The Writing Desk: Character Creation

Characters: the drivers of the plot and the people we get attached to. You can’t have a story without them, so how do you actually create a good believable character from nothing?

I’m going to approach this particular post from a fiction novel-writing stance, though I have to admit that a lot of my process comes from my experience with Dungeons and Dragons. Not all of it, I’ve been writing my whole life and only playing D&D since I was 16, but a lot of my tricks have been improved by my roleplaying skills. Perhaps one day, I’ll do a whole thing Mycreants-style on adapting fiction techniques to roleplay and vice versa.

Good or Bad?

The first thing to get out of the way: when I talk about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ characters, I’m referring to the quality of the writing, not their ‘alignment’ or moral code. A villain can be good and a hero can be sooo bad. I won’t call anyone out by name because we’re all in this together, writing is hard, and readers have differing tastes, and this is according to my taste. So if you were hoping for a roast of badly written characters, you’re going to have to read between the lines or form your own opinions