse character strength with physical strength. It’s awesome if your female character can beat up 30 people in a room, but what does that actually tell us about her? There needs to be something more than just that.

So, how do you make your characters legitimately stronger? Here are a few tips to get your started:

Give them a goal

All characters should want something. It can be something small, like getting a good grade on a test, or it can be something big, like saving the world. Know your characters and what their goals are. This should help you shape the plot and prevent writer’s block.

Let them grow

Character growth is something that makes your story fascinating. Each character should make a change or grow, especially if you want your readers to root for them. This is usually the case with protagonists because common antagonist traits are that they are stubborn and they might not grow very much. Let us see your protagonist learn and become a stronger hero.

Define their character traits

You can make a character more relatable if you know what their traits are. Is your protagonist cautious? Are they afraid of failure? Are they lazy? Knowing specific details about your characters can help your story feel more real. You’ll actually get to know who your characters are and why they’d react a certain way.

Build relationships

Let your characters love or hate or have great friendships. Your character’s connection to other people in the story will help make them stronger. They’ll have more motivation to fight til the end and they’ll have something they care about. Don’t neglect these relationships.

Let them fail

A strong character doesn’t mean they do everything perfectly and lack struggle. Your characters need to fail. Most of us don’t get stronger by constantly succeeding. We fail, we pick ourselves back up, and we keep going. This will help keep your protagonist relatable and your readers will continue to root for their success.

-Kris Noel

Art by: tairupanda

What to do if you have a binding injury

1. Take the binder off. I don’t care how dysphoric you are, I don’t care how bad you feel, I don’t care who is around. DO NOT PUT IT BACK ON. 

2. Go to the doctor. Or to a nurse. When I broke my ribs, I went to the nurse at my school because that was free and that worked fine.

3. Accept that there isn’t anything you can do to heal faster. The most likely thing that doc is going to tell you is that you have some bruised ribs, and you need to let them heal. Sometimes broken ribs can break lungs, which is potentially fatal, so no matter what, you still need to do step two, but that’s probably not going to be the case. 

4. Treat yo’self. Get some icecream, and settle down with your favorite tv show. This is gonna be rough on your mental health. 

5. Tell people that you are injured (make up a bull-riding/bungee-jumping story if you don’t wanna tell em why). This will garner you some sympathy points, and people will go easier on you. Maybe your boss will let you wear a hoodie to work.

6. Don’t reflect too hard on it. The first thing you are going to think is not “oh I have an injury so I better take care of myself” it’s going to be “this is the physical manifestation of my dysphoria and why does being trans always ruin my life”. Try to refrain from that particular thought. You have an injury. Treat it like any other injury or illness you could get. 

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What not to do. 

1. Put that damn binder back on. Don’t. I see you tempted. Don’t. 

2. I SAID DON’T. 

3. You could end up with a warped ribcage if you don’t allow yourself to heal. Don’t put it back on. 

4. Really. Don’t.  

original character is free

Grif and Samir - by Kaweki

(Posted with permission)

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