Questions? Suggestions? Comments?

[Chloe]

Anything at all you're unsure about, ask here and you'll get an answer.

[Lyndsey]

What are some 'personality cliches' that trigger you into an immediate dislike of a character? I'm really curious about this one, as sometimes I'm unsure if my character will be taken as likeable. Is there any advice or opinions anyone could offer?

[Sarah]

I dont know if you would call it a personality cliche but I find it very difficult to get through a book that has no grey areas - the infallible hero is a real hate of mine, as is a pure evil villain. having said that,some of my favourite books have purposefully used cliche characters with a "so what" attitude and it has worked beautifully.

The one kind of character I do find difficult to get on with in a book is an overly sensitive feminist type. The kind of character that constantly feels hard done by because she is a woman and spends a lot of time refusing to do anything remotely feminine just because it's "girly". Although there is always an exception and I do find, if written well, these characters can become ones I love to hate or if they develop through the story I do find myself warming to them.

of course the flip side to that character -the damsel in distress, is also a pain to read, but again if she develops I can warm to the character.

It tends to be female characters that I critique the most as I read, probably purely just because I know what it is to be female whereas I (obviously!) don't have that same depth of understanding with a male character.

That all may just be me, but I hope that was helpful nevertheless.

[Lyndsey]

Sarah wrote: "I dont know if you would call it a personality cliche but I find it very difficult to get through a book that has no grey areas - the infallible hero is a real hate of mine, as is a pure evil villa..."

Thank you for the advice! Yeah, perhaps cliche was the wrong term to use in my case. What was most prominent in my mind when I said that was when an author attempts to paint a picture so vividly in your mind that they use phrases like "most beautiful girl in the world", and "men fall for her as they walk through the door."
I'm not saying those things particularly bother me, but in a way it takes away from the readers ability to create their own description for a character. As though the author were trying to use the 'you should automatically like this character'.
Moving on however, I completely agree with your dislike of 'ultra girly' female characters. One of the reasons I enjoyed Katniss (from the hunger games), and Tris (from Divergent), was because they both had some hardcore grit to their personalities. Usually female characters are prone to long bouts of self-pity and weeping but for both of them, it was something we rarely saw. (I'm not saying just female characters do this, just that it seems to be more likely.)

Sorry guys, I have a lot of questions haha.. Could anyone explain what the hyphen sign is used for? (Looks like this: -) I often see it in casual writing now but have no idea what the rules for it are! Ive tried goggling it but got a lot of rules that didn't apply.

[Glitchieyt]

I agree, its not a good thing to make your character "Invincible". Every good and well made character usually has limitations to what he can achieve or do. Those limitations also depend on which world he/she is in, how old he/she is, his/her race, his/her ethnicity, his/her gender etc.

Also, really good books display the problems with the bad guy. A lot of times they are never pure evil, the antagonist brings out some emotions that people can relate to, and that gives a good impression on the book.



Also to Lyndsey: The Hyphen is used in lists, and other things such as what I used it for now.

It is used in formality, but not often in books. Emails use hyphens quite a lot.