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Candy and spinach are important concepts because they describe two critical elements of character likability. Candy is anything that glorifies a character. This includes cool powers, defeating a major bad guy, being right in an argument, and anything else that makes them look cool to the … read more »
I don’t think it’s controversial to say that killing is abhorrent. But in my novelette series, particularly the latest story, there is a great deal of cultists to be killed. I don’t particularly want to dive into the protagonist’s slow mental breakdown at the horror … read more »
Thinking through hero’s journey and story archetypes (newbie here!) and was watching the recent Pixar movie Moana. My question is, what do you see as the function of or reason for a story to choose a relatively inanimate/neutral sidekick like Heihei (Moana’s chicken, that, though providing some … read more »
The more characters in a story, the greater burden it is under. Ideally, each character’s narrative will weave together into the throughline, but that doesn’t always happen. Instead, stories often fracture under the pressure of an oversize cast, splitting off into unrelated plots. In the most … read more »
Everyone likes characters that go against the status quo, whether that means holding an unpopular belief, having a different worldview, or seeing events differently from the average sentient being. But for these norm-breaking characters to work, storytellers need to write them well. Read more »
Making a villain for your roleplaying campaign is always tricky. You want them to be intimidating and fun to fight, so the natural instinct is to spend a lot of time fleshing them out. But what if your players don’t like that villain? Then you’ve … read more »
Most principles of character likability work for a broad audience. But when a reader identifies with a character in your story, it can alter likability in ways that are difficult to predict. What’s more, every reader could identify with a different character, creating highly varied … read more »
This may surprise you, but we play video games, and often those video games have characters that we like. But why do we like those characters? What makes a character come off the screen and stick in our memory? That’s what we’re talking about today, … read more »
Have you ever noticed how many more articles there are about writing female characters than there are about writing male characters? Are women such strange and unusual creatures that we need an ever-growing number of articles to tell us how to write them? Read more »
Character karma is a useful concept that helps us understand how to craft stories that are engaging and satisfying. While I’ve mentioned the concept in many other places, it’s overdue for a full article on the ways it affects our stories. First, what is character … read more »