You Asked For It, And Here It Is:Character Development (creation) Checklist For Medieval And Fantasy

You asked for it, and here it is: Character Development (creation) Checklist for Medieval and Fantasy Characters.

I forgot to put in there someplace detailing ‘horns, tails, wings, hooves, etc.) but that should go in with the “Distinguishing Physical Features”.

This list is here to help you, as a writer to create new characters and further develop those you’ve already got sitting around, by helping you think about things you may not have in the past. It is designed to help develop complex, three-dimensional beings with personalities, flaws and strengths, fears, beliefs and desires.

This accompanies the previous Character Development Checklist , which was featured on FuckYeahCharacterDevelopment and is now gracing an ASTOUNDING number of Tumblr’s archives, now.

Please, feel free to send asks with suggestions, friendly feedback and commentary!

I hope you find this one as helpful as the last one.

Good Traits Gone Bad

Exploring good traits gone bad in a novel can add depth and complexity to your characters. Here are a few examples of good traits that can take a negative turn:

1. Empathy turning into manipulation: A character with a strong sense of empathy may use it to manipulate others' emotions and gain an advantage.

2. Confidence becoming arrogance: Excessive confidence can lead to arrogance, where a character belittles others and dismisses their opinions.

3. Ambition turning into obsession: A character's ambition can transform into an unhealthy obsession, causing them to prioritize success at any cost, including sacrificing relationships and moral values.

4. Loyalty becoming blind devotion: Initially loyal, a character may become blindly devoted to a cause or person, disregarding their own well-being and critical thinking.

5. Courage turning into recklessness: A character's courage can morph into reckless behavior, endangering themselves and others due to an overestimation of their abilities.

6. Determination becoming stubbornness: Excessive determination can lead to stubbornness, where a character refuses to consider alternative perspectives or change their course of action, even when it's detrimental.

7. Optimism becoming naivety: Unwavering optimism can transform into naivety, causing a character to overlook dangers or be easily deceived.

8. Protectiveness turning into possessiveness: A character's protective nature can evolve into possessiveness, where they become overly controlling and jealous in relationships.

9. Altruism becoming self-neglect: A character's selflessness may lead to neglecting their own needs and well-being, to the point of self-sacrifice and burnout.

10. Honesty becoming brutal bluntness: A character's commitment to honesty can turn into brutal bluntness, hurting others with harsh and tactless remarks.

These examples demonstrate how even admirable traits can have negative consequences when taken to extremes or used improperly. By exploring the complexities of these traits, you can create compelling and multi-dimensional characters in your novel.

Happy writing!

things to think about for characters

do they have allergies?

what foods will they not touch?

what kinds of music do they like?

how are they around new people?

do they speak in an accent?

have they tried learning a new language?

how many languages do they know?

what is a song that will always make them cry?

how do they cry? heaving? silently? sobbing?

how do they dress? for practicality or fashion?

what is the first thing they notice about a stranger?

what is their humour like?

do they have scars? what caused them?

do they wear jewelry?

are they a frivolous spender or a miser?

do they prefer luxury or practicality?

who would they quote?

what could make them change their mind?

who is the first person they'd call?

how are they around animals? do they have pets?

what is their favourite childhood food?

what is something they've never told anyone?

childhood friends?

what are habits they've picked up from other people?

what are their guilty pleasures?

what is something they're staunchly against?

do they speak a certain way? do they use contractions? popular turns of phrase?

can they fall in love? what does it look like? does it differ between people -- friends vs family?

what would they rather die than do?

what is their biggest mistake? one that they look out to never do again.

How to easily improve the flow of your writing

When writing a story, your prose can often feel jumbled.

Muddled.

Disconnected.

Like it just doesn’t flow.

And for a long time, I never knew a clear, tangible tactic for fixing that problem, except by feel or by trial and error. Then I learned a simple, but effective trick for improving flow:

Use the last few words of one sentence to set up the information that’s about to appear at the beginning of the next one.

Here’s what I mean:

Think of it like crossing a stream, hopping from rock to rock — each rock acts as both a landing spot and a launching point. Writing and revising your sentences to serve a similar purpose can go a long way in improving the flow of your prose.

Let’s start by taking a look at a paragraph (prepared by yours truly) that doesn’t do this, resulting in a somewhat bumpy flow:

Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” had always inexplicably drawn Henry in. The painting was framed as a poster on his wall, and he often stared into its dizzying swirls of blue and yellow, and its fiery cypress tree — marveling at the chaos that entrenched the village scene. Henry had always hoped that Vincent was able to find some peace in expelling this vision from his mind and onto the canvas.

Feels a bit disconnected, doesn’t it? It’s still readable, but there isn’t much of a continuity of ideas bridging the sentences — no connective tissue to smooth out your journey through the prose. 

Now let’s look at the same paragraph again, but with some simple rearranging done to ensure that the information that ends each sentence also kicks off the next one (I put these hand-offs in bold):

Henry had always felt inexplicably drawn to Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night.” The painting was framed as a poster on his wall, and he often stared into its dizzying swirls of blue and yellow, and its fiery cypress tree — marveling at the chaos that entrenched the village scene. With such a vision expelled from the mind and onto the canvas, Henry had always hoped that Vincent was able to find some peace.

Now that reads a little better, doesn’t it? You’ll notice I didn’t even change up my word choice. Sometimes you’ll have to swap out words or change the order of your sentences, but even just rearranging information can often add a lot connectivity.

This obviously won’t be possible in every sentence and paragraph, but it’s a great rule of thumb when you want to smooth out your prose. I hope this proves as helpful to you all as it has been for me!

Good luck, and good writing, everybody.

— — —

Everyone has stories worth telling — including you. For tips on how to craft meaning, build character-driven plots, and grow as a writer, follow my blog or check out my new Instagram.

Distinguishing Between Character Perspectives

                I’m sure many of you are already working on projects that have multiple characters that hold perspective (as in, we follow the story from their eyes), or you will someday. Whether you do it chapter by chapter or just intentionally head-hop, distinguishing between perspectives of characters is important both for clarity to the readers (we want to be able to hop into any part of the story and know who we’re with) as well as for conveying character!

                We do this through building the narrator with the character’s voice.

                Whether you’re writing first person, third person omniscient or limited, or even second person, your narrator is going to have a voice. This voice is the voice of the character you are following.

                Narrator voice works almost the exact same as how you would write your character voice. Your narrator is going to tell the story matching the attitude and background of their character. Background will influence the kind of words they use, the way they see the world, and how they would comment on it. In an easy example, if your character doesn’t swear—their narrator definitely wouldn’t, unless the character swears inside their own thoughts but not out loud.

                Attitude is telling personality through voice. Take for example, your character has just walked into the bar:

                “The bar was filled to the brim with sweaty drunks falling over each other, barely cognizant of the drinks they were spilling--much less so the people around them.”

                Versus

                “Upbeat dance music filled the bar. A crowd had formed in the middle of the floor, people cheering and dancing together like the rest of the world hardly mattered.”

                Same situation, far different attitude.

                Your narrator for different characters will use their tone, their word choices, and convey a specific and unique outlook on the world. All of this conveys their character in an intimate way (the narrator is almost like their inner-thoughts or literally seeing through their eyes) and will make reading works with multiple perspectives far more interesting!

                (However, this also applies even if there’s only one perspective!)

                What are some unique choices you made for your narrator/characters’ voices?

Pro Tip: One Simple Trick To Making Your Characters Likeable and Relatable

Want a super easy, never-fail trick to making a character instantly 100% more interesting? 

Make them a paradox. 

 There is a reason why certain character tropes are so common: 

The scoundrel with a heart of gold 

The assassin with a moral code 

The badass “normal” in a super-powered world 

The cute and childish psychopathic killer 

The gruff warrior who’s a softie inside

But you’re not limited to well-trodden tropes, and in fact it’s even better to make your own surprising combinations (because these archetypes are now so expected that they need to be subverted to remain effective). 

When you give a character a strong central trait or motif, and then give them a strong secondary characteristic that runs directly counter to that concept, you generate internal conflict, which is automatically interesting. More than that, you make the character more relatable. 

The thing is that every single person on this earth feels like they’re special. All of us are privy every day to our own messy dynamic traits. We can put the people around us comfortably into various boxes, but we always feel like we are too complicated to really fit any single description. 

So when you give someone a character who is clearly complex in the same way? A person whose identity works at cross-purposes? Someone who doesn’t fit neatly into the box their archetype is assigned? We will find them instantly more likeable and interesting. Give it a try!