What You HAVE TO Know About Your Characters

What you HAVE TO know about your characters

Name:

Appearence:

Age:

Role:

Why the have that role, not based on the plot but based on the characters core beliefs and how that affects the plot:

Beliefs:

Motivations:

Who they were raised to be vs who they are/are becoming:

Plans for the future:

How they feel about themselves and how it affects their behavior:

Why do they even matter:

MY FRIEND JUST SENT ME THISBAOUHEKXBEJ

Hot (medium lukewarm) writing take

Life and death stakes are not enough to motivate your characters (most times), they have to have other motivations. Why are they staying alive otherwise?

The only exception I can really think of is if you writing about a character choosing to live, I still think that even that is iffy.

i have THE ULTIMATE POWERRRR

reblog to bonk the person you reblogged it from with a hollow cardboard tube

not me reading four books at the same time 😭

Animal Farm

Anna Karanina

The lighting theif

The life and crimes of Hoodie Rosen

If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

Create your characters voice

Write one to ten pages (I usually do 5 for major character, 1 or 2 for side characters) as your character. Anything they would say, opinions, diary entries, complaining, etc.

Ooooh I have collected some helpful things to maybe include:

adopting slang from people they are close too/love interest

do they have a raspy voice? High pitched? Overly sweet? Commanding? Figure that out.

to make characters have their own voice vary rhythm, word choice, use of profanity, how much they talk about themselves or others, their politics.

Take some dialogue and ask if readers would be able to tell who is speaking with no context.

Write an AITA post from their point of view.

Identify what role your character has, a leader? a follower? a disrupter? a rebel? an antagonist? a peacemaker? How does that change the way they speak?

The character traits will tell you what your characters will say or how they will say it.