Hello and welcome back.

Today I am going to talk about some strategies for creating characters.

Each character will need an opposing force. Your protagonist and your antagonist. Remember that each character is the hero of his/her own story. So don’t make your antagonist the cliched villain who is supremely evil and has no redeeming qualities. There will always be motivation for why he does what he does. And for the hero, don’t make her the vanilla type without any flaws and who is the master at everything. This would make the story boring as it would show there’s no way that the antagonist could possibly win.

Both the antagonist and the protagonist will have friends and allies. Jobs, and families. They will also likely have hobbies and favorite things. Come up with about ten possible things the character could do and choose the best for the story. And how to weave it into the narrative in a natural way.

For example, Joe enjoys training at the gym. This is where he meets Mary, the woman (he thinks) of his dreams. Little does he know that she’s a honey trap to get corporate or military secrets.

You can come up with a whole slew of things, Joe’s friends try to convince him she’s up to something, but he’s blinded by how hot she is. Mary’s brother is the head of whatever group that’s trying to steal the secrets. Does she keep her mission or fall in love and have to choose which man to betray?

Those are a couple of ideas to help.