I always tell my students to complicate your characters: never make it easy for the reader. Nobody is ever one thing. That's what makes characters compelling.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
As with anything, you need to keep your creative juices flowing and keep the character interesting.
To combine telling an interesting story with brilliantly written characters is the most difficult thing to do.
Exposing characters and their shortcomings gives me great comfort. It's always great to write about someone more mixed up than yourself.
All of my characters are a little bit based on people I know in real life. You know when you do that you have to change the character a little bit in case your friend or your relative reads the book, because you don't want them to know you wrote about them... They might get mad.
I believe the most intricate plot won't matter much to readers if they don't care about the characters, especially in a series. So I try to focus hard on making each character, whether villain or hero, have an interesting flaw that readers can relate to.
When you think of a great twist or a red herring or a way of misdirecting the reader, it is good, but you know that they are just tricks at the end of the day, and the way to keep interest is to write characters that people care about.
You'll work hard to create characters that are compelling and unforgettable. But in the end, it's the story that matters.
I always try to make each character my own.
In real life, people are constantly saying one thing and doing another, but if you write your characters that way, the story becomes too hard to follow.
I think if you're too embroiled in the need to relate too closely to the character, then you start to judge the character for the audience rather than to present it to the audience for their enjoyment and them to mull over the questions that the characters present.
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