Now NovelRead Now Novel’s best character writing blog posts below. Learn how to create a cast for your story that is rich with bold personalities. The best stories make it easy for us to connect with characters and become invested in their story outcomes. Learn how to describe characters’ faces, postures, speech and more. You can also find helpful guides on creating conflict between characters, different kinds of relationships between members of the cast of your story and more.
Internal or inner monologue is a useful literary device. Dialogue reveals character relationships, their converging or competing goals. Inner monologue gives readers more private feelings and dilemmas. Learn more on how to use inner monologue effectively
Literature is full of fantastic antagonists who make it hard for the story’s central characters to reach their goals. Read antagonist examples from successful novels, along with tips we can take from fictional villains and opponents:
Character profile writing is a useful way to build a rounded idea of your characters. Knowing your characters’ appearance and persona inside out makes scenes practically write themselves, sometimes, when you bring characters together. To create a character profile, ask these 5 questions and write summary answers with simple headings (e.g. ‘name’, ‘main goal’):
Describing hands is useful for showing characters’ psychological traits and personality, age and more. Many amateur writers stop at describing eye colour or how characters say their dialogue. Yet there are many different physical details you can use to show a character’s nature. Read examples that show how to describe hands in such a way that your writing is rich and detailed
If you want readers to fall in love with your novels, writing great characters is crucial. Read 5 lessons modern novels give us in writing vivid characters:
The best-loved fiction for children, teens and adults shares characters who feel familiar. This is because effective characters often have strong archetypal qualities. They have combinations of fears and goals – character psychology – we’ve seen before. What are character archetypes, exactly, and how can you use them to make your novel’s cast more interesting?
Knowing how to introduce characters so that they stick in readers’ minds is a skill. Here are six techniques to create memorable first impressions:
Characterization – how you make a fictional character seem like a real, living, breathing person – is tricky. Besides describing characters physically, you need to convey their motivations, goals, personalities and flaws to make characters truly three-dimensional. Here are 5 characterization examples that show how to reveal your characters’ vital qualities:
Conflict is a key ingredient of an engrossing story. ‘Internal conflict’ and ‘external conflict’ are two terms you’ll often hear when people discuss character creation. Read definitions of these types of story conflict, then how to use them to develop your story:
