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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48022
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48022
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

You talk of your characters as one or two basic characteristics, and that's it. That's where your problem is. There is more to a person than a short tag. Think about your friends. Chances are, you can describe them all as "lawful good", or "friendly geek", or whatever kind of people you surround yourself with. But each is much more than one tag, right? Each has a whole set of character traits; each has their unique history, unique view on things, unique way of acting; each is a unique person.

As an example, here are some characters I used to play in an online text-based RPG (a MUD) many years back. All would be classified as lawful-good, but look at what made them different:

- Alpha was a young woman from an affluent family. She rebelled against her parents' expectations from a girl, and joined the army. Having grown up in a port city, she spoke like a sailor - using both naval metaphors and colourful language; a rebellious choice, since she certainly had the education to speak properly. Based on the same state of mind, she despised grandstanding and snobbishness. Underneath this façade, Alpha hid a bundle of insecurities about her parents maybe being right to some extent about some things, in particular about being able to find a husband while not being a "proper lady".
- Bravo was a minor nobleman, also a soldier. (See a commonality here? You might think they're the same person, only look how they aren't.) He didn't rebel against anything - he knew what his place in the world was, what his duty was, and he did just that. Consequently, his attitude was always calm and patient. Where Alpha was impulsive, Bravo thought things through. Where Alpha made a choice and ran with it, and then faced the consequences, Braco agonised over conflicting duties, turning them in his mind until he found the right path. He was also a family man, with a wife and kids, contributing to the whole "conflicting duties" thing.
- Charlie was a ranger rather than a soldier. While not too different in essence, his loyalty wasn't to "king and country" but to his comrades and company leader. He was also a dreamer, unlike the previous two characters: he wrote songs, and had "Plans" for the future. He wasn't actually very good at the whole "ranger" thing - he didn't lack courage or fighting skill, but when he needed to guard something, or scout, or perform some other task where the mind might wander, his mind did just that - he'd be thinking of his fiancée in great detail and rather forget everything else.

On the face of it they're all the same. When you delve a little deeper, they're not the same at all. They might all cite "protecting people" as their motivation for bearing arms, but in its details their motivation is different. In the same situation, they would take different actions. They would respond differently to the same stimuli. Some of their goals are the same, some are different. Coming from different backgrounds, they speak differently and see things differently. And so on.

Which is exactly where the answer lies: **you need to give your characters more flesh, more development. Delve deeper into who each of them is.** Each character is not a couple of tags - they are a person. Only once your characters are fleshed out enough, can they be different.

Original score: 41