Tag: character development

MAKING THINGS SIZZLE – HOW DO YOU MAKE CHEMISTRY HAPPEN BETWEEN CHARACTERS

Write Better Now
Write Better Now
MAKING THINGS SIZZLE – HOW DO YOU MAKE CHEMISTRY HAPPEN BETWEEN CHARACTERS
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K.M. Weiland writes, “Character chemistry can make all the difference in creating a superior story.”

So, how do you put the chemistry sizzle between characters in your story? That’s a big question for a lot of us writers because a lot of readers want romance and fire and good swoony things between characters even when the book isn’t actually a romance.

Well-storied.com is a great site with a ton of sources and information and it was my first stop when I was trying to figure out what exactly is romantic chemistry. Though I write it a lot, truth is I’m not someone who thinks of my own real-life self as very romantic or even very romanceable.

I am, however, someone who has no qualms about making up a word like romanceable.

So, the wonderful Kristen Kieffler wrote,

“Like all relational chemistry, a key ingredient in romantic chemistry is attraction, the pull that interests one person in another. But the types of attraction that create romantic interest will vary from person to person. In fact, there are four main types of attraction that you can use to craft a romantic profile for your characters. Let’s take a look:

Physical Attraction: a desire to touch and be touched by another person, often in a sexual manner.

Intellectual Attraction: a desire to engage with someone due to their intellect and/or interests.

Social Attraction: a desire to interact with someone because of their social aptitude; their confidence, humor, ambition, likability, and/or particular social personality traits.

Emotional Attraction: a desire to connect with someone on a spiritual level, an attraction often prompted by a person’s emotional capacity, attitude, beliefs, or shared experiences.”

Over on K.M. Weiland’s Helping Writers Become Authors, she has a piece about the five steps to write great chemistry between characters and says,

“When we have great chemistry with someone, we discover an almost instinctive synchronization that allows us to rest into our peak energy while easily batting back and forth the ball of interaction.”

And that happens between all the characters in your story, just in different ways.

So then the question becomes how to do it?

First think of these things:

  1. You have to make it believable. Your reader has to get why these two or three or whatever are falling for each other. So that means you have to have well developed characters.
  2. You want to add dimension to your characters even if they are stereotypes like cop and reporter or um, secretary and his CEO, or teacher and the hot mom.  It isn’t just about the demographics/stereotypes, but the psychographics and what makes them tick.
  3. Think about the kinds of attraction Kieffler talks about and make sure that you have a couple of them going on. Show it, don’t tell it. Nobody wants to read, “Carrie thought Shaun was hot.” They want to read, “Shaun stretched out, climbing onto the extra stove in the garage to get the hummingbird out between the windowpanes. ‘Come on, little guy,’ he whispered. ‘You’ve got this.’ Carrie tried not to stare at Shaun’s biceps flexing and relaxing as he tried to coax the hummingbird into his hand. Carrie failed.”

Pretty good stuff, right? I’m going to be going much more in depth on this on my substack, which you can find here.

Thanks for listening to Write Better Now.

The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Mr.ruiz and the track is Arctic Air and the album is Winter Haze Summer Daze.

For exclusive paid content, check out my substack, LIVING HAPPY and WRITE BETTER NOW. It’s basically like a blog, but better. There’s a free option too without the bonus content but all the other tips and submission opportunties and exercises are there.

Character Development and Novel Structures are Creepy Besties. Here’s why.

I am a big fan of boiling things down to simple components and not spending a ton of time on things blathering on, so let’s get to it, okay?

Write Better Now
Write Better Now
Character Development and Novel Structures are Creepy Besties. Here’s why.
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Novel structure and character development are related.

Not just that, they are creepy best friends. You know the kind. They do EVERYTHING together, drink the same soy-caramel latte, have the same crushes on Bowen Yang, borrow each other’s clothes.

In your novel, your character starts somewhere emotionally and in setting.

Maybe they are emo because they missed seeing Kim K when she went to the WalMart in their town to promote her beauty line.

Maybe they are happy because they finally got promoted at the fire department.

But in the beginning of the story they are something.

            They are in an emotional state.

            They are in a setting.

This is the set-up of the novel, right? The beginning. Act One. Whatever you want to call it.

In a novel, like life, things change. Usually. So, that change is often called a catalyst or inciting incident or plot point one according to whatever writing help book or blog you’re reading. This big change is when Act Two happens—it happens when the change is so massive that your main character can’t be who they were in the beginning any longer. The character is MOTIVATED to react and to act. There is no going back to the world of Act One. That baby is over.

Whoo… That sounds like a lot.

It is. Act Two is a lot.

Act Two equals change. Act Two equals learning lessons. Act Two equals things changing and the main character gets it or they don’t get it. This is about half the pages of your novel. It’s the journey. It’s the meat of the book. The learning. The adventure. It doesn’t all have to be uphill or downhill for your main character, and it’s usually more fun if it’s both.

Then you hit Act Three (the ending chapters, the finale, the closure) and all that learning and change in Act Two? That’s where WE SEE the change for the main character. It’s where WE FEEL the change in the main character.

And they end up in a better place (emotionally and physically).

The structure of the story (all three acts of it) is all about the character’s journey. The story happens because the character makes choices and responds to things that are going on. They are creepy besties. They cannot be apart.

“The tree acts of story correspond to the three stage of the hero’s outer motivation. Each change in the hero’s motivation signals the arrival of the next act.”

Michael Hauge Writing Screenplays that Sell!

Over on the LIVING HAPPY blog this week, we’re going to talk about the three basic character arcs, so you should check that out. The link is below.

Thanks for listening to Write Better Now.

The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Mr.ruiz and the track is Arctic Air and the album is Winter Haze Summer Daze.

For exclusive paid content, check out my substack, LIVING HAPPY and WRITE BETTER NOW. It’s basically like a blog, but better. There’s a free option too without the bonus content but all the other tips and submission opportunties and exercises are there.

When Should You Add A POV Character to Your Novel?

Sometimes an author will get super in love with a character that isn’t their protagonist or main point-of-view character and they’ll think, “Maybe this sexy beast deserves their own point of view.”

Then they will second guess themselves.

Then they will go back to thinking yes.

Being an author is confusing sometimes.

When you have two protagonists (co-protagonists), you want to make sure that each get pretty close to the same amount of time in the story. They should be almost equally (if not equally) important.

So, let’s go back to that main question: When should you add a POV character or when does a character in your novel deserve to be promoted to POV.

The simplest answer is this: You need to have a good reason.

Reasons to have a story with more than one POV character include:

  1. There’s no way to tell the story from just one character’s POV because the story that’s being told NEEDS to be told from multiple perspectives. If all your characters don’t get the other characters and their motivations or they hate each other (think The Girl on the Train) then your story might be well served to have more than one POV.
  • Each POV shows us something different about the story. They have to show us something new, something the other POV can’t show us.
  • You are writing an epic beast where the story lasts for more than one lifetime.
  • You want the story to be super fast-paced. There’s a power in switching in and out of POVs when each POV ends on emotional or plot cliffhangers.
  • Each POV character has their own narrative arc, goals, big lie, and transformation.

Remember: If both your POV characters are in the same scene, you can still only show that scene from one of those characters’ POV not both.

My little, creepy book baby is out in the world because who doesn’t want sad, quirky, horror with some romantic bits for the holiday season?

It’s a young adult novel (upper) called WHEN YOU BRING THEM BACK, please buy it!

It’s super fun.

Atomic Wedgies, Power, Noogies and Does Your Character Need to Be In Your Novel

Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
Atomic Wedgies, Power, Noogies and Does Your Character Need to Be In Your Novel
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Yesterday on Carrie’s blog she talked about a writer worry that happens a lot, which is figuring out when your novel has too many characters.

You should check that out at carriejonesbooks.blog if it’s one of your worries, but here’s a bit more information about making that deadly decision (deadly for your character, not you).

ANOTHER WAY TO DETERMINE IF THE CHARACTER NEEDS TO BE THERE IS TO THINK ABOUT YOUR CHARACTERS’ ROLES IN THE STORY.

Protagonist – The main character. It’s the character that the reader likes, loves, roots for, worries about, the character that moves the plot forward and has emotional development.

Antagonist – The naughty one who keeps our protagonist from quickly achieving their goals.

Sidekick – The bestie. The support system for the protagonist.

Orbital – They tend to get the protagonist in trouble even if that’s not their intent. Think Hermione in Harry Potter. She’s the coolest, but her insistence on doing the right thing and being heroic sometimes pulls Harry into a path of uh-oh. The orbital is basically an instigator.

Love Interest – I don’t have to explain this one, right?

Confidante – This is the person the protagonist tells their secrets to. It can be a trusted friend, a mentor.

Foil – They aren’t the villain, but they are the protagonist’s opposite. Think Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter.

Red Shirts – These are the extras. They are hanging out in the background and encountered, but not super important. The Patils in Harry Potter

If you have a ton of one type of character, you can probably delete or combine one.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Diversify your characters’ roles and consolidate. Don’t have too many characters doing the same thing/serving the same role.



DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Keep your crew tight. Don’t think the red shirts are the sidekicks.

SHOUT OUT!

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. 

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It’s pretty awesome.

AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! It’s taking a bit of a hiatus, but there are a ton of tips over there.

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.

Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!

LINKS WE MENTION

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/142716/where-does-noogie-come-from

https://www.gotoquiz.com/what_killier_wedgie_do_you_deserve_girls_only

When To Delete Your Characters in Your Novel

Sometimes even though you love them with all your heart, you might have to get rid of a character in your novel. Or even—gasp—a few.

So how do you know when you have too many characters?

Part of it is a bit subjective. It depends on your story.

But a big clue is that if the readers are having a hard time keeping track of who the characters are or remembering them? It means that you have work to do.

It might mean that you’ve fragmented the narrative with such a super large crew.

It might mean that you just haven’t made each character memorable enough or distinctive.

It might mean that your story is a bit flabby in a time (2021) where a lot of readers lean toward the story that’s lean.

Your first step is to think:

  1. Who is this story really about? Don’t get rid of those characters or character.

Now that you have that covered, think about:

  1. What other characters are really needed to tell this story?
  2. Go through your non-main characters (the ones the story isn’t really about) and ask yourself if you can get rid of them without ruining the story.
  3. If not, can you combine a couple of those characters into one character?
  4. If your story has more than one point-of-view, can you get rid of one of those POVS if that’s the issue. If your story feels fragmented to you or the reader, that is often the problem.

Janice Hardy has a great old blog post back from 2013 where she tweaks an exercise of Robyn Hood Black in order to determine if her novel has too many characters in it.

She has a lovely four step process that I’m going to share here.

“Step One: Take a sheet of paper and draw two boxes in the middle, evenly spaced apart. Write your protagonist’s name in one box, your antagonist’s name in the other. Add boxes if you have more than one of either. If you find yourself adding a lot of boxes at this stage, you probably have too many main characters.

“Step Two: Add boxes with the other character’s names. Put them below the protagonist if they’re directly connected to her, above the antagonist if they’re connected to him. Put down:

1. Major secondary characters first (friends, sidekicks)

2. Then important characters (people the plot or story hinges on, but aren’t hanging out with the main characters)

3. Then minor characters (recurring people who play smaller roles and are seen multiple times)

4. Then walk-on characters (people in one or two scenes who don’t do much, but have names anyway)

5. Then any character who interacts with your protagonist or antagonist who isn’t already listed

“Step Three: Draw lines connecting the boxes. Use a solid line if the character directly interacts and affects the protagonist, or a dotted line if they are connected more to someone else connected to the protagonist. For example, when your hero is mugged by three thugs, and only one speaks to him and actually interacts in a meaningful way, he gets a solid connection line. The other two thugs would get dotted lines to the first thug, because they’re connected to him, but really don’t affect the protagonist much.

“Step Four: Draw wavy lines between any characters who are connected to each other so you can see the relationships.”

On the podcast Tuesday, we’ll talk about another way to determine if your novel’s character needs to be there. But, you should check out Janice’s full blog because it’s really a great resource!

RESOURCE

http://blog.janicehardy.com/2013/06/does-your-novel-have-too-many-characters.html

My little, creepy book baby is out in the world because who doesn’t want sad, quirky, horror with some romantic bits for the holiday season?

It’s a young adult novel (upper) called WHEN YOU BRING THEM BACK, please buy it!

It’s super fun.

What is a Character Profile?

So, usually one of the first things an instructor will present in a character development class is the character profile sheet, but I tend to delay this because of my own belief system, which is probably something I shouldn’t admit, but it basically comes down to this:

I care more about my characters’ insides than their outsides. Yes, the demographics of who they are and how they grew up and their physicality absolutely impacts who they are, but I want their yearnings, wants, big lie, human worth and flaw to be the things that matter the most to me as the writer and the reader.

But character profiles are beautifully concrete tools and approaches that can truly help you nail down your character (not literally, no hammers involved).

A character profile is basically a tool that:

  1. Helps you not get confused with the details as you write.
  2. Helps you round out your character’s psychographics and demographics.
  3. Organizes your thoughts.

Writerswrite.com says,

“A Character Profile is just meant to be a guide where you can list facts and details to help you get to know your characters, especially if you get stuck on one character who doesn’t quite seem real. You also want to be sure you don’t create a Mary Sue character. Maybe he needs a new characteristic — a hidden trauma, a fabulous skill or a deadly secret — something that will make the character come alive for you. If you are having trouble coming up with character details try to see how your character performs using a writing prompt or walk them through a situation known well to you.”

When I was in fourth or fifth grade, I loved character profiles, filling in all the blanks on the sheet, but what I didn’t know then is that while the profile is a fantastic organizational tool that helps you think about your character, it isn’t what makes your characters believable or lovable or be the kind of characters that readers want to invest time in.

Bringing life to the character doesn’t happen in the outline or the profile, it happens on the page as that character deals with conflict, goes after their yearnings, takes action, interacts and moves across the story, guided by their own yearnings that we readers can relate to.

Those yearnings are a much bigger deal than demographics because it’s those yearnings that make us (and our characters) human.

Resources/Links

https://www.writerswrite.com/characters/character-profile/

Click to access Character%20Profile.pdf

Click to access Character-Profile-Sheet.pdf

https://blog.reedsy.com/character-profile/

NEW BOOK OUT!

It’s super fun. An adult paranormal/mystery/romance/horror blend. Think Charlaine Harris but without all the vampires. Instead there are shifters and dragon grandmothers and evil police chiefs and potential necromancers and the occasional zombie and a sexy skunk.

It’s out November 1, which means you can buy it now, and I seriously love it. So, it would be cool if you bought it so I can be all motivated to write the next book.

Oh, and it’s quirky.

This is because most of my books are quirky.

Be ready to resurrect your love of the paranormal in the first novel in the Alisa Thea series—the books that give new meaning to quirky paranormal.

Alisa Thea is barely scraping by as a landscaper in small-town Bar Harbor. She can’t touch people with her bare skin without seeing their deaths and passing out, which limits her job and friendship opportunities. It also doesn’t give much of a possibility for a love life, nor does her overbearing stepfather, the town’s sheriff. Then along comes an opportunity at a local campground where she thinks her need for a home and job are finally solved . . .

But the campground and its quirky residents have secrets of their own: the upper level is full of paranormals. And when some horrifying murders hit the campground—along with a potential boyfriend from her past who may be involved—Alisa starts to wonder if living in a campground of paranormals will end up in her own death.

Join New York Times and internationally best[selling author Carrie Jones in the first book of the Alisa Thea Series as it combines the excitement of a thriller with the first-hand immediacy and quirky heroines that Jones is known for.

It’s fun. It’s weird. It’s kind of like Charlaine Harris, but a little bit more achy and weird.

best maine paranormal carrie jones
Almost Dead Series – Meet Alissa Thea, a sexy skunk, a haunted campground and a lot of quirky

How To Begin To Develop Character In Your Story?

The character in your story is pretty much the key to make it all work, to inspire the readers to keep turning the page or scrolling down the screen.

Dwight Swain writes:

“A character is a person in a story.

“To create story people, you grab the first stick figures that come in handy; then you flesh them out until they spring to life.”

So, the question becomes how the heck do you flesh them out, right?

Matt Bird writes, “Character is the human element of your story, the aspect that the audience actually cares about.”

And that’s the big deal.

You can have the best plot in the world and most of the time, it won’t matter because people want characters that they can cheer for, commiserate with, worry about.

Bird believes that there are certain elements that need to be there for readers to care about your character:

  1. They have to identify with them (the character).
  2. The character needs to be resourceful.
  3. The character needs to be active.
  4. The character who is misunderstood is more lovable than the one who saves the cat.
  5. The character doesn’t have to be likeable to be lovable. Go for lovable.
  6. A character who is vulnerable is good and even a badass can be vulnerable.

In the Secrets of Story, Bird brilliantly splits three aspects of hero/protagonists into three needs:

  1. Believe – They have to feel like the character is real.
  2. Care – The reader has to be emotionally engaged with the character’s journey.
  3. Invest – The reader has to be into the character. Bird says this comes from active characters who are resourceful and aren’t like the other characters in the book.

Bird further goes on to say:

Matt Bird from his blog (link here). http://www.secretsofstory.com/2017/07/how-to-create-compelling-character.html

But it’s his first bit that interests me the most right now.

Humans are stunningly complex. We contradict ourselves. We don’t always make sense and to encapsulate all of that in a novel is pretty impossible, so we have to pick and choose the contradictions and details to highlight. How do you deal with that?

Swain writes,

“A story is a record of how somebody deals with danger. One danger, for a simple story; a series of inter-related dangers, for one more complex.”

He advocates developing your character only so much as it is needed to deal with the story or to ‘fulfill his function in the story. You give an impression and approximation of life, rather than attempting to duplicate life itself.”

Swain believes that character begin with a fragment and then the author adds more and more on to that character, individualizing her until she becomes more real, more believable.

That individualization occurs through free association and layering in observations and details. What begins as a fragment of an idea (guinea pig hero) becomes a believable, lovable character as the author “supplements” that fragment with “Thought and insight.”

And that can be hard.

Swain thinks it’s hard because in real life, we tend not analyze people’s behavior and motivations. We take them and their actions for granted, he says.

“Consequently, when we try to build story people, we find that we lack a grasp of mental mechanisms: motivations.”

And motivations? They are a big deal. They are why characters go after goals. They are the yearnings that we readers connect to.

So, Swain says this is where the imagination steps in.

“To understand a man,” he writes,” you have to grasp the essence of that wholeness . . . its gestalt, the totality of its configuration.. . Each of us is an entity, a personal and private whole that transcends its components.”

I advocate taking a journal or diary when you’re really lost developing a character and go somewhere safe and observe people, think about why they might be acting the way they are. What is it that’s going on with them. Practice trying to understand people and you build those character development skills. 

NEW BOOK OUT!

It’s super fun. An adult paranormal/mystery/romance/horror blend. Think Charlaine Harris but without all the vampires. Instead there are shifters and dragon grandmothers and evil police chiefs and potential necromancers and the occasional zombie and a sexy skunk.

It’s out November 1, which means you can buy it now, and I seriously love it. So, it would be cool if you bought it so I can be all motivated to write the next book.

Oh, and it’s quirky.

This is because most of my books are quirky.

Be ready to resurrect your love of the paranormal in the first novel in the Alisa Thea series—the books that give new meaning to quirky paranormal.

Alisa Thea is barely scraping by as a landscaper in small-town Bar Harbor. She can’t touch people with her bare skin without seeing their deaths and passing out, which limits her job and friendship opportunities. It also doesn’t give much of a possibility for a love life, nor does her overbearing stepfather, the town’s sheriff. Then along comes an opportunity at a local campground where she thinks her need for a home and job are finally solved . . .

But the campground and its quirky residents have secrets of their own: the upper level is full of paranormals. And when some horrifying murders hit the campground—along with a potential boyfriend from her past who may be involved—Alisa starts to wonder if living in a campground of paranormals will end up in her own death.

Join New York Times and internationally best[selling author Carrie Jones in the first book of the Alisa Thea Series as it combines the excitement of a thriller with the first-hand immediacy and quirky heroines that Jones is known for.

It’s fun. It’s weird. It’s kind of like Charlaine Harris, but a little bit more achy and weird.

best maine paranormal carrie jones
Almost Dead Series – Meet Alissa Thea, a sexy skunk, a haunted campground and a lot of quirky

YOU’VE GOT CHARACTER FLAWS, HOW DO YOU USE THEM?

If you checked out this post, you’ve spent some time figuring out your character’s flaws, and now it’s time to actually use those flaws to make a better novel.

And the first thing you need to do is let the reader know about that character’s flaws and where it came from.

  1. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

You want to show the reader why the character is the way they are.

Can you blame their childhood? Or something terrible? A lot of times our negative scripts in our brains or something horrible happening to us characters creates that flaw that is currently keeping us from having a nice, happy story.

Can you blame conditioning? Not the kind of conditioning you do for being fit, but the kind of conditioning that teachers, parents, the robots, the authority figures put you through. Is the flaw or negative belief system inherited via education or example?

Is it just your character’s brain? Sometimes our characters are not the smartest tools in the shed and they have big lies that motivate them or big flaws in their thinking or their logic because they make wrong assumptions because of things that they’ve experienced or seen in the past.

  • MAKE SURE THE FLAW WORKS

You want your character’s flaw to flow well with the character. Most of us don’t know that we have flaws and we might ignore it (and bristle when someone brings it up) or think it’s actually a strength. A Slytherin doesn’t think cheating on a test is a bad thing. They think it’s being cunning or ambitious. A Carrie Jones doesn’t think being self-deprecating is annoying. She thinks it’s being authentic.

  • REMEMBER THAT ONE FLAW LEADS TO ANOTHER

A lot of times you have one specific flaw destined and planned out for your character, but then they go and add more. That’s good. Most of us have more than one flaw.

If you feel like donating a random dollar for these writing tips, please feel free!
Character flaws: Creating lovable imperfections

How to Give Your Characters Humanizing Flaws

I’m teaching a class over at the Writing Barn about character and we’re half-way in. I’ve talked about character motivation and goals, yearning, making them memorable, human worth, stakes, and the big lie. But one of the most important factors in creating a character’s inner landscape is the humanizing flaw.

The humanizing flaw is about where your character is messed up.

It’s part of what’s holding them back from getting their goals and yearnings.

It creates conflict. It keeps them away from that Superman perfection.

NowNovel writes:

Character flaws serve multiple purposes. Often, they’re the faults and shortcomings that create conflict between key players in a story. Yet flaws are also useful for creating attraction between characters. Without them, characters feel wooden, ‘too perfect’. Without them, attraction might seem too instant.

I have some issues with this term from a disability perspective, honestly. And the first type of flaw that editors/coaches/teachers will cite is:

THE PHYSICAL CHARACTER FLAW OR DISTINCTIVE DETAIL?

This might be about a character’s appearance. It might be about something that goes against society’s “beauty norms.” It might be about something in their physical nature that makes them different and potentially judged negatively for.

The way your character deals with/thinks about/relates to this “flaw” is important. Is it a positive attitude? A negative one? An impartial attitude? Their perception of their flaw helps build their character.

So, both I and author Libba Bray can’t see out of one of our eyes. Libba usually talks about this in a jocular way. I usually blurt it out, unthinking, while I explain that I have a horrible time seeing people raise their hands in Zoom sessions. How we handle our blind eyes helps define who we are as people. It’s the same thing for characters on the page.

NowNovel talks about finding “beauty in the eye of the beholder,” saying:

“The common phrase ‘beauty’s in the eye of the beholder’ reminds us that attraction is often highly subjective. One character might joke with another, saying, ‘What do you call a potential boyfriend shorter than six foot? A friend’ The friend, on the other hand, might have a strong attraction to shorter men.

“Often someone’s ‘flaws’ – a mole, some or other detail – is also what gives them their ‘them-ness’. It’s the distinctive detail that another character associates with them. It represents them in the other’s mind’s eye.

“When writing romance between characters, think about physical details a character might dislike about their own appearance. There could be a ‘too much’ or ‘too little’ that a lover wouldn’t have any other way.”

THE PERSONALITY OF POOPINESS OR EMOTIONAL FLAW

These are big ones, really. And they can be confusing. Think of going on a date with someone. It’s your first date and then you have a few more. They text you a lot. They want to hang out with you all the time. You think, “Oh, what a cutie!” But then it turns out that if you don’t text them back within the hour, the send out an all points bulletin looking for you.

Aspects of personality that seem lovely can be turned around into a negative and vice-versa.

Or, as NowNovel says:

“The imbalances in people are often the things that attract and repel others.

“This push and pull between finding emotional flaws or imbalances attractive and frustrating makes relationships interesting. The character who ‘chivalrously’ holds the door for the other could easily become irritating in their determination to hold up gender ‘roles’ or traditions.

“These double-edged character qualities are especially useful when you want to show how characters pass from hating to loving each other (and vice versa). An extrovert character who finds another’s shyness off-putting, for example, might find themselves getting drawn more and more to their quiet or gentle quality.”

It’s hard to manage those flaws sometimes.

And finally, we have . . .

THE IDEALOGICAL WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH THEM FLAW

Just like each of us, our characters have an ideology. There are values that they live their lives by. They have beliefs.

It’s a bit like going on Facebook or Twitter or TikTok and seeing a bunch of memes that lean a certain way politically. You quickly know how a person on your friends’ list stands if they share those things, right?

When your characters have different ideologies, one might decide the other’s way of thinking is a flaw. One might be a vegan. One might be all about meat and potatoes. One might love STAR WARS. One might think STAR WARS is a capitalistic venture creating bipolarities meant to dumb down the world.

Sometimes a character might think another’s idealogical flaw or difference makes them hot. The difference in belief systems can help a character in a young adult novel rebel against their family if they are expressed in a potential love interest. It can be a place to insert humor and conflict in your characters, but it can also repel characters.

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