How to characterize your character

1: What is your character's life goal they want to achieve? Doesn't necessarily have to be something big, but instead personal enough to be relatable.

2.what lifestyle does your character live, describe it. Is it awful or is it fantastic? Or somewhere in between.

3. What are your characters personal needs and wants? Can be small.

4. What is their worst fear, and how do they react when their worst fear becomes reality

5. What are your characters' negative traits, dive into their flaws a bit.

6. How do they handle being under pressure?

7. How many close friends do they have, (they don't have to have a ton of them.)

8. What is your character's ideal combat? Or is he/she a pacifist? Or are they great at combat?

9. How does your character react to things like violence? Do they hate it, or do they like it?

10. How does the character react to the loss of a loved one? How does it affect their mental & emotional state?

11. Remember, your villains don't have to have a redemption arc, and if you plan on doing so, give it meaning and impact.

12. How do your characters react to power and or corruption?

11. Where does your character live? In the city? Suburban Town, mountains, in the middle of nowhere, random climate ideas etc.

13. Your main character doesn't have to be good, you can do a good twist if you want to! Or maybe, we're following the villain (but only do this if you have a good enough skill, if this is your first book than probably don't do this)

14. Does your villain have allies or does he/she work alone. (Remember you can write more than one main villain and protagonist!)

15. What time period is it? If it's in the past, then you should study certain events just to get ideas, even if you're writing about a completely different world than ours, it is still good to get some ideas, after all the more it's like our past the more we can understand this world. And if it's the future, try to still give the audience realistic enough material.

16. World building time, what are the country's political affairs, how nasty is it? Deep headfirst into this idea. You'll be surprised about what you come to find about our own world. How many countries does this world have? Make sure to slowly throw out some exposition and keep the readers guessing about these different countries' history's. But be subtle though, no one likes a fat exposition dump.

17. How many wars are happening, how bad is it? What caused it? How has it affected this world. Study real wars for some great ideas.

18. Make sure the main character doesn't know what is coming, but don't make him look like an idiot for not realizing it. (This can be a betrayal or just something unexpected like a plot twist)

19. If your character ever thinks about their ideas, either negative or positive about a character or country, make sure to prove them wrong. (Just don't do it often.)

20. Remember, if you want a character's death to be shocking and really sad, then make sure to develop him/her into a lovable character and kill him/her off. People will only cry if they have a deep connection to them.

21. One of the characters that people least expect to get killed off are the characters who want vengeance, make sure they're punished. There are a lot of stories where vengeance is honored. Make sure all perception of this character is with plot armor and kill them off. People will be shocked because they believed his/her vengeance made him/her untouchable.

22. If you want your villain to be scary, than make sure to show them being scary, "show don't tell baby" show them killing or threatening people don't just say "oh he's awful! You believe me, right guys." Because no one's going to just believe that. Don't write another boring Voldemort. "You shall not speak his name?" Your readers are going to ask "why not tho." Just saying.

23. If you want a twist villain in your story, make sure it's not obvious or predictable, otherwise everyone will expect it, but also not unpredictable enough that people just think it was jarring either. Sprinkle tiny hints of something and make it subtle once the plot twist is revealed people will be thinking "how didn't I see this coming sooner!"

24. Study MBTI on ideas for your character's personality. Study how their brain functions as the type you have chosen. And stick to it. Your character will feel more stable and realistic.