╰⇢ hey it's olivia ♡ ◦ today I will be showing you how to come up with characters for your story so let's get into it <33 ☼ questions to ask yourself ⛸ ◦ what does my character want? ◦ what are they afraid of? ◦ what is their misbelief/fatal flaw? ☼ flaws ⛸ ◦ make your character flawed. perfect characters have nothing to learn and therefore no internal journey to struggle through. memorable characters always experience a journey of change and discover somehing new as a result of their journey. great examples are steve rogers, tony stark, and loki from the mcu ☼ internal conflict ⛸ ◦ for your characters to be relatable, they must struggle with internal conflict (desire vs fear.) without internal conflict, your character just becomes a punching bag for the plot. if we don't know what matters to the characters, we don't know why this story matters to us. how to find your character's misbelief (or fatal flaw) which is part of their internal conflict: ☼ choose the theme for your story ⛸ ◦ kinda random i know, but what is the story's truth? what change do you want to see in the world? what is the thing you want to scream from the rooftops? it can be 'you're allowed to show emotions', 'you can ask for help', 'you don't have to be alone', 'you can stand up for yourself', 'you can be yourself', whatever you want. what message do you want to share with your readers? ☼ flip this truth upside down and make it a lie ⛸ ◦ this is your character's misbelief. if your theme is 'you're allowed to show emotions', then your character's misbelief is that 'you have to hide your emotions', nobody can see your tears, your pain, your anger. keep it in and don't let the world see it. ☼ what could have happened in my character's past to make them believe such a thing? ⛸ ◦ is that what they were taught by their parents? are they abusive? does your mc get punished if they cry? ☼ write that backstory scene for your character ⛸ ◦ it helps if you write down that scene and you can even include it in your story as a flashback. try to include as many details as possible even if you're not going to include them in your final story because you need to understand your character fully and how this affect their day-to-day life ☼ describe/write other scenes in the character's past that cemented this misbelief as TRUTH to them ⛸ ◦ what confirmed this misbelief? what made them think that it just makes sense? preferably write 3 or 4 scenes to make it feel REAL ☼ how is my character dissatisfied with their life today because they believe this lie so firmly? ⛸ ◦ they want happiness, right? we all do. but say if we're going with the emotions thing, then they can't be happy because they're disappointed with themselves whenever they show emotion. do you know what i mean lol ☼ what does my character think will make them happy? (based on their misbelief?) ⛸ ◦ do they think that once they finally push away all other emotions like sadness, anger, and pain, they will finally be happy? ☼ what steps could my character take now to actively pursue this goal? ⛸ ◦ this is going to lead into your plot, this is going to become your characters mission. ☼ clarify the motive, the goal, and the plot ⛸ ◦ the motive is the lie they started to believe at a very young age, the goal is the thing that will bring them true happiness, and the plot is the steps they're going to take to make this dream a reality ☼ other stuff ⛸ ◦ that is what makes your character unique and 3 dimensional. this is what makes your story MATTER. you see a lot of 'character profiles' which are like what are their eye colour, their hobbies, and tons of less important stuff, but you should only worry about that stuff until you have these actually important stuff done. to further strengthen your character i would recommend finding out their mbti type or enneagram. take the quizzes online as if you were them and use that to that your advantage. because you don't want a supposedly confident, loud and shouty character to be shy and timid when a teacher is asking them a question because then it just gets confusing. i hope this helps! ✄ notes ✧ ◦ click the green flag for some cool names ◦ some of them are really bad lol ◦ huge thanks to for the code and layout stuff and abbie emmons for the tips - she's amazing!!
