Do You Want Your Story Characters To Be Original? Consider These 5 Traits

Do You Want Your Story Characters To Be Original? Consider These 5 Traits.

Story Characters To Be Original. Write more interesting Characters

Do you want your story characters to be original, not boring, and also likable?

What are you willing to do to help your story characters to be original?

What have you done to help your story characters to be original?

Do you have ideas for how to make your story characters to be original?

Then there are some things you’ll want to consider while you are writing your characters. Unique and original characters in our writing don’t just happen by mistake or accident. It takes time, planning, and clever storyboarding to really make our readers dig in.

It is surprising how many beginning authors leave these simple writing tricks out and don’t consider them. Not well known or famous or well-practiced authors. Time tested and practiced authors know that in order to make characters interesting there are certain human traits to consider and add but in a very strategic and specific manner.

These aren’t just tricks of the trade, they are important pieces of every character’s story and every short story or novel writer at least needs to consider them.

These are not listed in an order of importance, just listed in a way that you can see them and use them for your benefit in any of your writing to make your story characters to be original.

5 Things to consider when writing to get your story characters to be original :

Oddities
Imperfections
Likes
Dislikes
Choices

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#1 Oddities

If you want your story characters to be original, traits that make your character odd to any “normal” person are very fun to think about. Anything that makes them feel more and more human and less like some strange creature from a perfect place is ideal. You don’t have to go overboard with this. Just think of a few unique traits that’ll make your character stand out among your other characters. Giving them each different personality can make your story characters to be original.

What are some easy ways to show off these Character Oddities?

Talking style:

How does your character talk? The way each character in your story talks is a big deal for how your readers will see and interpret how they act on a normal daily basis.

For this, the best thing to do is to think about people you know in your immediate sphere and use the way they talk to help make your characters seem more real to life. Use their speech patterns and also let your readers know if they have an accent or not. Do they slur? Do they have a funny shaped mouth that makes words sound different? Write that stuff in there. Let the reader know if they say the word “going” funny or normal. Do they “going,” “goin,” or “gon?” Let your reader know.

Do they use distinct hand motions when they are talking? Do they shift back and forth? What are their eyes doing? Do they look around or make direct eye contact? All these traits make a character more believable and more relatable.

Which brings us to the next point. What is their body language saying?

Body Language:

To do body language well and to your advantage, you might have to do some research just to make it really good.

Do they cross their arms a lot? Do they have a hard time standing still? Do they fidget? What do they fidget with? Do they bite their nails? Do they cross their legs? When they think do they lookup? Do they look down?

For body language, think about your own body language and what you do when you’re feeling a certain way. Also, go to a public place and watch peoples’ body language and what people do naturally when they aren’t thinking with their arms and legs and heads and eyes and eyebrows. The more detailed you can be, the more fun you can make the character by making them come to life in your reader’s imagination. Don’t take 5 paragraphs to explain mannerisms just add a little here and a little there and you will really make your character distinct and your readers will naturally come to know them the way you do.

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# 2 Imperfections

If we want our story characters to be original we should make sure they have some defining imperfections.

Even though we are scared by nature to write imperfections into our characters, this is actually what makes them human. Readers can’t resonate with a character if they never see how they are indeed imperfect in some way. It’s just unbelievable if they are too perfect. It makes the reader disinterested if the character has no problems. It’s not real to life and it can become boring.

It makes sense that we want everyone to like our characters and we’re afraid if they don’t that they won’t like our story, but that’s actually just the opposite.

A good way to get over this fear is to realize that people don’t have to like your characters like they like people in real life. It’s actually the opposite. Depending on who the reader is they may your secondary character more than your main or your villain more than your hero, but as long as the story is good they will keep reading. Obviously there is more to it than just that, but just don’t worry if they don’t want to be “best friends” with your main character. That’s not the point of a good story.

Things that make for good imperfections can be psychological problems. ADD, ADHD, Schizophrenia, trauma, etc. Whether or not the character has a psychological problem can be interesting for many reasons. WARNING: if you choose one of these, do your homework. Don’t just guess or watch a movie. If you get something wrong, you’ll quickly lose readers. Know what the disorder is really like in real life and write appropriately.

You’ll also want to add Personality imperfections. Are they a horrible listener? Do they lie a lot? Do they brag too much? Use things you know to be common problems with people to help you write the character’s personality.

What problems do they face physically? Are they overweight? A smoker? An Addict? Do they have one hand? Are they blind? Deaf? Out of shape? How does this affect what they are trying to accomplish? Are they handicapped in any way? Is there any way they can use this to their advantage?

Have you read a story where the protagonist is a paraplegic? That could make for interesting writing since it doesn’t happen often.

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# 3 Likes

If we want our story characters to be original we should give them unique “likes.”

These are not massively important to the plot, but you can use them in clever ways.

Say your character likes to ice skate. Have her and friends go ice skating one night and while they are there some boys holler at them and treat them disrespectfully. They think nothing of it, but later on, in the story, their friend goes missing and you find out the last person she was with was one of those boys from the ice skating rink.

You can also use likes to show character traits. Is your character OCD about working out? Do they run everyday?

Do they have hobbies like sewing? Did they rip their jeans while running away from gang members? Were they able to sit down and sew them together themselves?

Do they have certain clothing they like to wear? Can you tie in their clothing choices to add to their character traits? Do they dress sloppy and comfortable? Or do they want to appear professional all the time so much so that they wouldn’t even consider wearing sweats out of the house?

Can you use future goals they have to resonate with your audience? Is your character a detective that’s really good at their job but dreams about retirement?

Is your character a slob that dreams about cleaning up their life, but always says tomorrow?

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# 4 Dislikes

Very similar to “likes” characters have to have “dislikes.”

Do they not like onions? Do they get mad in traffic? Do they hate waiting in lines? What type of pizza toppings do they not like?

Whining, complaining, and getting mad are great ways to help your reader get sucked in and even chuckle at the simple life things that frustrate us as humans every day.

Your reader will either be like “What?! How can you not like pepperoni?” Or they’ll be like “yeah traffic is the worst. It makes me so mad too.”

Use these to make your characters more realistic, but don’t take a ton of time detailing them.

Think of likes and dislikes as icing on the cake you’re presenting. They mostly make it look pretty, but it’s not the cake.

And definitely try to use some clever ways to tie it to the plot.

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# 5 Choices

Choices are easier ways to show character traits that directly or indirectly affect the plot and move things along.

For instance, let’s say we have a character named Gabriella. Gabriella is a very time-sensitive person. She is always calculated and never late. She takes the Southbound highway every day, but unlike her coworkers, she takes exit 21 because she has mapped out the fastest route which takes her through downtown. The rest of her coworkers that take the same highway always just stay on and take exit 22 because it’s easier but it’s 2 minutes slower.

Gabriella is more concerned about the extra 2 minutes she’d be “wasting on the highway” as she would put it.

On a normal day in broad daylight, Gabriella was ripped out her car going through downtown at 7:45 am on her way to work off of exit 21. No one has heard from her since and it’s been at least 2 days.

Now, from this example above you can see that Gabriella has an underlining temperament of not wasting any time, especially not for convenience. She’d rather drive through downtown to save 2 minutes than “lose” 2 minutes and stay on the highway. You can make a character like Gabriella make many choices based on time efficiency in an example like this, but the example shows how we’ve displayed a key part of her character, how it affects her choices, and how her choices then affect the plot.

I think the choices a character makes and why are some of the easiest writing tips to show character traits and tie them into the plot seamlessly and without much effort.

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I hope this helps!

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