Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
A character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it
Donald Miller • A Million Miles in a Thousand Years
Elements of Fiction Writing - Characters & Viewpoint: Proven advice and timeless techniques for creating compelling characters by an award-winning author
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“catalyst” Buddy Love tales, in which a “being” comes into one’s life, affects it, and leaves, is a subset of the Buddy Love dynamic
Blake Snyder • Save the Cat
A story’s theme is dramatised through the protagonist’s choices and behaviour, affecting how the story is resolved in a positive or negative manner.
Tim Clague • Write a Script in 10 Weeks
Vic is a pointy-faced man of about forty with slicked-back dark hair who looks like a weaselly sort of hood, or maybe just a weasel, with his small eyes and vicious smile. Before landing here at the DMV, Vic worked as a bouncer, a roadie, a security guard, a fitness trainer, an auditor, and a head cook—name a job where you got to intimidate people
... See moreKatherine Heiny • Games and Rituals
Archetypes are an invaluable tool often overlooked by writers. By their very nature, they force you to delve deeper into your characters, to see them as not just “Character 1” or “Librarian” but as a type of person who responds in very specific ways to the conflict within your story.
Victoria Lynn Schmidt • 45 Master Characters, Revised Edition: Mythic Models for Creating Original Characters
The concept of The Big Lebowski is “Let’s take the genre of the Private Eye Story but make our hero not a hardbitten detective but a sweet, loveable stoner.”
Steven Pressfield • Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That Is And What You Can Do About It
If two characters in your cast share the same attitude and react in kind to whatever occurs, you must either collapse the two into one, or expel one