The Problem Must Be Unavoidable. The Character Must Have No Choice But To Make A Decisionno Choice But

The problem must be unavoidable. The character must have no choice but to make a decision—no choice but to act. There must be a believable reason why the character can’t just run away or avoid the problem altogether. And there must be a believable reason why the crisis must be faced now, rather than just delayed. If a character faces a problem that can easily be avoided, the situation may strain our disbelief and cause us to feel frustrated. For example, if a family is staying the night at a hotel which turns out to be haunted and blood is dripping from the walls, why can’t they just leave? Make sure it’s a good reason. A lack of gas wouldn’t stop many people from running away from a death motel. Closely related to this is idea of unavoidability is urgency. Urgency is all about lack of time. Why doesn’t the character have time (to avoid the problem/conflict)?

Are there any lies that your OC has told that they didn’t want to tell? If so, did they ever reveal the truth?

Resources For Describing Characters

Physical Appearance

Arms

Athletic Build

Back

Butts

Cheeks

Chest

Chins

Curvy Build

Ears

Eyebrows

Eyes

Faces

Facial Hair

Feet

Fingernails

Fingers

Hair

Hands

Head

Hips

Jaws

Knees

Legs

Lips

Muscular Build

Neck

Noses

Shoulders

Slender Build

Sickly Build

Skin

Stocky Build

Stomach

Teeth

Toenails

Toes

Underweight Build

Character Traits

Affectionate

Ambitious

Bossy

Brave

Calm

Cautious

Charismatic

Clever

Conceited

Courageous

Creative

Critical

Curious

Determined

Diplomatic

Dishonest

Disorganized

Eccentric

Excitable

Friendly

Funny

Generous

Glamorous

Guarded

Honest

Impulsive

Independent

Intelligent

Just

Kind

Loyal

Manipulative

Mature

Modest

Mysterious

Naïve

Optimistic

Prejudiced

Persistent

Proper

Responsible

Sensitive

Sentimental

Serious

Shy

Reckless

Stingy

Stubborn

Talented

Thoughtful

Thrifty

Visionary

Wise

Witty

Worry Wart

Wounded

Talents & Skills

A Knack for Languages

A Knack for Making Money

A Way with Animals

Archery

Astral Projection

Astrological Divination

Baking

Basic First Aid

Blending In

Carpentry

Charm

ESP (Clairvoyance)

Empathy

Enhanced Hearing

Enhanced Sense of Smell

Enhanced Taste Buds

Farming

Fishing

Foraging

Gaining the Trust of Others

Gaming

Gardening

Good Listening Skills

Haggling

Herbalism

Hospitality

Hot-Wiring a Car

High Pain Tolerance

Knife Throwing

Knowledge of Explosives

Lip-Reading

Lying

Making People Laugh

Mechanically Inclined

Mentalism

Mimicking

Multitasking

Musicality

Organization

Parkour

Photographic Memory

Predicting the Weather

Promotion

Psychokinesis

Reading People

Regeneration

Repurposing

Sculpting

Self-Defense

Sewing

Sharpshooting

Sleight-of-Hand

Strategic Thinking

Strong Breath Control

Super Strength

Survival Skills

Swift-footedness

Talking With The Dead

Throwing One’s Voice

Whittling

Wilderness Navigation

Wrestling

Elemental Abilities

Miscellaneous

Voices

Voice Types

Speech Patterns

Speech Impediment

List of Character Flaws

List of Archetypes

Hairstyles

Describing Body Types & How They Move Around

Secrets To Give Your Character

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20 Mistakes To Avoid In Fantasy Stories

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– This is the second installment of an ongoing “20 Mistakes to Avoid in…(insert genre here)” series, which started with 20 Mistakes To Avoid in YA Romance. I’ve decided to continue this series, but written in a more concise fashion so that it’s a lighter read for you guys with all of the same main ideas and key points. I hope you enjoy this as much as the first, and if you have any requests for more articles in this series, leave them in the comments below!

Being Impatient

Develop your story at a steady pace that makes sense for your plot and your characters. Don’t base the pacing of your story on other fantasy novels. This happens a lot in Fantasy, typically with political turmoil and development of relationships, with political systems being explained very slowly to a point where you forget important details, and romance being forced to develop too quickly, which makes it feel unrealistic and disingenuous.

Not Thinking Outside The Box

Your story doesn’t have to mirror the typical characteristics of fantasy. Explore ways to diversify your cast that aren’t just mimicking whatever series you just read. Create unique political systems that your characters struggle with. Make your characters’ traits contradictory, rather than assigning them an archetype.

Having Loose Rules For Your Magic System

Magic systems need hard lines and declared limitations. Magic systems without those things are boring to write and lazy-looking to critical readers. Magic shouldn’t be your characters’ all-powerful saving grace whenever you don’t feel like coming up with an actual method of clever escape from danger.

Unoriginally Using Common Creatures

Having dragons and fairies is completely okay in fantasy, but it will be hard to get away with including those things when you have put no unique spin on them that leaves a specific version of that character in your reader’s mind when they think of your story. 

Unoriginal “Chosen One” Plots

“Chosen One” plots are interesting and they’re inescapable, but like the use of universally popular fairytale creatures, you need to put a unique and stylistic twist on the original idea to make your story stand out in the reader’s memory.

Boring, Overused Settings

Forests are cool. Have a scene in a forest. But make it a forest that is unique to the world in your book, with characteristics specific to your story setting, and with purposeful details that add to the progression of the plot.

Self-Insert Main Characters

Don’t base characters on yourself. Add your quirks and behaviours to characters sparingly and with intention. If you have a quirk that happens to seem like something a character would do, sure, have them adopt it, but otherwise, separate your own image from the story. You’ll be too easy on your characters if you base them on yourself.

Slow Beginnings

Don’t start your story with an embarrassingly slow exposition. In fantasy, it’s valuable to take the advice of “starting in the middle of the action”. This doesn’t mean start in the middle of the plot, but don’t start weeks and weeks ahead of it either. Find a happy medium.

Too Many Characters

It’s great to juggle a bunch of characters in one story, but be realistic. Your reader needs to be able to keep up. The main thing you must do is recognize the difference between a main character, a secondary character, and a supporting character, and then develop them appropriately.

Info Dumping

Reveal information to your readers gradually and at appropriate points in your story, not in several huge paragraphs scattered throughout the story whenever you realize, “oh no, they need to know this, here’s the complete rundown in a massive paragraph, including lore”.

Boring, Underdeveloped Cast

On the other side of the point of too many characters, make sure that your main cast has the majority of your attention. Have a few fully developed characters, then several characters that are somewhat developed, but basically only explained to the point where they need be.

Lacking Plot Full Of Repetitive Action

Don’t include an action scene if it serves no purpose or is a complete retelling of an action scene that has already occurred. Develop your plot rather than include action because you think a fantasy novel needs 12 6-page action scenes that all read the exact same way with the exact same outcome.

Skimping On The Female Characters

Female characters should be developed as people, not “strong female relatable characters”. Don’t make a female character completely indifferent to men simply because you want the reader to know she doesn’t need one. Blandly put, a female character can have a happy relationship, a gentle demeanor, and not know how to hold a gun, and still demonstrate strength, resilience, and badassery. Strength comes in different forms. That’s all.

Not Diversifying The Cast

Make casts diverse. Don’t try to make up excuses for not having people of color or people of different sexualities in fantasy. If your book doesn’t include humans, fine, but otherwise, please do yourself a favor and be inclusive.

Unnecessarily Confusing The Reader

Try to state the details of your story in a way your readers can understand and carry into their reading experience. If you make up a language for your story, explain it simply. If the political system is completely unlike any your reader has seen, explain it. Of course, you should leave some room to connect the dots, but not all readers learn that stuff the same, or understand it fully from small traces of information.

Stupid Antagonists

Make smart, cunning, ambitious, and interesting antagonists with complicated emotions, realistic trauma, understandable points of view, and qualities the reader can empathize with.

Making Fantasy Worlds Paradise

Not every part of any world would be believably fantastical and perfect. Lack of roughness and hardship in your world will disconnect your reader, because nobody has experienced a utopia and they cannot empathize with it.

Not Making Magic Cost Anything

The best magical systems are the ones where magic comes with a price. That creates stakes, stakes create tension, and tension builds suspension and makes your story addictive to your reader. If magic doesn’t cost anything, your characters will use it all the time for everything for no reason and your story will probably be uninteresting.

Overdoing It

Fantasy worlds should be interesting and unique, but understandable to the reader. Don’t make your world or your plot so complex and out of the framework of fantasy or your reader will be confused the entire time. 

Ignoring Implications of World Elements

Everything that occurs will have consequences. Show those consequences. If a castle is blown to bits, the people in and around it will be affected. If one uses magic to kill someone, that someone’s family will be in mourning, people will find out, there will be investigation, etc. Consider the implications of the events in your story, as well as how world-building details will affect your characters’ conflict-resolution.

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I made these as a way to compile all the geographical vocabulary that I thought was useful and interesting for writers. Some descriptors share categories, and some are simplified, but for the most part everything is in its proper place. Not all the words are as useable as others, and some might take tricky wording to pull off, but I hope these prove useful to all you writers out there!

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Writing great friendships

Some of the best chemistry/relationships in fiction exist between characters who are/become friends. Here are some tips for making friendships come alive on the page:

1. Banter

One of the most interesting aspects of fictional friendships is the way the characters interact with each other whilst important plot points are occurring.

If your characters have easy banter, teasing one another without missing a beat and managing to bounce off each other even in the toughest circumstances, it will be clear to the reader that these two are/should be good friends.

Friends know each other well. They know the other’s character so well that they can easily find something to tease each other over. However, this also means knowing which topics are off-limits.

If you want to write a good, healthy friendship, your characters shouldn’t use humour/sarcasm as a way to hurt the other. It should be good-natured and understood as such from both sides.

Different friendships will have different types of chemistry. Some friends may tease each other with facial expressions. Others may already anticipate a snarky remark and counter it before it’s been spoken. Others will have physical ways of goofing around. 

Some friends might not tease each other at all. Banter isn’t necessary; it’s just a good way to make your characters come alive and make their friendship one that is loved by readers.

What’s important is chemistry - the way they automatically react to each other.

Think Sam and Dean in Supernatural or Juliette and Kenji in the Shatter Me series.

2. Mutual support 

Unless you purposefully want to write an unhealthy/toxic friendship, your characters should both be supportive of the other. 

This means that, even if one is the MC and the other the side-kick, both should be cognisant of the other’s feelings and problems, and should be considerate in this regard.

Few things will make your MC as likable as remembering to check in and be there for their best friend even when they are in the thick of a crisis.

You need to show your characters being vulnerable in front of each other and being supportive in ways that are tailored to the needs of each friend.

So, if one of the characters really responds to physical comfort, the other should know to give hugs/rub their back when they’re not feeling well. Similarly, if one of them doesn’t like being touched and responds to material comfort, have the other bring them ice cream and join them for a movie marathon. Whatever works for your characters.

What gets me every time is when a character is falling apart and won’t listen to/be consoled by anyone but their best friend (but this is just personal preference).

3. Knowing the other’s past/family life

This really only applies to characters who have been friends for quite a while.

Good friends know each other’s backstory - the highs and lows and mundane details. They know they layout of their family home and they probably know their family members well.

Friends will often talk about these things, only having to mention a few words for the other to know what they’re talking about i.e. “The ‘09 Thanksgiving disaster” or “You know how Uncle Fred is”

This will instantly make it clear that your characters are close and have come a long way together. 

Perhaps there are issues at home/trauma from the past that the other character will immediately understand. So, if one character appears with a black eye, their friend might know that the father was probably drunk the night before and got violent. Or if the character has a nightmare, the friend might know that it was about childhood abuse etc.

This can also apply to good things i.e. if one of the characters gets a nice note in their lunchbox, the other might know that their grandma is in town.

Whatever works for your story should be used to indicate the level of unspoken understanding the friends have.

4. Being protective

Few things will make your readers love a friendship more than the friends being fiercely protective of each other (in a healthy, non-territorial way).

Has someone hurt one of the characters? The other should be furious and want to exact revenge. Does someone say something demeaning to one of the friends? The other should defend them immediately and vehemently.

This can also take on a humorous twist if one of the characters starts dating someone. The friend can make extra sure that said date is sincere and promise to exact vengeance if their friend is hurt.

This can also be a great plot device, since it could explain why the MC’s best friend joins the quest/goes along on the journey. Perhaps this is the main plot point: a character seeking to protect/avenge their friend.

If you want to go in a toxic direction, this can be taken too far i.e. a friend who never lets the other spend time with anyone else/stalks the other/is patronising etc.

5.  Common interest(s)

Even if the two characters are vastly different, there should be something that keeps them together besides loyalty.

This is especially important for characters who become friends throughout the course of the novel.

This doesn’t have to mean that both of them go hiking every weekend or want to become pilots one day. It could be something small, like a love of cheesy movies or a shared taste in music. Maybe they both enjoy silence/don’t like other people. Maybe they are both social justice warriors, but for different causes. 

This could also be common characteristics instead of interests. Perhaps both are very ambitious/funny/social.

There should just be some factor that ignited the friendship and brings the two of them together.

This doesn’t necessarily have to be a big part of your story, but you should at least have it mentioned to make the friendship appear more authentic.

Reblog if you found these tips useful. Comment if you would like a Part 2. Follow me for similar content.