 Hello, hello, writers! I'm Kristin Kiefer, author of fantasy fiction and creative writing resources, and you are listening to the Well-Storied Podcast, where I share insights, encouragement, and actionable advice designed to help you craft sensational novels and build your best writing life, always in 30 minutes or less, so you can get back to writing, of course! Ready for the show? Let's get talking! Hello again, writers, and welcome back to the Well-Storied Podcast. I'm your host, Kristin Kiefer, and today is Friday, July 31st, 2020. Today's episode of the podcast is titled 33 Ways to Write Stronger Characters, and it is a newly revised and updated version of an article that first appeared on the Well-Storied blog on June 11th, 2015. Today's article includes plenty of links that lead to articles containing additional information about what we're going to talk about today. So, if you would like to check out those links and read along as you listen in, please visit www.well-storied.com slash stronger characters. Without any further ado, let's dive in. No matter how much tension you pack into the pages of your book, readers won't care about your story if they don't first care about your characters. After all, there's nothing page turning about a predictable protagonist playing out a predictable plot. If you want readers to invest in your characters and their journeys, then you must craft characters that readers can believe in, characters so well-developed and realistic that they seem to spring to life on the page. But crafting a cast that moves beyond caricatures and cardboard cutouts can be difficult. What steps can you take to develop complex and compelling characters today? Here are 33 tips you won't want to miss. Tip number one, establish their role. Before you can effectively develop a character, you must determine the role they'll play in your story. Will they serve as a protagonist or antagonist? A sidekick, mentor, or love interest? Some other sort of secondary or tertiary character? Tip number two, define their narrative purpose. No matter the role they play, every character in your story must serve a purpose. If you can remove a character from your manuscript without impacting readers' understanding of your plot or story world, then that particular character doesn't add value to your story. Give them purpose or let them go. Tip number three, construct their identity. Defining the basic demographic markers that determine your character's identity can help you develop their worldview and experiences and help readers understand who your character is, of course. Consider your character's age, gender identity and sexuality, race, religion, ethnic background, level of education, and other common identifiers. Tip number four, consider their name. Though they may seem simple, names can hold great power. Consider using your character's name to showcase the era in which they live, to hint at their ancestry, establish a naming system for your fictional world, or otherwise lend additional depth to your story. Tip number five, establish their appearance. Helping readers visualize your character by establishing their height, build, and coloring is important. However, don't forget to consider other insightful elements of your character's appearance, such as their mannerisms, gait, physical tics, and body language. Tip number six, develop their personality. Your character's personality is more than just a list of positive and negative traits. By exploring how the characteristics that define your character impacts their voice and lived experiences, you allow your character's personality to breathe life onto the page. Tip number seven, determine their flaws. To be imperfect is to be human. By giving your character a moral shortcoming, negative character trait, quirk, fear, bias, and or limitation, you develop a realistic character with whom readers can relate. Never mind the conflict that a good flaw can create. Tip number eight, identify their false beliefs. The human experience is rife with internal conflict. Doubts, fears, flaws, and regrets can all lead characters to formulate false beliefs about themselves and the world that impact nearly every aspect of their characterization. Tip number nine, consider their worldview. A character's worldview can be defined as their breadth of knowledge and perspective concerning the world in which they live, which impacts how they think and interact. Elements like your character's upbringing, education, religious and political beliefs, relationships, and societal influences can all impact their unique worldview. Tip number 10, give them a voice. A character's voice is a unique way in which they engage with the world as determined by their worldview, personality, upbringing, and other key characterization elements. A character's voice commonly manifests in their mindset, speech patterns, vocabulary, opinions, internal narrative, body language, and mannerisms. Tip number 11, define their quirks. Everyone has strange qualities and habits. Defining the quirks that make your character unique can help further distinguish them in reader's minds as well as lend to their relatability and or serve as a key character flaw. Tip number 12, establish their relationships. Relationships are a defining aspect of our lives. Whether good or bad, past or present, determining your character's most important relationships can help readers better understand your character's world. Tip number 13, define their everyday reality. Consider what your character's life is like before their story begins. How do they spend their days? What are their daily joys and trials? Establishing this reality is key to laying the foundation for your character's first appearance on the page. Tip number 14, determine what they want. When your character first appears on the page, they'll likely be dissatisfied with their life in some way or become dissatisfied due to early events in their journey. Consider what your character believes will resolve this discontent. What do they want to have or achieve to lead a more satisfied life? Tip number 15, determine what they need. Often what a character wants isn't actually what they need to resolve the issues they're experiencing in their life. If this holds true for your character, then determine what they need to realize or achieve to lead a happier life. Tip number 16, give them a goal. A character's goal determines the arc of their story, prompting the actions they'll take and the conflicts they'll encounter. Defining your character's goal can help you address your story's plot with confidence and clarity. Tip number 17, define their motivation. Conflict means little without emotional context. To encourage readers to invest in your character's journey, determine why your character wants to achieve their goal. What will push them to act despite obstacles and hardships? Tip number 18, establish their history. Well-developed characters have lives that extend beyond the confines of the page. By giving readers a glimpse of your character's backstory, you can lend context to their characterization and the conflicts they experience throughout their journey. Tip number 19, define their ghost. A ghost is an aspect of a character's past, often a form of guilt, grief or grievance that haunts them throughout their journey. Determining the ghost that haunts your character can inform many aspects of their characterization, from their goals and motivations to their personality, worldview, flaws and false beliefs. Tip number 20, establish their desires. Hope and longing are powerful human emotions. Consider what your character desires for their life. What do they envision for themselves in an ideal world? What dreams do they wish could come true? And why do they feel their dream is unattainable, at least in the present moment? Tip number 21, give them interests. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. By giving your character interests that extend beyond the goal they're working to achieve, you lend additional depth and realism to readers' understanding of your character's life. Tip number 22, consider what they love. There's no motivator more powerful than love. By defining who or what your character loves most in the world, you reveal to readers what they're willing to fight for. Tip number 23, give them agency. Personal agency is the ability to exert power over one's life. Though your character may find themselves in less than ideal circumstances from time to time, allowing them to exert at least some small measure of control over their life is essential if they're to helm their journey and or experience growth. Tip number 24, make them relatable. Readers don't need to find characters likable to care about their stories, but they do need to relate to them in at least some small way. Consider what makes your character relatable no matter the role they play in your story. Tip number 25, make every character complex. It's easy to lean into well-worn tropes when developing secondary and tertiary characters who don't receive much time on the page. To ensure these characters feel just as realistic, consider one or two details you can slip into the text that hint at their richness and complexity. Tip number 26, showcase their emotional landscape. One note characters will always fail to come to life on the page. Allow readers to see your character as fully realized by showcasing what makes them laugh, cry, see the cower, and otherwise experience a wide array of emotions. Tip number 27, make them sweat. Handing your character's success on a silver platter is a sure-fire way to cheapen their development. By giving your character numerous obstacles and uncertainties to conquer throughout their journey, you create opportunities to introduce readers to new facets of their characterization and growth. Tip number 28, allow them to fail. Failure reveals who we are at heart. Allowing your character to stumble and fall throughout their journey gives them the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and develop as human beings. Tip number 29, allow them to suffer. When your character encounters conflicts and failures, resist the urge to immediately resolve these issues. By forcing your character to dwell in their negative circumstances and emotions for more than just a brief moment, you give your character the opportunity to prove their mettle while lending a sense of realism to their journey. Tip number 30, take them to their happy place. While allowing your character to sweat, fail, and suffer is important, don't pack your story full of so much conflict that readers never get to see what your character is like in happier times and moments of peace. Readers and characters alike need these small moments of joy and reprieve. Tip number 31, push them to their breaking point. Happier times aside, while developed stories require conflict. Ask yourself what line your character would refuse to cross to achieve their goal, then figure out what circumstance would force your character to cross it anyway. Bringing your character to this breaking point will be one of the most important and impactful moments in their journey. Tip number 32, give them a refuge. When all seems lost, your character needs a safe haven, a person, place, or even a memory from which they can draw much needed strength. Where will your character find this refuge? What comfort or words of wisdom will encourage them to rise from the ashes of their experiences? Tip number 33, define their story. If you've harnessed the tips in today's episode, then you have developed complex, compelling characters and explored key ways to bring those characters to life on the page. But at the end of the day, well-developed characters can't stand on their own two feet. Readers may not care about your story if they don't first care about your characters, but they also won't care about your characters if those characters fail to take them on a journey. You already have what you need to develop your character's stories. You've defined their wants and needs, their goals and motivations, their failures and breaking points. Now it's time to draw upon all of the elements you've developed to weave a story that readers won't soon forget. This is what makes for a strong character. Not a thousand tiny details, but one grand story of was, and is, and will become. So tell me, writer, what journey will your characters experience? Are you ready to map out your character's story? Get started today with the Pre-Write Project. By taking time to develop your story before putting pen to paper, you'll not only write your first draft with clarity and focus, you'll avoid countless unnecessary hours spent patching up pesky story issues. By completing the activities and guided questions in this 143-page digital workbook, you'll create a reference guide to use as you write and edit your story, helping you avoid the messiness of writing by the seat of your pants and instead embrace the power of drafting with a plan in place. If you would like to learn more about the Pre-Write Project and grab your copy today, simply visit www.well-storied.com-pre-write. Now here's to crafting incredible characters and their incredible stories. Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Podcast Writer. I hope you found it helpful to your writing journey. If so, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss a new episode and to give the podcast a quick rating or review. Doing so goes a long way toward helping the podcast reach new writers and lets me know that you're enjoying what I'm creating. You can also give me a shout out directly on Instagram at christen underscore keeper. For additional guidance as you work to craft sensational novels and build your best writing life, be sure to head on over to www.well-storied.com where I share blog posts, workbooks, e-courses and other helpful resources for writers. Again, that's w-e-l-l-s-t-o-r-i-e-d dot com. Thank you again for tuning into today's episode, my friend. Until next time, happy writing!