Build • A • Script

—

SHARE THIS WITH YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY!

when i have free time:

Resource Dump: Creating Characters!

Primary Characters

Your Hero: Top Ten Rules

10 Traits of a Great Protagonist

4 Steps to Creating a Truly Active Protagonist

20 Tips for Creating Relatable Protagonists

How to Center your Story

How to Create Unforgettable Protagonists

25 Things You Should Know About Protagonists

Creating Memorable Characters

Creating Strong Female Protagonists

Creating Dynamic Protagonists

How to Create Characters

Inner Dialogue - Writing Inner Character Thoughts

25 Things a Great Character Needs

5 Ways to Create 3D Characters

Secondary Characters

10 Secrets to Creating Unforgettable Supporting Characters

How to Write Effective Supporting Characters

Question to Ask (& Strengthen) Your Minor Characters

5 Tips for Developing Supporting Characters

Techniques for Creating Great Secondary Characters

5 Steps to Dazzling Minor Characters

3 Ways to Create Stupendous Supporting Characters

Creating Memorable Secondary Characters

5 Archetypes for Supporting Characters

Your Map to Creating a Memorable Minor Characters

Names

Top Ten Tips

8 Tips for Naming Characters

7 Rules of Naming Fictional Characters

Name that Character!

6 Creative Ways to Name your Character

Naming your Characters

A Guide to Naming Characters

Female: 1 | 2 | 3

Male: 1 | 2 | 3

Alien: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Surname: 1 | 2 | 3 

Unisex: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Traits

List: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

Developing Character Traits

How to Create Good Personalities for your Characters

Develop Memorable Personalities

Give your Character Personality

How to Create a Character’s Personality

How to Make Sure your Character’s Personality Shines

5 Building Blocks of your Character’s Personality

Appearance

Appearance Generator

Your Character’s Physical Appearance

How to Describe a Character’s Looks

Describing a Character’s Appearance

Character Description Resource

Examples of Physical Characteristics

Describing the Physical Attributes of your Characters

How Great Authors Describe Character Appearance

Ultimate Guide to Nailing your Character’s Appearance

Describing Clothing and Appearance

Character Appearance Help

Character Description Resource

Describing People: A Person’s Physical Appearance

Describing the Physical Attributes of Characters

Speech

Talking About your Character: Speech

Variety in Character Voices

All your Characters Talk the Same

How to Create Distinctive Character Voices

How to Create Characters Who Don’t Sound like You

The Art of Voice in Fiction

Create Varying, Yet Realistic, Speech Patterns

The Art and Craft of Dialogue

Writing Character Voice

Creating Differences in the Speech Patterns of your Characters

Style: Person and Speech

Dialects: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

Backstory

Building Better Backstories

Basic Tips to Create Better Characters with Tragic Backstories

How to Write a Backstory

Writing Characters Using Conflict and Backstory

Backstory Description Generator

Questions to Create Character Backstory

How to Weave in Backstory to Reveal Character

Nail your Character’s Backstory

How to Write Backstory Without Putting your Reader to Sleep

How to Write a Killer Backstory

Diversity

How to Make Young Adult Fiction More Diverse

Writing People of Color

A Few Tips and Resources for Writing Characters of Colour

Writing Characters of Colour Tastefully

Writing With Colour

7 Offensive Mistakes Well-Intentioned Writers Make

Writing Characters of Colour

Describing Characters of Colour

Gender

Female: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Male: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Transgender: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

Non-Binary: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Sexuality

Main Character Sexuality

On Writing LGBTQ Characters: 1 | 2

Writing Gay Characters

Guide to LGBT YA

Avoiding LGBTQ Stereotypes

Writing Bisexual Characters: 1 | 2

Writing Asexual Characters: 1 | 2

Pansexual & Demisexual Characters

How to Write Gay, Bisexual and Pansexual Characters

Introduction

Introducing a Character

Introducing your Main Character

Do’s and Don’ts for Introducing your Protagonist

First Impressions

How to Introduce a Character

How Not to Introduce a Main Character

Introducing the Protagonist

Development

Character Development

9 Ingredients of Character Development

Characterisation 1 - Character Development

How to Develop a Character for a Story

Character Development

Character Development Drives Conflict

Developing your Characters and Making them Interesting

Relationships

How to Write Strong Character Relationships

Character Relationships

3 Keys to Developing Character Relationships

The Secret Behind Great Character Relationships

3 Tips for Character Relationships

Building Believable Relationships

Sibling: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Platonic: 1 | 2 | 3

Romantic: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

Strengths

Identifying your Character’s Strengths

Character Strengths and Weaknesses

Introducing the 24 Character Strengths

Character Strengths and Virtues List

Strengths and Weaknesses

A Balance of Strengths

Flaws

123 Ideas for Character Flaws

DarkWorld RPG Flaws List

Character Flaws

Ten Ugliest Character Flaws

The Four Types of Character Flaws

On Giving Flaws and Weaknesses

Character Flaw Index

Goal

Why your Character’s Goal Needs to be 1 of these 5 Things

Goals Define the Plot

Goal Setting for You and your Character

How to Explore you Character’s Motivation

4 Ways to Motivate Character and Plot

Motivation

By Genre

Fantasy: 1 | 2 | 3

Sci-Fi: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Romance: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Thrillers: 1 | 2 

Horror: 1 | 2 | 3

Heroes

Your Hero: Top Ten Rules

How to Write your Own Hero Story

What Makes a Great Hero?

Creating Heroes and Heroines

Write a Story about a Hero

How to Create an Antihero that Readers Love

Heroes vs. Anti-Heroes

Create a Super Hero

How to Create a Brand New Iconic Hero or Villain

What Makes a Hero

Villains

How to Create a Credible Villain in Fiction

How to Make a Purely Evil Villain Interesting

9 Evil Examples of the Villain Archetype

How Not to Create a Villain

Creating Villains People Love to Hate

3 Techniques for Crafting a Better Villain

Basic Tips to Write Better & More Despicable Villains

Writing Tips for Creating a Complex Villain

How to Create a Great Villain

Do’s & Don’ts

Do’s and Dont’s of Writing a Good Character

How to Create a Character

Characterisation Dos and Dont’s

Female Characters of Do’s and Dont’s

Do’s and Dont’s of Dialect

Helpful Writing Blogs

fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment*

writeworld

referenceforwriters

thewritingcafe

aquestionofcharacter *

writingwithcolor

fuckyeah-char-dev

dailycharacterdevelopment

Clichés

Characters and Cliches

Top 10 Character Cliches

7 Lazy Character Cliches 

10 Most Cliched Characters in Sci-Fi

Four Worst Character Cliches

Female Character Cliches

Character Cliches to Avoid

The Cliche Character Test

How Cliches Can Help You Make Great Characters

Templates

How to Create a Character Profile

Writing Character Bios

Character Sheets and Character Creation

Gender/Sexuality Generator

Extremely Detailed Character Template

Writer’s Resource: Character Template

Good luck with the Thing. You can do the Thing. You will do the Thing. You just have to do the Thing.

Best wishes,

There’s a quote from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone that I adore:

There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.

I think it states in simple (silly) terms a complicated truth about friendship and relationships and the moments that cement them.

Real, lasting bonds are formed by acts of support in moments of vulnerability.

The more two characters expose vulnerabilities to each other and the more they support each other in those moments, the stronger their relationship will be. 

During the troll fighting incident in Harry Potter, Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s lives are all in danger (vulnerability) and they each play a role in getting one another out of danger (support.)

This example works particularly well because there’s an equilibrium of support and vulnerability. There may be a bond between two people when one person is doing all of the supporting, but it won’t be a healthy one.

Of course, moments of vulnerability don’t have to be life threatening. They can be moments of emotional vulnerability. For example, if person A performs in a dance recital for the first time ever (vulnerability) and person B comes to watch them (support).

As humans, we don’t like to expose our vulnerabilities to people with whom we don’t already have a strong bond. When starting out a relationship, these moments are usually out of the person’s control.

For example, person A walks into a crowded classroom for the first time, looking for an empty seat and person B takes pity and moves their backpack from the seat next to them onto the floor, freeing a place for person A.

After class, person B spills the entire contents of their backpack onto the floor and person A helps pick everything up.

These two moments won’t make person A and person B instantly friends. Bigger moments strength bonds quicker than smaller ones, but the more we support people and the more we expose ourselves to them, the greater our bonds grow. The stronger the bonds, the more likely we are to willingly expose our vulnerabilities to people and purposefully deepen the relationship.

If you’re writing a relationship and you want it to be something built on solid foundations that your readers can support, you’ll want to show these moments of vulnerability and support.

Start small, with moments of vulnerability that are accidental or forced. As the bonds grow stronger, let the characters purposefully initiate the moments, signaling trust and comfort in the relationship. Level One is moving a backpack and freeing up a seat. Level Ten might be fighting a mountain troll together. Level Twenty is handing someone a ticket to your first ever dance recital.

How to Manipulate This Rule to Create Complex Relationships 

Just because the foundation for a relationship is there doesn’t mean the characters have to act like it is. 

A perfect relationship is boring to read about. Support doesn’t have to be given or received kindly. Especially in those first stages of the relationship. Person B can be grumpy and resentful of having to give up their extra seat to person A, and they might not want to accept person A’s help when person A helps them pick up the contents of their spilled backpack. Even once a person admits to themselves that they like the other person, two people who openly care about each other can still bicker and squabble and disagree. Supporting each other when it counts in no way precludes that.

If you want to complicate the relationship even more, if you want to write about a complex, difficult relationship: have characters fail to support each other in moments. Explore the consequences of those decisions.

As for characters who would die for one another…

Your characters should all have driving motivations. The best way to build strong relationships in your writing is to show your characters supporting each other in those specific efforts.

Show moments of support that come at a cost to the person offering it. Person B goes to Person A’s dance recital, but skips out on a date to do so. 

A recommendation: show the non-POV character support the POV character in a moment of vulnerability first. We’re already in the POV’s head and we’re already on their team. We still need to be convinced by the non-POV,  as the author, you have to make the reader like the non-POV character before we like the relationship. A quick and easy way to do this is to have them support the character we already like.