1/22/2024 0 Comments Negative trait thesaurus![]() Nobody likes people who are just flawed you need something to make readers care. They make us actually like the character. That doesn’t mean they are the mirror opposites: the opposite of ‘selfish’ is ‘unselfish’, but you can’t create a character who has a flaw ‘selfishness’ and give them ‘unselfishness’ as their good trait. A character’s good traits are the traits they use to overcome their flaw. The positive trait thesaurus is the other side of the negative trait thesaurus. The second results in the arc ‘the character learns that you can care about others without getting hurt’. ![]() In the above examples, the first would result in the arc ‘the character overcomes their selfishness’, which is pretty generic. Flaws are linked to something inside the character that makes their flaw rational to them: the lie.Īlso, by formulating the flaw as a lie, learning to let go of their lie becomes the character arc. On the outside the effect looks the same, but by linking the flaw to a lie, you also highlight the internal workings of a character. ![]() Characters don’t have flaws like ‘I’m selfish’, no, they tell themselves a lie like ‘Caring about others will make me get hurt’. This idea helped me a lot to improve characterization. It links the flaws to the so-called hierarchy of needs, from psychology, and links them to lies a character tells themselves. Not just that, it adds a foundation to them. The negative trait thesaurus, by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi, offers a list of possible flaws to use as inspiration. A flaw doesn’t just appear, it’s the result of something that happened in a character’s past. You see, you’re not just giving them a flaw, you’re giving them life. Giving a character a ‘flaw’ sounds easier than it really is. I’ve recently bought two books that really help with creating characters. Today, let’s look at the characters themselves. I’ve already written about combining character arcs and plots. The character has a flaw, which he or she slowly overcomes during the story an arc that reaches a climax near the end of the book.īut then what? How do you think of a flaw? What other traits should you add to the character to round them out? How do you tie that into the story? Most books describe creating characters as an offshoot of the plot: the story you’re trying to tell must match the characters. For us lesser mortals, creating a character is more work. ![]() Some writers might have characters that spring from their minds wholly finished, much like Athena was born whole from Zeus’s forehead. Two tools that can help are the positive and negative trait thesauruses. Writing a great story starts with thinking up great characters. ![]()
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