It's Called Heartbreak

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

It was obvious that this was the Stefan that Scott had been talking about. The way he mentioned Scott as if he was a good friend. Stiles’ kind of admired that, he thought everyone should treat is best friend with that respect, but he was still curious; weary. “Yeah Scott McCall.” Stiles murmured unnecessarily. 

“That’s me,” He shrugged a little and firmly shook the new guys’ hand, “So uh, you got a class to go to? I should probably be getting to English.” 

Not that he would do anything in English anyway. 

He was pretty sure Stiles already knew he didn’t need to specify which Scott they were talking about, so he resisted the urge to comment on that. The last thing Stefan needed was to alienate Scott’s best friend when he was still working in on getting the pack’s trust. It was hard enough with the species difference, let alone without insulting people Scott cared about.

Stiles wasn’t afraid to tell Lydia, he was afraid to disappoint her. He had lost Scott for he didn’t know how long, he wasn’t prepared to lose Lydia too. He wanted to tell her, he really did but he was struggling to muster up a reply to her, so for a while he sat there with his mouth open and eyes clearly struggling to make words while she looked at him. “I uh,” he sighed and tried to gather his thoughts, “You know how we suspected that Donovan was a Chimera but we never found him…” 

He had been so preoccupied in this thoughts that he hadn’t noticed the dreary day turn into a rainy night. Not that it mattered, there was no-one he could help now, no-one he was allowed to help. The pack wasn’t just something to Stiles, it was everything, and he was pretty sure he had just lost his everything. Which was why he was slightly shocked when he heard a rattle on the front door. 

He was nearly to the door when it burst open and he saw Lydia, soaking wet and clearly worried about him. 

A sarcastic roll of her eyes accompanies the words. Stiles knows PRECISELY what she’s talking about, and no amount of playing dumb will convince her otherwise. She takes three steps towards him, ignoring the large drops of water steadily splashing across his floor. The cool air quickly turns frigid, forcing Lydia to fold her arms across her chest for a brief respite from the bone-chilling cold of her soaked clothes, but she pays it no mind.

         Stiles. She’s focused on STILES.

                 “You know who, Stiles. What happened with Scott?                    WHAT’S going on?”

She softens, head tilting to the side and eyes filling with concern. This time, when she takes a step towards him, it’s out of WORRY - not frustration.

                 “Are you okay?”

Stiles began and then realised that this was not the time to counter Lydia’s witty sarcasm with his own. This was serious; life and death - quite literally. Stiles watched as she moved closer, she was soaked from the weather outside and he knew he should get something to keep her warm but he also knew she wouldn’t let him leave without answering her. 

“Scott. Well Scott may have kicked me out of the pack.” 

His mumbles were muffled by the hand that brushed his lips as the anxiety of what he had done hit him again. Upon her question he looked into her eyes, so familiar and soft and in that moment he just unwound. 

He collapsed into her, arms snaking around her cool, wet body, “Lydia.” He managed to choke out as the tears approached. 

Yeah this was the guy. Stiles knew it, Scott wasn’t the best at describing people but Stiles’ intuition made up for it. Tall, muscular and looking as if he was here for a reason other than learning school subjects, or pretending to learn them. Stiles could tell by the way they were analyzing each other that they both had missing information on each other. “I’ve heard about you from a friend.” He replied, taking a single step in his direction. 

“My name is Stiles.” He said as he extended his hand to the new guy.

A friend? He was right, then. It had to be one of Scott’s friends, because Stefan hadn’t talked to anyone that wasn’t in the pack. It wasn’t necessarily that he was tired of teenagers, but he had come here with a focal point. The pack was that focal point, even the less wolfy aspects. “ Ah, a friend. You must mean Scott. ” He knew he was right, but the human probably wasn’t a mind reader. Best to actually say what he was thinking.

“That’s me,” He shrugged a little and firmly shook the new guys’ hand, “So uh, you got a class to go to? I should probably be getting to English.” 

Chemosignals.  Derek learned to read them with the course of the years,  similar to the flow of a river, soaking him with wisdom, sensitivity and emphaty. That’s how he noticed that Stiles smelled like something worse than anxiety. Fear, guilt, tears…just an overwhelming mass of nerves and sadness that collapsed right into the predator’s face like some kind of bomb.  “…what’s wrong with you?”