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In my experience, characters generally feel flat and unnatural when they're there to fill a role in the story, instead of being allowed to act like themselves. Meaning, the events are written the w...
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#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-14T20:45:28Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47503 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T12:47:17Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47503 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
In my experience, characters generally feel flat and unnatural when they're there to fill a role in the story, instead of being allowed to act like themselves. Meaning, the events are written the way the _author_ wants rather than the way the _character_ wants. The result is a character who is more puppet than person. (You've probably seen them before - the unconvincing villain who's there mainly to make the hero look good, the love interest who has no chemistry with the MC because he's meant primarily as a plot device.) Sometimes, it helps to step back and try to let your characters write the story instead. Pretend there's no plot for a moment - drop your characters into the scenario you've set up, and let things play out the way _they_ would want. You may find you need to tweak the plot, or abandon the character and create a new one. (If you're having trouble, I've also found it helpful to take the characters out of the story completely and drop them into situations they might never experience otherwise. How do they react to being stuck in a traffic jam? A difficult co-worker? etc.) In summary: Make sure you're writing your characters as _people_, not as plot devices.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2019-08-22T11:36:59Z (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 3