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How to Create an Interesting Character
(The Unofficial Guide.)

Step 1:
- Get a general idea of what you want your character to look like. For this example, I’ll use a simple chart.

Name: Undecided
Sex: Female
Species: Demon
Skin Color: Green
Eye Color: Red
Other Attributes:
|Fetishy|: Huge breasts, giant belly, colossal butt.
|Standard|: Ram horns, claws,
Clothing: Succubus Armor

Step 1A:
- If your character comes out looking pretty cliché, try and change two or three of their traits to something that doesn’t fit the standard look.

Name: Undecided
Sex: Female
Species: Demon
Skin Color: Green
Eye Color: Button Eyes
Other Attributes:
|Fetishy|: Huge breasts, giant belly, colossal butt.
|Non-Fetish|: Ram horns, claws, Velociraptor feet.
Clothing: Nun Outfit

*Bonus Tip (For Writers): Remember, all characters are not created equal. Unimportant characters can (and should be) generic. If a waitress delivers a cup of coffee for your main character, don’t waste time trying to make her interesting if she doesn’t serve any other purpose.

Step 2:
- Give your character a job. A job is something that your character spends most of the day doing.
Being an adventurer is a job, ruling a country is a job, being a pirate is a job, being a wandering swordsman is job, even being a student at school is a job. Characters that have a job are usually more interesting than those who don’t have one.

Name: Undecided
Sex: Female
Species: Demon
Skin Color: Green
Eye Color: Button Eyes
Other Attributes:
|Fetishy|: Huge breasts, giant belly, colossal butt.
|Non-Fetish|: Ram horns, claws, Velociraptor feet.
Clothing: Nun Outfit
Job: Nun for a Cathedral.

*Note: Searching for a job (and begging on the street) also count as jobs.

Step 3:
- Give your character a personality. This step is probably the easiest and hardest thing to do.
First, let’s choose one of the “Big Sixteen”.

www.16personalities.com/person…

The personality types that make up the Big 16 are sort of like store mannequins. They’re a base for you to work with. After we choose a personality type from the B16, we’re going to add bonus character traits in order to customize it.

Here’s a giant list of character traits to assist you in this part.

www.fiction-writers-mentor.com…

*Remember that the most interesting characters have a mix of both good and bad traits.

Name: Undecided
Sex: Female
Species: Demon
Skin Color: Green
Eye Color: Button Eyes
Other Attributes:
|Fetishy|: Huge breasts, giant belly, colossal butt.
|Non-Fetish|: Ram horns, claws, Velociraptor feet.
Clothing: Nun Outfit
Job: Nun for a Cathedral.
Big 16: Protagonist – (Charismatic and inspiring leader)
Positive Traits: Hard-Working, Loyal, Gentle, Friendly.
Negative Traits: Gluttonous, Disorganized, Foul-Mouth, Stubborn.

Step 4:
- Give your character a few skills/talents that they’re very good at. People are interested in those who are skilled at something. Try to make at least one of these skills “out of the ordinary”.

Name: Undecided
Sex: Female
Species: Demon
Skin Color: Green
Eye Color: Button Eyes
Other Attributes:
|Fetishy|: Huge breasts, giant belly, colossal butt.
|Non-Fetish|: Ram horns, claws, Velociraptor feet.
Clothing: Nun Outfit
Job: Nun for a Cathedral.
Big 16: Protagonist – (Charismatic and inspiring leader)
Positive Traits: Hard-Working, Loyal, Gentle, Friendly.
Negative Traits: Gluttonous, Perfectionist, Foul-Mouth, Stubborn.
Skills: Expert Cleric, Competitive Eater, Playing the Organ.

Step 4A:
- Add some hobbies/likes/dislikes

Hobbies: Competitive Eating, Playing the Organ, Jigsaw Puzzles.

Step 5:
- Give your character aspirations and dreams.
Every real person has these.

Name: Undecided
Sex: Female
Species: Demon
Skin Color: Green
Eye Color: Button Eyes
Other Attributes:
|Fetishy|: Huge breasts, giant belly, colossal butt.
|Non-Fetish|: Ram horns, claws, Velociraptor feet.
Clothing: Nun Outfit
Job: Nun for a Cathedral.
Big 16: Protagonist – (Charismatic and inspiring leader)
Positive Traits: Hard-Working, Loyal, Gentle, Friendly.
Negative Traits: Gluttonous, Perfectionist, Foul-Mouth, Stubborn.
Skills: Expert Cleric, Competitive Eater, Playing the Organ.
Hobbies: Competitive Eating, Playing the Organ, Jigsaw Puzzles.
Aspiration: To compose the most beautiful organ hymn ever.

Step 6:
- Give your character a befitting name, one you think is memorable and describes them well.

Name: Hannah Baphomet (Combination of a famous biblical name and a goat demon)
Sex: Female
Species: Demon
Skin Color: Green
Eye Color: Button Eyes
Other Attributes:
|Fetishy|: Huge breasts, giant belly, colossal butt.
|Non-Fetish|: Ram horns, claws, Velociraptor feet.
Clothing: Nun Outfit
Job: Nun for a Cathedral.
Big 16: Protagonist – (Charismatic and inspiring leader)
Positive Traits: Hard-Working, Loyal, Gentle, Friendly.
Negative Traits: Gluttonous, Perfectionist, Foul-Mouth, Stubborn.
Skills: Expert Cleric, Competitive Eater, Playing the Organ.
Hobbies: Competitive Eating, Playing the Organ, Jigsaw Puzzles.
Aspiration: To compose the most beautiful organ hymn ever.

Step 7 (Optional):
- Now that you have a base for your character, you can try coming up with a backstory. I’ll be making a draft backstory for Hannah as an example.
- I’ll be using “| |” as a symbol for “Work-In-Progress Concept”

***
Demon working for a Holy Establishment:
- Hannah is a succubus that has mostly repented of her |evil ways|. She’s still a glutton however.
- Hannah works for the |Great Cathedral| and is one of the few demons that have been allowed to do so.
***
Button Eyes:
- These are a homage to the book Coraline by Neil Gaiman.
- In order to show the angels that she had truly repented of her wicked ways, Hannah had her eyes removed and replaced with buttons. She can still see because the buttons are enchanted.
***

Step 8:
After drafting a backstory, your character is basically complete. Now you can focus on a few other topics:

***
Does my character have an easily exploitable weakness? (For Extraordinary Beings)
Giving your character a sense of mortality makes them much more interesting. This is one reason why Batman is more fascinating than Superman. Bullets are common compared to Kryptonite, and Batman isn’t a superhuman, so his life is endangered by many more things.

Let’s give Hannah special earrings that allow her to be near holy items without suffering. If these earrings were to be removed while she was in a “sacred zone” she would start burning to death.

Let’s also make Hannah’s nun outfit a sacred garment as well.
***
What does my character sound like? (Character Dialogue)
The default voice of a character sounds like the example below.

“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

People often write how they usually talk. Most people get to the point in the shortest and most efficient way possible. So all of their characters sound like this.

“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Hannah said.
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Red said.
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Protagonist said.

It’s alright for one of these “major characters” to have an “everyday” sounding voice. But we need to make sure that our other characters don’t share the same speaking style. Play with word choice, sentence length, (and occasionally stylistic spelling) to give your character a voice.

“Yeah dude, that fuckin’ brown fox hightailed it over the lazy mutt.” Hannah said.

“Golly Gee Willikers!” Red said. “That news is the tops! But I heard a quick brown fox went lickety-split over the lazy dog.”

“Brown fox. Lazy dog.” Protagonist said. “Get it, Frank? Get it, Butch? I don’t want any screw-ups on this job.”

“I believe a swift auburn fox leapt over the idle hound, chap.” Mr. Gentleman said.

Vocabulary is the secret to character voice, and using a dictionary of etymology www.etymonline.com/ can help you find words to assist your character in sticking out. Trust me, you want them to stick out. Because it opens up fun tricks that you can’t use with similar sounding characters. Now, I’m going to be parodying an intense scene from a Tom Clancy novel.

----------------------------------
Power outage—blackout.
First bomb beeps on the floor.
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
His group kneels in front of the device.
“The quick brown fox—”
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
One question left.
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog?”

*Who said what?

vs.

Power outage—blackout.
First bomb beeps on the floor.
“Brown Fox. Lazy Dog. You get it?”
His group kneels in front of the device.
“Gee Willikers, I think the fox went lickety—“
“I believe that auburn fox leapt over the idle hound.
One question left.
“That fuckin’ fox hightailed it over the mutt?”

Now the only reason that scene worked was because each character had a unique speaking style. The author didn’t have to break the action with “He said/She said” tags. Try giving each of your major characters a unique voice and open up fun possibilities.

***
Are you satisfied with your character?

Even if someone calls your concept boring or a knockoff, remember that your happiness comes first before the audience’s. You should love your character more than anyone else. So if you want a Mary Sue, then make a Mary Sue that you’re proud of.

***
Conclusion:

To wrap things up, creating an interesting (and memorable) character, is just a simple task of putting unexpected things into a cliché concept. Nothing is truly original anymore, so don’t try being 100% original. You’ll fail pretty hard haha.

A final note I’d like to make is that if you’re trying to make your main character an “Everyman” or “Average Joe” please stop. No one wants to read about average people. The only average characters should be secondary ones that serve a purpose of world building.

Mildred Montag from Fahrenheit 451 is a perfect example of how average characters should work. She shows us what an “average person” is like for a world that burns books.

***
I hope this guide has helped you in some way. ^__^

Description
body div#devskin0 hr { }

How to Create an Interesting Character
(The Unofficial Guide.)

Step 1:
- Get a general idea of what you want your character to look like. For this example, I’ll use a simple chart.

Name: Undecided
Sex: Female
Species: Demon
Skin Color: Green
Eye Color: Red
Other Attributes:
|Fetishy|: Huge breasts, giant belly, colossal butt.
|Standard|: Ram horns, claws,
Clothing: Succubus Armor

Step 1A:
- If your character comes out looking pretty cliché, try and change two or three of their traits to something that doesn’t fit the standard look.

Name: Undecided
Sex: Female
Species: Demon
Skin Color: Green
Eye Color: Button Eyes
Other Attributes:
|Fetishy|: Huge breasts, giant belly, colossal butt.
|Non-Fetish|: Ram horns, claws, Velociraptor feet.
Clothing: Nun Outfit

*Bonus Tip (For Writers): Remember, all characters are not created equal. Unimportant characters can (and should be) generic. If a waitress delivers a cup of coffee for your main character, don’t waste time trying to make her interesting if she doesn’t serve any other purpose.

Step 2:
- Give your character a job. A job is something that your character spends most of the day doing.
Being an adventurer is a job, ruling a country is a job, being a pirate is a job, being a wandering swordsman is job, even being a student at school is a job. Characters that have a job are usually more interesting than those who don’t have one.

Name: Undecided
Sex: Female
Species: Demon
Skin Color: Green
Eye Color: Button Eyes
Other Attributes:
|Fetishy|: Huge breasts, giant belly, colossal butt.
|Non-Fetish|: Ram horns, claws, Velociraptor feet.
Clothing: Nun Outfit
Job: Nun for a Cathedral.

*Note: Searching for a job (and begging on the street) also count as jobs.

Step 3:
- Give your character a personality. This step is probably the easiest and hardest thing to do.
First, let’s choose one of the “Big Sixteen”.

www.16personalities.com/person…

The personality types that make up the Big 16 are sort of like store mannequins. They’re a base for you to work with. After we choose a personality type from the B16, we’re going to add bonus character traits in order to customize it.

Here’s a giant list of character traits to assist you in this part.

www.fiction-writers-mentor.com…

*Remember that the most interesting characters have a mix of both good and bad traits.

Name: Undecided
Sex: Female
Species: Demon
Skin Color: Green
Eye Color: Button Eyes
Other Attributes:
|Fetishy|: Huge breasts, giant belly, colossal butt.
|Non-Fetish|: Ram horns, claws, Velociraptor feet.
Clothing: Nun Outfit
Job: Nun for a Cathedral.
Big 16: Protagonist – (Charismatic and inspiring leader)
Positive Traits: Hard-Working, Loyal, Gentle, Friendly.
Negative Traits: Gluttonous, Disorganized, Foul-Mouth, Stubborn.

Step 4:
- Give your character a few skills/talents that they’re very good at. People are interested in those who are skilled at something. Try to make at least one of these skills “out of the ordinary”.

Name: Undecided
Sex: Female
Species: Demon
Skin Color: Green
Eye Color: Button Eyes
Other Attributes:
|Fetishy|: Huge breasts, giant belly, colossal butt.
|Non-Fetish|: Ram horns, claws, Velociraptor feet.
Clothing: Nun Outfit
Job: Nun for a Cathedral.
Big 16: Protagonist – (Charismatic and inspiring leader)
Positive Traits: Hard-Working, Loyal, Gentle, Friendly.
Negative Traits: Gluttonous, Perfectionist, Foul-Mouth, Stubborn.
Skills: Expert Cleric, Competitive Eater, Playing the Organ.

Step 4A:
- Add some hobbies/likes/dislikes

Hobbies: Competitive Eating, Playing the Organ, Jigsaw Puzzles.

Step 5:
- Give your character aspirations and dreams.
Every real person has these.

Name: Undecided
Sex: Female
Species: Demon
Skin Color: Green
Eye Color: Button Eyes
Other Attributes:
|Fetishy|: Huge breasts, giant belly, colossal butt.
|Non-Fetish|: Ram horns, claws, Velociraptor feet.
Clothing: Nun Outfit
Job: Nun for a Cathedral.
Big 16: Protagonist – (Charismatic and inspiring leader)
Positive Traits: Hard-Working, Loyal, Gentle, Friendly.
Negative Traits: Gluttonous, Perfectionist, Foul-Mouth, Stubborn.
Skills: Expert Cleric, Competitive Eater, Playing the Organ.
Hobbies: Competitive Eating, Playing the Organ, Jigsaw Puzzles.
Aspiration: To compose the most beautiful organ hymn ever.

Step 6:
- Give your character a befitting name, one you think is memorable and describes them well.

Name: Hannah Baphomet (Combination of a famous biblical name and a goat demon)
Sex: Female
Species: Demon
Skin Color: Green
Eye Color: Button Eyes
Other Attributes:
|Fetishy|: Huge breasts, giant belly, colossal butt.
|Non-Fetish|: Ram horns, claws, Velociraptor feet.
Clothing: Nun Outfit
Job: Nun for a Cathedral.
Big 16: Protagonist – (Charismatic and inspiring leader)
Positive Traits: Hard-Working, Loyal, Gentle, Friendly.
Negative Traits: Gluttonous, Perfectionist, Foul-Mouth, Stubborn.
Skills: Expert Cleric, Competitive Eater, Playing the Organ.
Hobbies: Competitive Eating, Playing the Organ, Jigsaw Puzzles.
Aspiration: To compose the most beautiful organ hymn ever.

Step 7 (Optional):
- Now that you have a base for your character, you can try coming up with a backstory. I’ll be making a draft backstory for Hannah as an example.
- I’ll be using “| |” as a symbol for “Work-In-Progress Concept”

***
Demon working for a Holy Establishment:
- Hannah is a succubus that has mostly repented of her |evil ways|. She’s still a glutton however.
- Hannah works for the |Great Cathedral| and is one of the few demons that have been allowed to do so.
***
Button Eyes:
- These are a homage to the book Coraline by Neil Gaiman.
- In order to show the angels that she had truly repented of her wicked ways, Hannah had her eyes removed and replaced with buttons. She can still see because the buttons are enchanted.
***

Step 8:
After drafting a backstory, your character is basically complete. Now you can focus on a few other topics:

***
Does my character have an easily exploitable weakness? (For Extraordinary Beings)
Giving your character a sense of mortality makes them much more interesting. This is one reason why Batman is more fascinating than Superman. Bullets are common compared to Kryptonite, and Batman isn’t a superhuman, so his life is endangered by many more things.

Let’s give Hannah special earrings that allow her to be near holy items without suffering. If these earrings were to be removed while she was in a “sacred zone” she would start burning to death.

Let’s also make Hannah’s nun outfit a sacred garment as well.
***
What does my character sound like? (Character Dialogue)
The default voice of a character sounds like the example below.

“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

People often write how they usually talk. Most people get to the point in the shortest and most efficient way possible. So all of their characters sound like this.

“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Hannah said.
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Red said.
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Protagonist said.

It’s alright for one of these “major characters” to have an “everyday” sounding voice. But we need to make sure that our other characters don’t share the same speaking style. Play with word choice, sentence length, (and occasionally stylistic spelling) to give your character a voice.

“Yeah dude, that fuckin’ brown fox hightailed it over the lazy mutt.” Hannah said.

“Golly Gee Willikers!” Red said. “That news is the tops! But I heard a quick brown fox went lickety-split over the lazy dog.”

“Brown fox. Lazy dog.” Protagonist said. “Get it, Frank? Get it, Butch? I don’t want any screw-ups on this job.”

“I believe a swift auburn fox leapt over the idle hound, chap.” Mr. Gentleman said.

Vocabulary is the secret to character voice, and using a dictionary of etymology www.etymonline.com/ can help you find words to assist your character in sticking out. Trust me, you want them to stick out. Because it opens up fun tricks that you can’t use with similar sounding characters. Now, I’m going to be parodying an intense scene from a Tom Clancy novel.

----------------------------------
Power outage—blackout.
First bomb beeps on the floor.
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
His group kneels in front of the device.
“The quick brown fox—”
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
One question left.
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog?”

*Who said what?

vs.

Power outage—blackout.
First bomb beeps on the floor.
“Brown Fox. Lazy Dog. You get it?”
His group kneels in front of the device.
“Gee Willikers, I think the fox went lickety—“
“I believe that auburn fox leapt over the idle hound.
One question left.
“That fuckin’ fox hightailed it over the mutt?”

Now the only reason that scene worked was because each character had a unique speaking style. The author didn’t have to break the action with “He said/She said” tags. Try giving each of your major characters a unique voice and open up fun possibilities.

***
Are you satisfied with your character?

Even if someone calls your concept boring or a knockoff, remember that your happiness comes first before the audience’s. You should love your character more than anyone else. So if you want a Mary Sue, then make a Mary Sue that you’re proud of.

***
Conclusion:

To wrap things up, creating an interesting (and memorable) character, is just a simple task of putting unexpected things into a cliché concept. Nothing is truly original anymore, so don’t try being 100% original. You’ll fail pretty hard haha.

A final note I’d like to make is that if you’re trying to make your main character an “Everyman” or “Average Joe” please stop. No one wants to read about average people. The only average characters should be secondary ones that serve a purpose of world building.

Mildred Montag from Fahrenheit 451 is a perfect example of how average characters should work. She shows us what an “average person” is like for a world that burns books.

***
I hope this guide has helped you in some way. ^__^