How to Make a Good Character

So last week I was on a spree looking for topics and on one of my now favorite blogs The High school author was talking about good characters so I thought I would put my own twist on it.

So characters without them you don’t have a story. Characters can be good, bad, or neutral. They can be a male, female or even a different species entirely. But there is one problem, how do you make a good character? Since they are so many different ways people can create characters I am going to stick to the basics so I am not here for an hour.

1.  Know the characters traits.

     One thing that I hate the most in any form of literature is when you have a character whose motives change just randomly. What I mean is that if your character starts out good and heroic, don’t have him go around and start killing people for no reason. Either make a point to why there trait changes or keep it the same.

2. Back Stories

     Now I understand if your character is supposed to be mysterious and doesn’t want to give us their back story, but when your main character doesn’t even really have a good reason to be doing what they are doing you have a major problem. Another problem with back stories is that there are so many cliché back stories. A few examples.

·       My family, village and or species is now dead and I must get vengeance.

·       I am the choose one and I am the only one who can do this

That is only two examples of back stories, and I can think of over 30 books I have read that have used those back stories for their main characters. And before I move on to my next point I want to put some attention to a specific back story cliché that I truly hate amnesia. Now if the amnesia back story idea is used correctly then yes it does make it very interesting, but to many authors now a days use as just a lazy way for us to slowly learn the characters back story.

3. Character Details

     This one will be my last point but it is still important. I hate when authors give us this cookie cutter hero that is so basic that you already know what is going to happen before the end of the first five chapters. So when you are making your character please gives us more details, make it so that we can relate with the hero.

     Well that is my opinion on how you should make a good character, and yes I know there is many more things that I could have listed but I feel that this is enough to get a few writers through. And finally I want to say thanks to The High School Author because I have a feeling that I may be borrowing a few more ideas from them.