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I outlined the Heroine’s Journey last week, but it’s more fun to watch it in action. Because this structure is about a character who’s out of balance and makes a course correction, it’s often used for villains who take a heel-face turn. Here’s five villains … read more »
Grasping the outlook of a character is difficult for any storyteller, but it can be especially difficult in speculative fiction. If your hero is an alien living on another planet, her perspective will be vastly different from yours, and there won’t be any aliens from her planet you can interview. Read more »
Popular media is rife with psychopaths. In fact, psychopaths are more common than you might think. Psychopathic villains often serve as foils for heroic deeds, but there are psychopathic heroes, too. Read more »
Chris, Oren, and Mike discuss the depiction of parents in popular stories. They describe why so many parents are cast in a negative light, share their favorite parent characters, and rediscover sexism for the gazillionth time. Read more »
Every time you build a new PC, it’s an opportunity to explore a new character’s story. But what if you draw a blank? It’s a struggle to be creative without context in an unknown campaign world, or to create a replacement character if your original … read more »
The internet abounds with exercises to help storytellers develop their characters. These steps are all helpful, but none of them are irreplaceable. What’s important is the end result. But what does that endpoint look like? Here are five signs that you’ve arrived. Read more »
One of the challenges of writing strong dialogue is making each character sound unique. Without different speaking styles, it’s hard for readers to tell who’s speaking, and conversations become lackluster. Luckily, there’s a variety of options for distinguishing characters in dialogue. Read more »
Perfect characters kill tension with ruthless efficiency. It’s really hard to get interested in what they’re working through, because it’s obvious they’ll succeed. Characters that overcome obstacles despite a serious handicap seem stronger than ones who don’t. Read more »
Mike, Oren, and Chris are confounded by all-encompassing definition of anti-heroes on TV Tropes. Oren shares his theory that all characters are either boring, anti-heroes, or Captain Picard. Chris asks why there aren’t female anti-heroes that aren’t also antagonists, and Mike describes anti-hero tricksters, templars, and … read more »
Chris, Oren, and Mike discuss the great dilemma of whether or not to kill a character. They describe the storytelling problems created by this dilemma, and question the difference between good character deaths and bad ones. Read more »