Simple, quick tips for improving both your writing quality and your Wattpad experience. Open, friendly, and conversational, this book will give you that little info boost you need to tackle common problems and often-overlooked issues.
Wherever you a...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Struggling with making strong, realistic characters? Here's six handy tips to help!
1. Do a Sketch
We're not talking about drawing (although you can do that too if you're feeling artistic). We're talking about figuring out the basics. What's this character's backstory? What do they look like? Where do they live? What's their family situation like? What's their job? What's important to them?
You don't have to nail everything down, but get a sense of the person you're talking about. You can fill in more as you go on.
2. Ask Questions
Think about the details you picked out in Step 1. Assuming those are the case, how would that affect your character? Try not to pull character traits out of nowhere or tack on backstory like a coat your character could shrug off and it make zero difference to the story. Your character should develop from their situation. Try to imagine growing up as your character—how would that have changed you? How did it change your character?
You can ask questions the opposite way too. It doesn't just have to be "x happened in their childhood, so they became y way." You can also say, "this character does/feels/says y. Why does that happen?" And then make up an answer x.
Using these two types of question and answer tactics will help you create a character grounded in their world. This character will have a history and a reason for being the way they are beyond arbitrary decisions. And if you want to make what at first seem like arbitrary decisions, find a real way to justify them.
Also, don't fear changing your mind about details you picked out in Step 1! That was just an outline. You're the author; everything is always changeable.
3. Interrogate Your Character
Now that you have a good understanding of where your character came from and how that has shaped them, throw every dumb question you can think of at them. What's their favorite dessert? What do they like to do on a rainy day? If they could have three wishes, what would those be?
There are lots of ways you can find good questions online: lists of icebreakers, personality quizzes, questions for the newlywed game, and (of course) character development questionnaires.
Fill out as much information as you can, even if it doesn't seem important and even if it will never come up in your story. The more you know about your character, the better you will be able to write them. Also, answering these questions will force you to come up with random pieces of the character's life that might have gone untouched otherwise.
