Write Like A Pro

Characters

Characters traits:

Active, adventurous, compassionate, competitive, exciting, fair, faithful, affectionate, gloomy, greedy, cross, cruel, childish, clumsy, cold-hearted, calm, bossy, brave, clever, charming, enthusiastic, kind, helpful, easy going, eager, doubtful, dishonest, immature, imaginative, dangerous and daring. The list goes on these are just a few.

Character's reactions and actions:

Reactions are important because it shows the character's personality. Do they worry a lot? Reactions also show how significant an event was. In addition reactions help to engage the reader and can reflect how the characters react on to the audience. The reactions and actions should match the character's personality, unless the character's personality change is part of a plot twist.

Develop your character, give them a personality change:

For example: The character may be shy and happy at the start and then something bad may happen that causes them to be distressed or to result to violence. This will make the character more interesting and more relate-able to real life. Make sure the character develops gradually throughout the novel. It has to be realistic people don't change that quickly.

Aims for characters are:

* A strong character.

* Make the character relate-able to the reader.

*Your character should reflect their feelings onto the reader. If your character cries about a tragic event than your character should make the reader cry about the tragic event.

* Flaws for characters need to be realistic. Flaws need to affect the story such as being weak may mean they lose a fight. Don't say their flaw is blushing because that doesn't affect the story. Perhaps use flaws that people you know have such as forgetfulness or a quick temper. 

* Characters can be developed by their appearance changing, their personality and reactions changing however, keep it simple not too big of a difference. The habits, values and fears being overcome. The character should interact with lots of other characters.

* There should be a background reason why your character is how they are. What caused them to be like that? The shyness of the girl, maybe because she was bullied when little.

* There should be interaction between characters other than the love interest. The characters should have a life outside of the love interest. You are making the novel realistic remember. Different relationships between your main character and other characters can give different viewpoints of the character. They may be rude to their siblings and not talk to their parents but, they are really chatty with their friends. The character can be defined by their relationship with others.

* Avoid clichés such as a nerd being a loser or a sports player being hot.

* Develop the characters relationship throughout the novel. Make it realistic. They aren't likely to meet and marry in the first chapter. They should solve their problems and get over fears by the end of the novel. With every action the relationship evolves. For example if the characters start to like each other they may become friends, then the character starts to full in love so the relationship should evolve to the characters becoming closer. The same with the characters hating each other the relationship should evolve to the characters moving apart.