It’s an age-old question for all creatives that love and want to write.
Sometimes we are inspired by our lives and the lives of those around us and sometimes we just aren’t.
Nothing that interesting is going on and we really desire to write something but just don’t know where to start.
So here are some quick thoughts to help inspire any writer.
Do you like to write fiction or non-fiction?
Personally, I love writing fiction with a bit of non-fiction spattered in there.
For instance, if I am writing about a dermatologist diagnosing a patient with skin cancer I want to know all about the true to life skin cancer melanoma and I want to be able to write factual things about what it would be like to be diagnosed with it and what the real to life treatment procedure would be.
If I am writing about medieval times I feel I have more fancy and license to make stuff up as I go but to include fun facts like the spears the Romans used to capture enemy shields. They have a type of hook on the end so the soldiers could pierce the shield and hook it and rip it off their enemies and strike them down.
I also enjoy creating completely fictional worlds in which I make up all the rules, the weapons, the magic and I have total control over the universe, the history of the universe, and anything that may come up or come along.
That is my favorite and most enjoyable way to write because the possibilities are endless and creativity can flow without too much research or inspiration.
Do you want to write non-fiction?
If you have an idea and you love researching and the idea of interviewing people than you will most certainly love to write non-fiction.
If we are writing non-fiction, we can write a biography, we can write down a historical event, we can research our favorite science project and write down the science of it.
Personally, if I choose to go the route of non-fiction I think the most interesting topics are true stories about people.
The people could be alive or dead, but there are many fascinating stories about peoples’ lives and experiences they went through that no one really knows about.
I think it would be very enjoyable and interesting to interview 20 people with a fair amount of life experience and get a few of their most fascinating experiences in life written down and then write a book about all of their experiences.
Or another idea would be to take their real-life experiences and create one to three characters that live through them all in one lifetime combining them in a way that entertaining to write and read about.
Writing prompts
Writing prompts are a great way to start writing short stories that can later turn into full-fledged novels.
You can google or go to Pinterest and find a plethora of assorted writing prompts and choose one or more and just start writing based on that writing prompt and just see where it leads you.
Another great way to use writing prompts, I highly recommend keeping a writing journal.
In your writing journal anytime a writing prompt pops into your head you can quickly write it down and come back to it later.
So the next time you are wondering “What should I write about?” you can grab your handy writer’s notebook and have an entire large list of ideas ready at your fingertips.
I hope these tips help prompt great writing for you!
If we want our readers to enjoy what we write and the stories we tell than we need to carefully consider how we get them to see what we want them to see while they are reading.
We especially want to do this with our villains because who doesn’t enjoy seeing a good interesting dynamic villain?
Good example: “he threw her to the kitchen floor muttering how worthless she was. He immediately reached down and took a twenty out of her purse that had spilled onto the floor. As he stared at the twenty tilting slightly from being drunk he spit on her, walked out the door and slammed it behind him.”
It takes more time to write that way and we have to find more creative ways to “show” our readers who our characters are, but the end result is much more interesting and will hold onto your reader’s interest longer.
Sometimes it’s hard to know what to write to help our reader see our villain more than just hearing about them.
A sure-fire way to get through this is to be more specific about details.
Bad example: “he wore a coat and glasses.”
Good example: “when he walked through the door the first thing anyone noticed about him was his dirty unshaved face hiding behind small circular thin glasses. There was a tiny chip on one side. Even his facial hair couldn’t hide his striking cheekbones and jawline, but he never looked up. His long brown leather jacket that looked to be as old as twenty years. It looked as if it had never seen any type of wash and it dragged just sightly with each step. If the smell wasn’t his own body it was most certainly the jacket.”
Again, longer to write and takes more creative juices, but we really want to get into the practice of imaging what our villain looks like and then using specific details to tell our readers what we see.
Don’t worry about being a dynamic writer.
Be concerned about passing what you see, hear, and smell the best you can as if you were in the room yourself.
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All villains start in the same place. They start off living in our heads. And that’s their only beginning until they start to make it on the page with our writing.
If we don’t take the time to sit down and actually write about them and play with their thoughts abilities and lives, they will never become anything more than just a passing thought in our heads.
So how do we get our villains from our heads into our readers’ imaginations?
We start by getting to know them and the only way we’ll truly get to know them it’s by spending some quality time with our villains.
How to write from your villain’s Mind:
# 1 How to Write From Your Villain’s Mind: Write short stories about your villains
11 + Things You Should Know About Your Main Character Before You Start Writing Chapter 1
We spend so much time thinking about the story and the plot and what we want to happen and why and then… we start writing chapter 1.
We start writing only to find that we don’t really know our main characters very well.
Have we ever taken the time to see what it would be like to sit down with them and have a cup of coffee to see what they would be like as a person in the real world?
Imagine you are sitting with your main character on a nice sunny breezy day outside a coffee shop and their name is Thor.
“Hi Thor, how are you today?”
“I’m marvelous and this brown liquid you have served me, what did you call it again?!”
“Hah, Thor, that’s coffee.”
“Ah! Coffee! I love this stuff! It makes me feel so alive and ready to conquer all my foes! I’ll take 3 more pitchers!”
“But Thor that much might make your heart race very fast.”
“Good! Indeed, I hope it does! I’ll take 5 more in that case! Bring them at once bar maiden!”
Silly though as it may be, it can be quite fun to think about what it would be like to sit and talk with your main character in various scenarios and even in their realm.
What would it be like to be their sidekick on an adventure?
What would it be like to walk with them through a quiet field?
What would it be like to go with them into a bar or tavern?
What would it be like to go on a 10-hour road trip with them?
What would it be like to go on a high-speed car chase with them?
By knowing upfront how they would act in a certain situation we can put them into almost any scenario and not betray their character. This is one simple way to make sure we write a good main character compared to a lousy one.
How would they act if they were sad?
Characters show sadness in different ways. Some bottle it up and try to manage it on their own.
Others immediately wail out and tears are flowing.
What pokes the heartstrings of your character? What would make them a little sad and what would be devastatingly sad to them?
When we are able to make our characters realistically sad it will have an effect on our readers too.
How would they act in anger?
Are they the type of character that can’t handle their anger and they act vengefully? Or do they act cool and calm no matter what comes at them?
What would make them angrier; their best friend getting punched in the face or their own face being punched?
Does injustice make them angry? Or could they care less? Does their own suffering make them angry or does seeing the suffering of others make them angrier?
What would devastate your character emotionally?
What things could your antagonist target in your character’s life that would devastate your main character?
How would they feel emotionally and react to someone messing with:
Their brother or sister
Their mother or father
Uncle
Best friend
Acquaintance
Stranger they see
Shop owner
Their teacher
Their relationship or crush
Their waiter or waitress
Their car
Their grades
Scholarship
The sports team (cheating)
How does your character react to change?
Change comes in many forms and it is a brilliant idea to introduce change to your character while you are writing about them to see how they would react and what the consequences would be.
Are they forced to move away from home?
Did the school just kick them out of one class with their favorite teacher to a class with a terrible teacher?
Did they lose their job? Did their boss quit? Did they get a new assignment with a different team?
Did they not make varsity this year compared to last year?
Does your character make friends easily?
Whether or not a character has friends and makes friends easily says a lot about them. Are they the life of the party or a good personal listener?
Or are they a loner and have a hard time relating to others in any form?
How do they normally react to the idea of spending an evening around strangers? Do they thrive on meeting new people or do they hate the idea?
Do they have many friends? Do they have just a few friends? Or do they not really have any friends?
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What are the character’s major fears?
Know what your character fears and how this affects the plot. Some characters fear getting into certain situations.
They may fear being on stage or swimming with sharks. They might be afraid to talk to a popular person they like.
Other’s experience fears of certain things.
They may fear certain animals or bugs like snakes and spiders. Those are a bit cliche, but you could make them afraid of other things like certain flowers or butterflies. These types of fears give our fictional characters more depth.
What are your character’s minor fears?
Writers often think of major fears without thinking of minor fears. You can give your character more humanity by giving them a slight fear of rats, bats, or spiders. Things people are commonly slightly afraid of.
Everyone has minor fears, things that might make them jump or scream. They might run out of the room because of these fears, but they won’t become debilitated or break into a sweat or start crying.
What are your characters not afraid of at all?
We can make entertaining and interesting characters by writing that they have no fear of more commonly feared things. Make them not afraid of sharks, speaking, cliff jumping, sky diving, or bank robbing. Think of common major fears.
Is your character a planner?
Does your character plan out what they do? Do they know what they are going to do tomorrow or not?
Are they extremely spontaneous or do they plot every move they make at the grocery store?
If plans don’t go their way do they get impatient and lose their cool? For planners, the plans they make are EXTREMELY important to them, so if anything goes outside the bounds of the plan that can make the entire event a COMPLETE and utter failure.
For someone that is more spontaneous, they actually enjoy just going and seeing what happens. They’d rather not have a plan at all and just enjoy the adventure.
Is your character spontaneous?
Does your character jump first and think second? A spontaneous character can be easier to write sometimes because you can easily make something up as you for their actions.
Planners have to be planned out and stick to the plan.
On the flip side, your character could be a hardcore planner where their plans almost NEVER work out. This could be entertaining and interesting to watch how it plays out for a character that experiences a lot of stress and turmoil just by plans going out of whack.
Does your character have a habit of lying? What do they lie about?
Do they lie because they are afraid of getting caught? If they do lie but not easily, what first prompts them to lie? Why would they give in to the temptation and who are they willing to lie to and about what?
A character’s personality and traits are a complicated web of thoughts, habits, and emotions, but know how they would think about and react to things is a great place to start figuring out just who this new character you have in your mind REALLY is.
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In order to beat writer’s block, you’re going to need to figure out where you’re at in the writing process.
In order to know where you’re at in the writing process, you are going to need to know what the writing process is.
What is the writing process?
The writing process goes as follows:
You get an idea.
You start to write that idea out
You finish writing that idea out
This sounds really simple and it is. The hard part is figuring out why you specifically are suffering with writer’s block.
Do I have writer’s block because I don’t have an idea?
In order to start writing you MUST have an idea.
An idea is not complicated in itself.
An idea is like, I want to write about a bank robber, but the bank robber isn’t nasty or mean she’s actually extremely polite and kind. She just gets a job at banks and figures out a nonconfrontational way to rob it and then disappears.
How do I start writing about my idea if I have writer’s block?
Writer’s block happens for different reasons at different times.
If you don’t have any idea of what to write about than it is time to do some reading and researching and thinking and sitting down and just making a giant list of ideas until you find one that you just love the idea of writing about.
If you already have an idea but you are having a hard time actually sitting down and writing that is a completely different beast altogether.
IF I have an idea what about writer’s block is stopping me from writing?
This is where you have to dig deep down and be really honest with yourself.
Are you having a hard time getting the idea in the right words or are you having a hard time actually sitting down and physically doing the work of writing.
Some of us fantasize about the idea of being a writer and being famous for a story and making lots of money and being called an author, but if we are honest with ourselves we don’t actually love the work of writing.
Let me make something very clear: The real work of being a writer is finding a place where we can sit or stand and write manually or type words on a page that cause others to want to read those words.
If you don’t like the idea of getting alone in your mind and creating words that lead to interesting words and paragraphs then you don’t actually like the work of a writer or author.
This very fact is to be considered when you have an idea, but you find it much easier to turn on Netflix, play a video game, go on social, go out with friends, and the thought of actually sitting down and writing seems bleh.
What do I do if my writer’s block is actually me not liking the physical work of writing?
This may sound blunt and it is. If you want to get past this type of writer’s block, you will have to stop what you’re doing and just go sit somewhere and start typing words.
It doesn’t have to be a million words the first time and every time you sit down to write, but I would recommend treating it like physical exercise.
Start small. Start by writing 10 words at a time and in time if you find that you can sit down to write 10 words then most likely you will feel like writing more.
The biggest problem for this type of writer’s block is not knowing what to write. Its the daunting feeling of feeling like writing takes a lot of work.
And writing can be a lot of work, but if you don’t just sit down and start writing something as small as ten words in a session you will never write anything you want to. You’ll just keep putting it off and procrastinating.
What if I have an idea and I’m trying to sit down and write, but I just stare at a blank page with a blinking line?
This is the real writer’s block and I’m going to give you the BIG but not so crazy secret to crush writer’s block and never have it be a problem for you again.
RESEARCH.
AND
READING.
Instead of staring at a blank page, start to read and think about and research the idea that you want to write about.
Let me give you some practical ways to research say BYE BYE to writer’s block.
EXAMPLE: Let’s say I just got a story idea and I want to write about an orphan girl in Vietnam during the Vietnamese war and her journey to find life family and love amidst war and being orphaned by that place and war.
Even though I have this idea that I like if I go immediately to the blank word document I still have ABSOLUTELY no idea how to write about an orphaned Vietnamese girl during the Vietnamese war.
So what should I do instead?
I should start reading about the Vietnamese war. I should read about orphans. I should read about young girls during that time and in that place and what their life and culture were like to deal with.
If you start to think this way and you start to read anything about what you want to write you will instantly start to have the knowledge to work with for the next time you pull up the blank page.
And I recommend that you write as you are reading and researching.
If you think of something while you are reading DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE WATI TO WRITE IT DOWN.
I can’t stress that enough. You will almost always forget your ideas if you do not write them down right away.
I recommend keeping a writer’s notebook near you while you are researching.
What if my idea is about fictional stuff and I can’t research it historically?
If you want to write about dragons, vampires, werewolves, unicorns, and leprechauns read about dragons, vampires, werewolves, unicorns, and leprechauns.
Exact same principle, different reading subject matter.
I hope this helps! Now gt out there and write something!
IF you have a specific idea and you are having a hard time figuring out how to research it, PLEASE feel free to reach out and I’d love to help you think of ideas for how to research any specific subject.
Leave a comment and I’ll try to get back to you soon!
I think we can all agree that the reason most readers love stories is because we want to feel something.
We want the good guy to win and the bad guy to lose or if the bad guy wins we want to feel for the good people and hurt with them or experience their emotional hurt.
We want to be able to experience those good and bad emotional feelings without real-life fallout or consequences.
In other words, we want to make sure as good writers that we are tugging heartstrings.
How are we tugging heartstrings?
We create emotional connection and attachment for readers by setting it up from the start.
# 1 How to write a Story that is tugging Heartstrings: We make a character that we want the audience to love or hate.
The last thing we want to do is create a character that is likable, but forgettable.
No, in order to be tugging heartstrings there must be emotional consequences at risk.
We want our readers to feel mad, upset, or unfair about the character we have made them hate getting away with injustice.
We want them to feel sad at the loss of our character that they love is experiencing.
Disney does this SOOO well at this skill in many of their stories. They create a character that we love and then they KILL them or kill someone they love! (Bambi, Lion King, Good Dinosaur, Frozen, Guardians 2, just to name a few…) You can look at tons of their stories and you will find beloved characters’ dead bodies strewn all over the battlefield of story and cinema.
Even if we create a character that they hate this is also good because they will still be emotionally invested to find out if that hated character gets away with “it” or not.
This is called tugging heartstrings.
We make people feel something by getting them attached to characters in our stories by the feelings of love and hate.
We naturally love ourselves and our own stories so we psychologically as humans hate when bad things happen to us (lose money, get cut off on the road, are late, get punished, loss of a loved one), but love when good things happen to us (get promoted, catch every green light, make a new friend, receive a gift, win the lottery.)
Taking it a step further, we hate when bad things happen to others that we love and we love when good things happen to them.
In this same way if we are going to be tugging heartstrings we MUST create characters that are either loved or hated, nothing in between.
Indifference about your character is the enemy of good storytelling.
If your reader feels indifference about your Character that is BAD.
# 2 How to write a Story that is tugging Heartstrings: If we are going to be tugging heartstrings, our readers must care about the relationships we build for our characters.
Not nearly as important point #1 but to be taken into account is that our relationships must be interesting to our readers.
# 1 plays into this though.
If we do a good job creating characters that are loved or hated then readers are more than likely going to care more about the relationships they are caught up in, and we don’t just mean romantic relationships.
They are to be emotionally invested in their relationships with their parents, friends, enemies, sidekicks, romances, pets, any relationship you can think up.
A good way to make any relationship interesting is to bring good times into it and bad times into it.
We are always interested to see how a fight between two friends or lovers will turn out.
Will they be together after? Or will they part ways? Will it end peacefully or ugly? Will there be theft or even murder involved?
All of these ideas make for interesting relationships between characters.
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Common! I don’t have all day! Pick up your weapon and face me!
He hates me! I knew it!
I didn’t know what to do so I hid in the bathroom and prayed!
I had never seen anything so beautiful!
The treasure glimmered in the firelight and reflected in her eyes.
Where were you last night?
Why am I the only one that thinks this is insane?
Tell me again, were there two of you or four of you?
I told him I could only give him a ride a couple of miles down the road, but when he pulled a gun on me I said, where do you need to go? He was pretty polite after that.
If you enjoy Writing Prompts, Storytelling and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
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If you enjoy Writing Prompts, Storytelling and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
Psychopaths are usually well-adapted actors. They feel nothing emotionally and so they learn to adapt to society by figuring out the “rituals.”
-Smile
-wave
-be polite
– when someone tells you something bad has happened to them, react with a sad face and say “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
-when someone tells you good news, smile and say “How wonderful for you!”
-When someone tells you they are having a baby, don’t ask them if they’ve considered the safety of the vehicle they are currently driving. Pretend to be excited for them.
– In public, don’t stare.
-If you are caught looking, pretend not to be.
The Perfect Psychopaths think in terms of how to adapt to their environment and get what they want.
They can be very good at charming you while having sinister motives behind getting closer to you.
Usually, if a psychopath is charming toward you they are trying to get something from you or get away with something without you knowing.
They are like chameleons and do their best to adapt to any given situation. If they make a mistake they may lash out with anger or recoil and manipulate by feigning victimization.
The perfect psychopath will have multiple backup plans for blending into their desired social circles.
The Perfect Psychopaths have an extreme sense of self-importance and maybe even a “God Complex”
They usually see themselves as geniuses and view everyone else as less intelligent than they are.
Even if they carry out heinous acts against unsuspecting victims they can often be delusional in thinking that what they are doing has a “greater” purpose and centuries from their lifetime, societies will see their genius and call them heroes.
They act on the desire to have others see them as they see themselves: as the hero, the genius, the great savior of the world.
You may find that as a “good” characterthey are narcissistic and intelligent and think everyone around them is dumber than themselves, but they will act in appropriate manners when the social situation calls for it.
You can write your perfect psychopath as someone that has trained themselves to act correctly, or you can write your psychopath as someone that is learning social manners.
Either way can make for fun writing and complex dynamics.
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The Perfect Psychopaths MUST have a Plan and have Everything in Their Control
How to Write The Perfect Psychopath
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How to Write The Perfect Psychopath
I wouldn’t say the perfect psychopaths are big planners as much as they make a plan for everything because they must have a sense or feeling of control over everything they care about.
For example: Let’s say they have a secret murderous addiction in mind. They are going to be constantly planning out every move. This will enable them to control their family their friends, their victims, the police, and anyone else that happens to get involved along the way. No one must be allowed to get in the way of their plot.
If they are a boss of a company they are going to have each role planned out so that their company succeeds and if anything threatens that they may plan to “take care of it” by whatever means possible.
Child psychopaths will find ways to control their friends, siblings, and parents. Whatever their “world” is they will naturally plan out how to control the situations and they might not even realize it while they are doing it.
This trait plays a role in their need to be amazing actors. They don’t want to be good at acting, they need to be.
They have a hard time socially knowing when and how to express the right emotions at the right time until they learn to from an outside source.
They don’t feel emotions like the rest of us.
This makes them disconnected and unable to connect with most anyone.
Humans rely on emotions to connect with each other and feel for each other. They can only make real connections when they are taught or teach themselves social cues and showing emotions based on the circumstance.
They do emote anger, but sadness and regret they seem to have a difficult time with. It has more to do with how they feel about other character’s situations.
If someone knows what it feels like to experience loss, they are more likely to feel empathy for another human when they see them also experiencing loss.
Psychopaths are unable to feel empathy for this reason.
They have no idea what it feels like to feel emotionally bad so they have no idea how to feel bad for anyone else.
If they decide to try to learn to act appropriately, it is mostly to be able to control their environment to continue to get what they are trying to get and not lose relationship points with those that they have convinced to trust them and be around them.
Some psychopaths learn to react to situations as if they are feeling emotions and some don’t bother.
Usually, a sinister psychopath will view feigning emotion to make people happy as a futile game that is a waste of time and energy.
A more mogul psychopath that wants lots of power will view feigning emotion as a way to gain peoples’ favor and trust and they need people in order to become more powerful. (Think of some politicians that might think this way.)
Psychopaths are MASTER MANIPULATORS.
You may find your master manipulative psychopath being the second in command of an army whispering one thing to one general and another thing to another general so that the two generals fight and the psychopath gets what they want out of it.
They like to play master of puppets behind the scenes.
They love to know that what they say and do controls people and their decisions. It feeds their feelings of importance and intelligence above others.
You might find your psychopath in high school dating the most popular boy in school so that people like her and see her as popular, but in secret, she hangs out with the boy next door that is the weird kid at school.
You would never catch her dead talking to her true friend at school, but only at home when no one sees her. Remember she can never lose control.
Your master manipulator might be working his way up the corporate ladder and find him figuring out who his next competitor is so that he can find ways to take out his competitor from the running.
Remember, psychopaths, need to be in control. So she or he is not just going to work hard to get the position. They will plan and scheme to MAKE ABSOLUTELY SURE there is no way possible that he could lose.
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Even if it means creating a trap that breaks his competitor’s leg so that they have to take sick leave for months while the bosses choose who gets the position.
You might find your psychopath manipulator as a bank teller who regularly uses access to people’s information and money spending “habits” as blackmail for keeping their money secrets.
As you look to get ideas for writing your next psychopath I hope this helps!
If you enjoy How to Write The Perfect Psychopath, Storytelling and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
If you enjoy How to Write The Perfect Psychopath, Storytelling and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
5 Tricks How to Hide Your Villain Right Before Their Eyes
One of the most fun and entertaining things to do as a story lover and writer is to hide the villain right in front of your audience and keep them guessing until the end.
Throw in a twist here and a twist there and voila, you surprise everyone that they knew who the villain was all along and they met them in chapter 2 but didn’t have a clue until the very end.
In some stories, the villain is bold and insidious and it’s obvious the entire time who they are, but some stories the villainous creature is scheming and conniving and even in their own mind is the good guy.
Whether your villain is insane and doesn’t recognize they’re evil deeds as evil or they are doing their best to fit into society and hide their dark secrets, it can be a lot of fun for readers to be surprised as to who the real villain is.
So here are some fun and creative ways that you can entertain your readers by hiding your villain right before their eyes:
When readers are poring over your words they expect to find the villain as some cruel ugly hag, but if you make her nice and kind and enjoyable, they might just skip right past this one on the possible guilty subjects list at first, expecting you to reveal them later, being none the wiser to have just met them.
Give your villain a scene or two where they are enjoyable and likable and perhaps even charming and potentially heroic and you’ll find folks are pleasantly surprised later on to learn that that charming character is actually an evil character in disguise.
Make your evil person a random shopkeeper that helps the protagonist find an item in the store in the first couple of chapters and even gives them a discount showing the villain to be charitable to throw them off the scent even more.
A good way to hide your bad guy from your audience at first is to make them believe he is a fool or a bumbling idiot.
By making him a fool at first, you make them look like a side character in the story. That adds extra dynamics and enjoyment, but nobody would ever expect the fool to be the cunning evil undertaker in disguise.
Give them some sort of physical handicap to make them “appear” to be physically “weaker,” but in truth, they are NOT weaker at all. It is only a guise. Give them a limp or hobble. Make them a character with paraplegia or quadriplegia. Make your villain a character with muteness, deafness, or blindness so that your heroine and reader are none the wiser to their evil schemes and less likely to put them on their mental suspect list.
It doesn’t even have to be an actual ailment to your villain. The antagonist could be feigning the injury or birthed medical condition altogether. Both work equally well for making a dynamic character with complicated ideas and emotions.
Readers expect the evil antagonist to be strong and of equal strength physically to the protagonist. By making the villain appear “weaker” or “vulnerable,” your readers could look right over them and might not suspect a thing.
Think Mr. Glass in Unbreakable and Glass. People all around him underestimate him, but that is the most dangerous thing to do. The main antagonist in Glass assumed she could control and outsmart Mr. Glass and that was her fatal mistake.
Because of her foolish assumption, she fell right into his plans perfectly and handed him everything he needed to show the world that the myth of superhumans was real. She assumed she was smarter than him and could control him and that was her downfall.
(Side note: make sure to have the utmost care and respect with how you research disabilities and write characters with disabilities, whether they are humans or fantasy creatures that you are writing. We all have friends and loved ones we know with disabilities, so be kind and respectful. Disabilities can be written about in fiction in a responsible and respectful way 🙂 .)
One of the easiest ways to throw your readers off the scent of the villain is to make them attractive. Make them kind, polite, and charming.
Make them the life of the party. The person that could spit in your face and that you would still want to be their friend and have their attention.
That character could never be the villain, could they?
5. Make the villain assist the protagonist.
Have the protagonist meet them on a train ride and have the villain help them find their cart and sit with them and have a very needed helpful conversation.
You could go as bold as to have the villain be there “sidekick” up until the time of turning against them, or you could have the villain help them in a moment and turn the reader’s mind to think that the villain is just a kind helpful person in the story.
One of the key secrets to great storytelling and writing stories is creating surprise.
Most writers and critics would call this a twist at times, but it doesn’t always have to be a twist.
With a villain that surprises our reader, it could be an act of cruelty.
One great way to do it is betrayal.
Think Judas and Jesus. Think Brutus and Caesar, “And you Brutus…”
Betrayal is a great way to surprise our reader with who the villain is as well as really put on the emotional sting when they find out.
The Way to Set Up Betrayal
If you want to use betrayal to surprise your reader with your villain you’ll have to set it up for it to have a great effect.
The villainess should start out in the story as someone close to the heroine. It could be their sister, mother, cousin, or best friend.
When we meet the villain we should think that they are a side character and are good.
Write them playing with the heroine as children. They can grow up together telling each other their deepest most trusted secrets.
They can go to the same school, or live in the same castle.
They can fight alongside one another in battle or be on the same basketball team.
Whatever you choose, make them close before ultimately showing that the villain was right underneath the reader’s nose all along and then write them doing some act of betrayal and showing little remorse for it.
They could be cheating with the heroine’s boyfriend or husband.
They could be secretly plotting to kill them to take their place on the throne.
They could be planning to take revenge for an act the heroine didn’t know they felt bitter about.
Whatever you choose, make the betrayal heinous and hard for the reader to accept without feeling angry for the heroine, or it might not work in the story.
Write a Villain that Could be Your Reader’s Next-Door Neighbor
If you want your villain to be bigger than life, you need to make sure the villain comes across as a plausibly real person.
Villains that are fun but too spooky are sometimes forgettable, but the villain that could be their next-door neighbor in real life is hard to get out of mind. If they have a hard time looking at their neighbors the same way after they have read your story then you’ve opened up their eyes to how dangerous a seemingly “good” person can be.
The idea is the psychopath next door.
Write the villainous character as someone that is the leader of the neighborhood watch in the cul de sac.
Everyone knows and loves the villain and the villain is greatly kind and generous in daylight and during office hours, but if you somehow got surveillance into their private home or office you’d cringe to find out what they are doing in secret.
That’s the key to a game making villain that’s real, but pure evil.
They are kind and generous in public, but in secret, they have nasty skeletons in their closet, or better yet the backyard of their second home.
Don’t take this overboard, don’t write them as fake nice that’s so easy to see through. Write them as genuinely kind so that when our reader learns what they do when no one is looking, they’ll be shocked, surprised, and in horror.
You can even carry this out in a creative way by picking a person in real life that you know or look up to.
Give the villain their personality and mannerisms and this will help your reader see and believe that this character is very real to life and could be their next-door neighbor.
Write a Villain That Doesn’t Care About Anyone But Themselves
A game making villain is completely selfish. A complete narcissist could work.
But don’t be so extreme or your reader will just be sick of them and ready to see them die or lose and move on.
Their actions have to give the reader hope that there is some good in them.
One of the reasons Darth Vader was so HUGE in villain history is that the entire trilogy Luke was saying “I can see the good in you. There is still hope.”
If our readers see a villain that does good things but surprises them with the evil deeds the villain commits our readers might cling to the idea that it is possible that they could change.
Leaving it possible means that curiosity about the villainess character can continue.
But we as the writer know deep down inside that our villain is complete and utterly consumed with selfishness and will never change despite leading the fact that the villain manipulates our heroine and leads them on.
Write a Villain that Has Extenuating Qualities
Give the villain excuses for the way he or she acts.
Give them a goal that the reader could possibly perceive as a good goal.
In Lord of the Rings, every member of the Fellowship of the Ring had the potential for good and evil.
Boromir wanted to take the ring and use it as a “weapon against the enemy.” But everyone knew the ring poisoned the wearer’s mind, turning them insane or against the good and towards the evil Saruman, making anyone a potential threat.
When Boromir says they should use it against the enemy it is tempting to think that this is a good idea. But deep down we as the readers know this is a bad idea.
When Boromir acts in this way his motives are potentially good, so when he tries to take the ring from Frodo the reader can be curious to know if his actions are good or bad. During this act, he acts as a potential villain but in the end, we know that ultimately the true villain is Saruman.
When we do this for the reader we make the villain and their acts more emotional and deep for the reader.
Write a Villain that has a Palpable Description.
Use the physical description of your villain to make her or him jump off the page and into your reader’s mind.
Give your villain a back story that leaves them with a hideous scar.
Use that scar to tell a story.
For example: the character has a deep gash in their back. When the villain was six years old the hero was fighting another villain in the same neighborhood that they lived in. The fight got so bad that it ended up destroying a part of the building above the villain. The villain’s apartment caved in and it killed her parents. A piece of rubble pierced her back and totally severed her spine, leaving her a paraplegic for the rest of her life. The villain blames the hero for her parents’ consequent deaths and her paraplegia. She hates the hero for this and plots ways to get revenge every single day.
Try to think of other ways to use their physical description as a way to remind the reader of their twisted back story.
Do You Want Your Story Characters To Be Original? Consider These 5 Traits.
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 :
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
