Things My Characters Learned (the Hard Way) #6

That's right. Every Friday, I'm going to share with ya'll a lesson my characters have learned sometime earlier that week while I wrote their story. Because we all know that sometimes the best lessons are ones learned in a more painful way than not (usually). It also serves to act as a way to share vague plot devices: what are the many ways you can get your characters into trouble? Read on to find out.

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Project: UNTITLED (Hansel + Gretel retelling)

Genre: Short Story

Lesson Learned: Always be sure of your way, or at least make sure the person in charge is sure of their way. And if you still don't trust their sense of direction, take some initiative and bring something to mark down your path? Or at least a map? Because getting lost is a sure-fire way of getting into sticky situations.

Really, you never know who you might run into when you can't find your way home. Thieves, beggars, a witch or two...there's troublemakers of all kind in unfamiliar territory.

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Do you write? Can your characters relate? Have your characters learned an important life lesson this week? Leave me a note in the comments! 

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TMCL: looking to get your characters into trouble? You never know who they'll run into when lost... (Click to Tweet)

Things My Characters Learned (the Hard Way) #5

**Note: Happy Friday, everyone! Well, it's officially been a month since I kicked off this new weekly blog feature, Things My Characters Learned (the Hard Way), and I'd love to know what you think so far. Questions, comments, suggestions? Leave them in the comments, and I'll send you virtual cookies!

Also, something new: you can now Follow my blog with Bloglovin**

 

That's right. Every Friday, I'm going to share with ya'll a lesson my characters have learned sometime earlier that week while I wrote their story. Because we all know that sometimes the best lessons are ones learned in a more painful way than not (usually). It also serves to act as a way to share vague plot devices: what are the many ways you can get your characters into trouble? Read on to find out.

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Project: CHILD'S PLAY

Genre: Short Story

Lesson Learned: Maybe Mother was on to something when she said not to talk to strangers. Just because somebody doesn't look dangerous, doesn't mean they can't effectively cause you to blind yourself before they steal your stuff.

Being young and impressionable is no excuse. If you get warnings from your own mother to help guide you safely to your destination, you might want to think about those warnings, and then actually heed them.

Mother is always right (sometimes).

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Do you write? Can your characters relate? Have your characters learned an important life lesson this week? Leave me a note in the comments! 

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TMCL: Mother's always right, right? Do your character heed their parents' advice? (Click to Tweet)

Things My Characters Learned (the Hard Way) #4

That's right. Every Friday, I'm going to share with ya'll a lesson my characters have learned sometime earlier that week while I wrote their story. Because we all know that sometimes the best lessons are ones learned in a more painful way than not (usually). It also serves to act as a way to share vague plot devices: what are the many ways you can get your characters into trouble? Read on to find out.

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Project: THE HOLLOW MEN

Genre: YA Sci-Fi/Thriller

Lesson Learned: Secrets don't make friends, but friends actually do make secrets. It makes it really hard to trust people, don't you think? The thing is, everyone's hiding something, and sometimes it's the least likely person who has the biggest and most shocking secret of all.

Do you know all your characters' secrets?

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Do you write? Can your characters relate? Have your characters learned an important life lesson this week? Leave me a note in the comments!

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TMCL: Friends make lots of secrets. Do you know the secrets your characters keep? (Click to Tweet)

Things My Characters Learn (the Hard Way) #3

That's right. Every Friday, I'm going to share with ya'll a lesson my characters have learned sometime earlier that week while I wrote their story. Because we all know that sometimes the best lessons are ones learned in a more painful way than not (usually). It also serves to act as a way to share vague plot devices: what are the many ways you can get your characters into trouble? Read on to find out.

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Project: WISHING STAR

Genre: Short Story

Lesson Learned: Be aware of how easily opportunities can disappear, whether it's to spend time with someone you love, take the next step in your life, solve a mystery that's been troubling you, etc. The chance you have now to make things right can disappear entirely, which means you've lost your window of opportunity.

Which means you'll need to be really creative to make up for it...

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Do you write? Can your characters relate? Have your characters learned an important life lesson this week? Leave me a note in the comments!

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TMCL: Missing that window of opportunity means your characters have to be really creative to make up for it (Click to Tweet)

The Villain as the Failed Hero: Humanizing Antagonists

So here's the thing: villains are not villains just so they can twirl their mustaches and say, "Ha! See? I'm evil!"

Just like your good guys, your bad guys have a history. Just like your good guys, they have reasons for doing things. The difference is, the reader tends to not see many of those reasons. Sure, they might get the Sparknotes version eventually, but even then it'll be watered-down; most of the roots of the villainry are trapped below the surface.

Which means they're doubly hard to write.

Villains and antagonists don't sit in the dark corners of their bedrooms plotting ways to be evil. In fact, the most convincing and realistic-and thus terrifying-villains are those who believe that they're the ones doing good; if you told your novel from their point of view, they'd be the good guys.

So when you're writing them, imagine they're the good guys.

What are they fighting for? What do they care about? What do they hope their actions will do? Who do they care about most, if anyone? If they're doing bad, and they know that it's bad, then why? What changed? Try writing a few hundred words of the most pivotal moment of their life. How are you looking at them differently, now?

Bad guys are only human (unless your bad guy is literally not of the human species, but still). They have flaws. They also have feelings. When you're writing your novel, make sure that you're doing them the respect they deserve and show them, and you'll be on your way to humanizing them, because every character exists on a blurred line: nothing's ever black or white.

Think of it this way: villains are the heroes who were never saved. While that's only one possible trope for characterizing your villains, antagonists, and overall baddies (of whatever caliber), it's a good place to start.

So I kind of already gave ya'll my own way of getting to know my villains: write something from their point of view. How do ya'll go about getting to know your bad guys?

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Crafting a believable bad guy? Try imagining they're the good guy. Blogger @Rae_Slater talks humanizing antagonists (Click to Tweet)

Things My Characters Learn (the Hard Way) #2

That's right. Every Friday, I'm going to share with ya'll a lesson my characters have learned sometime earlier that week while I wrote their story. Because we all know that sometimes the best lessons are ones learned in a more painful way than not (usually). It also serves to act as a way to share vague plot devices: what are the many ways you can get your characters into trouble? Read on to find out.

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Project: THE HOLLOW MEN

Genre: YA Sci-Fi/Thriller

Lesson Learned: If you're sneaking out in the middle of the night and breaking into a secure area, and the person you're sneaking in with gives you very small answers that aren't answers at all? Odds are things aren't going to end well.

Ask questions first, and stay out of trouble, later.

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Do you write? Can your characters relate? Have your characters learned an important life lesson this week? Leave me a note in the comments!

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TMCL: Sometimes, asking questions later doesn't work as well as your characters might think (Click to Tweet)

Things My Characters Learn (the Hard Way) #1

This is just the week of new things, isn't it? My second (and last; for now) new blog feature that I'm excited to introduce is a weekly feature called:

That's right. Every Friday, I'm going to share with ya'll a lesson my characters have learned sometime earlier that week. Because we all know that sometimes the best lessons are ones learned in a more painful way than not (usually). So what did my characters learn the hard way this week? Read on to find out.

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Project: THE HOLLOW  MEN

Genre: YA Sci-Fi/Thriller

Lesson Learned: Guns are dangerous. If you've never handled one before, odds are that grabbing one and attempting to threaten an enemy is going to wind up with somebody shot. And dead. On accident, maybe. But still dead.

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Do you write? Can your characters relate? Have your characters learned an important life lesson this week? Leave me a note in the comments!

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Things My Characters Learned (the Hard Way): blogger @Rae_Slater breaks out another new blog feature. With a bang. (Click to Tweet)

@Rae_Slater's characters learned about firearms and their lethality this week. What did yours learn (the hard way)? (Click to Tweet)

Characters and Interiority: Thought-Processes

So I was going to write a post on telling vs. showing and why telling is sometimes acceptable but only in small doses (never in large doses; I promise you the reader would roll their eyes). Then I was going to write a post about antagonists and how you have to humanize them in order to make them not only believable, but to allow to reader to sympathize them in some way.

Then I was sitting at my laptop going, "Um, I really have no clue how to talk about either of those right now." So those are coming, eventually; promise!

Instead I decided to write on something that I personally struggle with as a writer; it's something that's also been my thesis adviser's number one suggestion so far after reading the first two rough drafts of two short stories I'm writing for my senior project.

Interiority.

Technically it's not a word, but I'm ignoring that: in my world, it's totally a word. And it's fun to say. So what is interiority? Simply, it's the inner-workings of your character. As the title suggests: it's their thoughts and their thought-processes; it's their vision of the world and how that vision impacts what they do and what they say.

It's a large part of making your reader connect to your characters, and particularly the character whose perspective the reader is spending time in. Whether you're writing in first person or third, interiority is important.

It's also really hard to do without doing a whole lot of telling. In my opinion, at least (remember: I'm horrible at interiority and it's been my adviser's number one suggestion for improving my short stories; I am by no means an expert).

So if I'm not an expert, why am I explaining all this? Put simply: it helps me learn. I hope it helps you learn, too. (Also: I've never claimed to be an expert on anything involved in this writing thing, so there's that, too).

Despite that, I think there's one easy way to both understand your character's inner workings, as well as show the reader the character's inner workings; and it'll sound more natural.

Write your first draft. However you want. By this time, you should already have at least a little bit of an idea of what your character's motives are, so that'll help you write them and their actions. Once you've got the actions written, go back. Start again and add to the skeleton. You know what you're character's doing, now attempt to unravel the why. What makes them come to the conclusions that they do?

There's a lot of work that comes into this part. What's helped me is to consider a number of things:

• Consider your character's back story. Their history will help define their future; it determines the way they act on psychological scales. Memories are powerful things, so use them.
• Consider their relationship with others. Everyone's influenced by somebody else. Something somebody else did, something someone else said. Whether that somebody is a friend or an enemy also has an impact, and determines how far under the skin their influence can get. There's also peer pressure: does that somebody want your character to do something? How does that make them feel?
• Consider recent events. It's pretty common for people and characters to react and do things without thinking things through when they're in high-stress situations. Likewise, they're also going to react in strange ways when they have a longer time to think. Think about how much time they have to make a decision, and also what kinds of things have happened recently that might influence those decisions; odds are these events could be at the forefront of their minds.
• Consider your character's motivations. I kind of already mentioned this before I started this list, but a character's motivations are absolutely key. Whatever they're doing, and whatever decision they're making, the odds are that they'll be hoping that their actions bring them closer to their goals, whatever it is.

Like I said, I'm not an expert on this. Far from it. Yet the above list are some of the things I've been thinking about in order to explain my character's thoughts and actions in those short stories I'm writing; they all run in conjunction with many of the other comments my adviser has had to say: things about their goals and their relationships with other characters, in particular.

The key is that you don't have to have a detailed list of how one thought leads to another with a character. What you do have to do, however, is make the reader familiar enough with the character;s thoughts and life that, when they do make those leaps, the reader can follow them and use them to gain an opinion on the character.

If that makes sense. I hope? If ya'll have any suggestions or corrections or additions for me, let me have them; what kinds of things do you do or think about to really get your readers inside the mind of your character?

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Blogger @Rae_Slater talks interiority in characters: her biggest struggle, and how she's attempting to get around it (Click to Tweet)

Is That Character Really Necessary?

Quick apologies: my weekend was oddly stressful, which means my thoughts are muddled. I really hope this post makes sense.

For the entire month of December (and most of January) I was trying to get a start on rewriting my WIP. It was painfully hard. Ya'll might remember last month when I wrote my post on Conversations with a Character, and finally managed to figure out where I was going wrong (when my character called me out on being lazy).

Then I looked at one of my characters and realized his presence was a bit odd. I didn't know anything about him. Who are you, Connor? I asked. And then I nearly fell back in my chair when I had that thought, What do you even do?

What dawned on me, then, was that this character--a strapping young man named Connor--actually wasn't necessary. His presence wasn't vital to the plot. I could replace him. As in: I realized I could take him out and put another character (who already had a large part in the plot) in his place, and nothing changed.

Whoa, right?

When writing a novel, everything's important: every word, every sentence, every dialogue, every setting, every character. We all know this, right? One of the problems comes, in my opinion, when looking at characters in particular, especially if you're already done with draft one and you've moved on to rewrites and edits.

That problem? You love all your characters as if you gave birth to them. Then you're editing and you start to wonder why you have so many characters and are they all absolutely needed to make your novel's world go 'round?

It's hard, but that's why you actually should wait for editing to do this, since you're already in a heartless, kill-your-darlings state of mind, anyway.

To solve the dilemma of whether a character is actually really needed, ask yourself (and I did ask myself this) one question: What does that character have to offer?

It's a tough question, particularly when you look at books in a series. Take Harry Potter or even Maggier Stiefvater's The Raven Cycle into consideration: a large cast of characters, and some of them don't have much to do until book two/three/etc. In this case, you have to be willing to look to the future of your novel to determine whether the character in question has anything that might be useful to you or to the story line.

For the purposes of this post, simply look at your character and their purpose (every character has a purpose: protagonist, antagonist, foil, anti-hero, hero; they're the comic relief, they're the gatekeeper, they're the secret keeper. Get the point?) and ask yourself if there's any other character that can take on that exact role, or can carry out that character's duties in addition to their own without anything changing.

If the answer to that question is yes, then perhaps you might want to reconsider their presence.

To be honest, when looking at the necessity of a character it's usually the side and minor characters that go under the ax. Main characters are easy: of course nobody else can do their job (and if somebody else can do their job, then you should probably reconsider them, as well).

If one of those major characters can do the job of a minor, or if you can combine multiple minor characters, odds are that's what needs to be done. As I already said: in my WIP, I was able to replace Connor with another character with none of the consequences changing; the same ripple effects spread out among my other characters. Which meant that Connor wasn't really necessary. It tightened my plot more than you can imagine.

So that's my quick post on determining the necessity of a character. How do you deal with the realization that your cast might be too big?

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Blogger @Rae_Slater talks characters, and how to tell if they're all really as crucial to your plot as you might think. (Click to Tweet)

What does that character have to offer? How to tell if it's time to give that character the ax (Click to Tweet)

Creating Characters Using Pieces of You

(Real fast, let's just revel in the excitement that today is post number 200 on the blog! *throws confetti*)

When it comes to crafting characters, making them feel real is the goal. Giving them real dreams, motivations, ambitions, and relationships is what's going make the reader not only believe in them, but to care for them.

The way to do this is to consider one of the most basic pieces of writing advice: write what you know.

So how's this work? Look at the characters you already have, in whatever project you're working on. Break them down until you can identify their most basic personality traits. While it's true that you should have a diverse range (to make them unique from one another), you'll more than likely also find yourself in there, one piece per character. If you put each character into one, giant person: you'll have yourself.

The trouble is, this happens subconsciously. You can try, upon planning out an idea, to purposely plan each character to a certain trait of yours, but in that case you might find them forced. The trick is to let them evolve naturally, and then pick them apart once you've got them settled into their skins. This is going to really help you when it comes to figuring out their motivation.

Let me use an example:

In my current WIP, I have a lovely, purple-haired character named Wren. To put it simply, she's a bit of a bitch: she's obsessed with her work (hacking); she distrusts everybody she meets; and she's perfectly blunt in everything she says, often putting her own work above that of others and only telling them what she feels they need to know (or answering their questions in the most simplest of ways; one-word answers are kind of her favorite things). Now, let's compare this to me (and, hey, you're going to learn something about me):

Obsessed with my work? Yep. When I'm not doing homework, I'm doing writing or working on this blog. I don't have a social life. Or many friends.

Distrusts everybody I meet? Haha, yeah...there's a reason I don't have many friends, and that's because of past encounters and the fact that it takes a lot of time for me to really trust anyone with anything beyond normal, day-to-day, superficial interactions.

Blunt? Okay, this is only occasionally. What I say and what I think are two wildly different things (I'm a notorious people-pleaser); however, Wren says exactly what she thinks, whereas I keep my thoughts to myself. So here's a halfway point.

How does this help me figure out her motivation? Well, as it so happens, I know myself very well. I know that I work so hard because there's a part of me that's afraid of failing myself and failing my family; I know that I distrust everybody on first meeting because some of my closest friends have let me down (ex-close friends, I should mention; I've become much pickier in who I actually let in); lastly, I suppose I'm so blunt (in my thoughts) because I've always felt judged on some level, which means that when my verbal shortness does come out, it means I'm so stressed that I can't keep it in.

This is all extremely helpful when it comes to Wren: she's terrified of letting down her family (father dead, brother almost died, mother always worried out of her mind); her father's closest friends were the very people who killed him, and there's also the fact that everyone she works with keeps secrets, so she feels she has the right to keep secrets of her own; she's so rude to people because she feels as if she's on a deadline, which means she's given herself a mental ticking clock so she doesn't have time to waste if she wants to bring her father's killers to justice before they win everything.

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I could do this with all of my characters; if you like, leave me a comment and I'll do another. Just notice how I go from one step to the next: identify the character's natural traits (after a bit of first-drafting and planning; make sure to pay attention with the pieces of them that are natural); then, I figure out where those traits are inside of me. Then, I examine myself and figure out why I sometimes act the same way, which naturally leads to the reasons why Wren is the way she is.

Build your characters like this, and I guarantee that you'll be able to write them a lot easier, and that they'll come across more naturally in the long run: remember, write what you know, and if you look closely you'll realize that you can identify with everything your characters are going through, which means it might be easier than you think to figure out what they're fighting for.

Well, what are your thoughts? What's your best way of developing your characters?

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Trying to craft realistic characters? Blogger @Rae_Slater recommends looking no further than your own personality (Click to Tweet)

Creating Characters Using Pieces of You: a trick to crafting real characters, with real motivation (Click to Tweet)

Conversations with a Character

I'm sending out a PSA to say that after reading this, you might be questioning my sanity a little more than you probably already do. So. Just warning ya'll.

If you're in the middle (or beginning, or end, or still plotting) of your novel, and you get stuck, there's a really fun exercise you can do to both get your own gears working in terms of how things inside your novel work, and how to get inside one of your character's heads.

Try talking to them.

I know what you're thinking, "Rae, I can't have an open conversation with them. People will think I'm crazy!"

News: if people don't already think you're crazy, you're probably doing this whole writerly thing wrong.

Here's where this is coming from: I've been working on my WIP for a little over a year, now; unfortunately, not consecutively. The last two semesters of college took a lot of writing time away from me, so it's mostly been during the summer/winter break. But still. I'm on my third draft (well, draft 3.5; don't have me get into why  have so many half-drafts. It just kind of happens), and I was working on beginning this most recent drat in December when I was completely stuck. I mean: something was so strangely wrong with my WIP that I couldn't figure out what in the world I was doing wrong. It was maddening, and no amount of talking with my CP was helping to fix it. The really scary thing was: it was the first time ever that I doubted myself with this idea.

So, finally, I said, "Rae, we're going to go have a conversation with Moe." (Moe's one of two main characters, and she's a doll when she isn't being mean to me).

And here's what some of that conversation looks like:

Me: Okay, Moe. Obviously I'm doing something wrong with the beginning of your story. Any ideas?

Moe: *snorts*I'm a thief. And Hadley and I don't work well together. You've got it right, there-

Me: Yeah, but...Come on, Moe, this doesn't feel at least a little fishy?

Moe: Well...I mean, if you really want to get technical: Jackson. don't get me wrong, I like him-

Me: You *like* him?

Moe: /blushes/ He's genuine, okay? But, still. I don't want anything to do with Hadley, *or* her life. How the hell do you expect us to meet? What makes you think I'd give him the time of day?

Me: Huh...I think you've actually got a point there.

Moe: And for that matter, Kara's *smart*. She's not stupid. How the hell do you think me or Hadley could keep Hadley's work from her for *three years*? I get that she was only eleven when Mom died and all, but seriously? Give her more credit than that. And Hadley's hangovers, really? If she's supposedly so good at hiding her inebriation then why the hell would she be mumbling shit to me when I'm dragging her ass home? It's lazy plot filling. Lazy hints. I can figure shit out on my own.

Me: ...Inebriation's a really big word....

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And it went on like that for a total of 2200 words, most of which was Moe criticizing me and calling me an idiot. And I realize that a lot of the above conversation probably doesn't make sense to ya'll (it makes perfect sense to me, which is kind of the point), but what I really want to point out is the fact that my own character called me out on lazy plot filling. She called me a lazy plot filler. My own freaking character.

But you know what? She was right. I re-looked at a lot of things from my beginning, and a lot of things I was able to find through this conversation with my character were actually huge problems. Moe pointed out that one character was worthless and had no reason being in my plot whatsoever, and another was being treated as major when, in this point in time, he's actually pretty minor.

Here's the thing: as strange as it sounds, your characters know the world of your novel a heck of a lot better than you do. So sit down, have a conversation with them. See what happens when you're not busy making their life miserable. I recommend either writing it by hand, or (if you're like me and need to be typing it) use an incredibly simple word processing program like Notepad: you don't need fancy bells and whistles for this.

Chat with your character, ask them questions, let them call you out on the places you're being lazy and where you should reconsider things, or where you're getting a character completely wrong. Who knows? It might just help you in the end.

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When in doubt, talk to your characters. They know their novel better than you do via @Rae_Slater (Click to Tweet)

If your character calls you out on lazy plot-filling, consider listening. Talk with your characters via @Rae_Slater (Click to Tweet)

When Good Characters Make Bad Decisions

Ever had a moment where you're reading a book, and a character's about to do something really stupid, and you tell them over and over again not to do it...and then they do it anyway and consequences and repercussions and downright chaos ensue?

Yeah, that.

The thing is: sometimes a character isn't stupid, but they make stupid decisions. And while the reader is clear-headed and going, "Why would you do that?!" the character most likely isn't thinking that clear-headedly (is that a word?), which brings me to my point:

If your character is going to make a bad decision, at least give them a good reason for it. We've all done things that might not have been the smartest at the time, but think: to you it made perfect sense at the time, right?

Your characters are more than likely going through the ringer. Or the blender. Or something that chops them up into little pieces emotionally, physically, mentally, etc. Which means they're not thinking straight. So while the reader is sitting there going (again), "Why would you do that?!" you, the author, are in charge of knowing that "why" and making sure that it's not for a stupid reason (i.e.: they haven't thought of a smarter, easier, more obvious decision that everybody else can see clear as day for no better reason than, "Just because.").

What motivates bad decisions? Desperation, anger, grief, determination, fear. There's more, but those are the ones that I, personally, enjoy looking at. Basically: event A happens, it has some kind of effect on your character, and that leads them to performing actions that lead to event B (yes, no matter how much you yell at them).

Just make it natural. It's a good way of making well-rounded, three-dimensional characters if you know them well enough to be able to write out their decisions in ways that make sense. For them, it might be the only option; maybe they need to speed up the timeline of a previously-conceived plan; maybe they act on a plan that was previously shot down because of its bad-idea-ness; maybe they're simply emotionally distraught and they act without truly thinking based on why they're distraught. The list goes on, I promise. Whatever it is, you can bet they're thinking more emotionally than logically.

Which, while bad for the character, it's good for you: bad decisions make for great plot points. Things tend to go really bad, and it might, then, have some kind of profound effect on your character: it helps along their character arc in some way.

However, just make sure you're leading both the character and the reader into the bad decision in the right way: don't make the bad decision happen randomly just so you can keep the plot moving; you don't want your readers to think that your character's simply an idiot. Make the decision logical for your character and their development; have it play into their emotions and their motivations, and think about the events that lead up to the bad decision.

If I'm not making much sense, try these posts on the same subject from Helping Writers Become Authors and Ava Jae.

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Sometimes good characters make bad decisions. What to think about when characters don't think straight  via @Rae_Slater (Click to Tweet)

If your character makes a stupid decision, give them a good reason. @Rae_Slater gives you hints on what to think about (Click to Tweet)

Antagonists: Make Them Unique

Once again, I was completely at a loss for what to write about today (seriously, please make recommendations about what ya'll would like to see me talk about in regards to writing. It would be beneficial for all of us). Then I woke up this morning, got my coffee and cereal, sat down and started watching the news.

No, this isn't about the news. Once I sat down and turned on the television, I started thinking about IN A HANDFUL OF DUST, by Mindy McGinnis. Also known as: the book I reviewed last Saturday.

What got me thinking were the "villains." I'm using quotes because they aren't really the "villain" of the story, just a variety of antagonists; unfortunately, my mind tends to make certain words synonyms for each other instead of leaving them as related terms. Basically, I'm apologizing right now for jumbling up the two words.

Right here is where I stopped writing this post, stared at the title (which read: "Villains: Make Them Unique") and decided to change it to "Antagonists: Make Them Unique. Definitely makes more sense, now.

Anyway, what got me thinking was the fact that there are a number of antagonists in McGinnis' most recent book (off the top of my head I'm thinking three, but there could most definitely be more). Each one of them was completely different from another.

How's that possible, though? They all want the same thing: food, water, weapons, survival. And, yet, they all manage to have their own personalities, their own wants and fears, and their own methods for getting what they think will suit them best.

Their differences are extremely important when it comes to writing antagonists. Heck, it's important for writing any character in your book (villains, protagonists, side-characters). Consider the fact that they need to stand out; they need to have a shape all their own, and if they start looking/sounding/thinking/acting the same, then what's the point of having more than one? It doesn't matter how many you have (although, really, don't go overboard; like I said, IN A HANDFUL OF DUST had, like, three, and that's basically three groups, with certain people at the head. Those are the antagonists I'm talking about), just remember to treat them all like people.

Look at Harry Potter. Draco Malfoy is an extremely consistent antagonist whose attitude stems from basically being the spoiled little rich body with a superiority complex. He hates being shown up, and he also kind of hates the fact that Harry Potter is a more well-known name than his own. Later in the series, he simply becomes desperate as Voldemort claims a hold over his entire life. His attentions even switch from making Harry's life miserable to struggling with his own demons.

What about Dudley, Uncle Vernon, and Aunt Petunia? Their antagonism comes from their belief that anything that is not human is freakish. Also consider the fact: Petunia's sister got killed by bad magic. She'd already alienated Lily for her freakish tendencies, and then she gets killed by them? Well, by golly, she knew all along there was something wrong and dangerous about magic. Why on earth would you want your nephew following in the same footsteps?

And don't forget the Minister of Magic, who, through the entire fifth book, did everything in his power to make Harry and Dumbledore and anyone associated with them look like crackpot fools. Because he was afraid; nobody wanted to return to the dark days of Voldemort.

Fear really is an excellent motivator for people, don't you think?

Those are just three examples (and I think we all know by now that there are countless antagonists in the Harry Potter series).

To wrap this up, here are just a few things that I feel are good things to look at and think about when drudging up an antagonist:

Setting-more than just the overall world (since that's impacting everyone), look at their individual experience with the world. How have certain events and people influenced them through their life? How has that shaped and molded their outlook?

Background-before they entered the present world of your novel, before they met the protagonist: what was their life like?  Who or what made them the way they are? How did they survive to their current age and mental state, and how did those experiences make them see things differently?

Motivation-extremely key for any kind of character: why are they doing what they're doing? What's in it for them? What's fueling their actions?

Relationship to the Protagonist-here's a big one. See, the antagonist wouldn't be an antagonist unless they were somehow keeping the protagonist from their goal, right? Which means that at some point, in some small or large way, they're going to interact with your main character. What about the protagonist makes them tick? Why are they at odds, what's the conflict between them?

Limits-how far are they willing to go to get what they want/keep the protagonist from getting what they want? What's their limit? How far will they go until they refuse to go further? Will they kill? Will they blackmail? Torture? Subject themselves to someone else's power, sit back and watch another character do dastardly deeds and say nothing?

So, that's not the entire list. By far. But I mean, just some things to think about when thinking about the character(s) that pop up in a bad situation just to make things work.

So I ask you: how do you think up your antagonists?

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Characters' Trinkets and Charms

Look around your room. Or, take a look at any jewelry you're wearing. Or maybe it's not jewelry: maybe it's something that you just carry around with you like a certain keychain or a ribbon you shove into your back pocket.

Then ask yourself: why?

My personal "charm," as I'm going to call it, is a necklace: the charm is a small circle with a swirl laid on top, and beneath it the word "karma." I've worn it nearly every day since I got it, which is bordering on 3-ish years, now. When I ask myself why I wear it, I really have no answer. The only answer I have is that it suits me; it's honestly really difficult for me to wear anything else, including a necklace that has mucch more sentimental value (a gold chain with a camel charm that my dad bought for me from Egypt when I was a baby; he and my mom gave it to me for my sixteenth birthday).

Why am I detailing to ya'll a portion of my jewelry collection?

Everybody has that one thing they take with them everywhere. Maybe not even everywhere, but it remains in sight in their bedroom or house, something like a charm that, for some reason, they're not too sure they could live without. It could be something that reminds them to act or think a certain way, or it could be a gift/remnant from a family member or friend that they keep around in order to feel attached to them.

The truth is, the reasons people carry things with them are as unique as they are. And charms and trinkets like these can carry some powerful memories and motivation. Some people feel completely lost without their "object of power," if I may so call it, and because of this they provide an excellent detail you can use toward characterization.

So I want you to think about it: do your characters have anything that they carry with them whenever they go out? If the answer's yes, then explore it. Try to really dig in to your character's psyche and figure out what makes that thing so damn important to them.

For example, one of my writing buddies has a character who carries around a coin from a currency no longer in use. Another one has a character who receives an item from a friend/love interest in order to make a ruse work, and then she never gives it back. Personally, I've once had a character who wore her father's military dog tags, and another who always wore a bow in her hair because it was the apocalypse and wearing a bow was the way she fought back against becoming such a hardened tough-ass (and earned her the nickname of "Bow," which she hates but it still makes me snicker).

More often than not, these kinds of trinkets serve as a reminder of a turning point, or a point of no return of some kind. They keep the character grounded, reminding them of what used to be instead of constantly forcing them to look forward. What's interesting is that this means the trinket can serve as both a positive or a negative thing: negative in that, if they keep thinking of the past or what that charm represents, they might refuse change, or push too hard against the inevitable, which makes them a stubborn mule.

Which makes for great characterization.

**Special note: your character doesn't have to have a charm. It's not a requirement. Heck, no matter how hard I think about it there isn't a single charm or trinket that either of my main characters in THE HOLLOW MEN have. It doesn't mean that they'll never have one (there's still two books that follow), but the fact that they don't have anything isn't a death sentence.

So don't freak out about that.

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Male Characters

About 3 weeks ago, I talked about Female Characters and how our expectations and views of stereotypes are a tad on the unfair side. And I promised you a post on characters of the male persuasion, so here we are.

While many people comment on enjoying books with "strong female characters" there's a bit of a common archetype that I've noticed for male character's as well. For one, they're supposed to be the sexiest beings on the face of the planet. They're supposed to be strong (physically), have a dark side/dark past, and occasionally they carry with them the Edward Cullen-type broodiness that's supposed to make them mysterious and irresistible. Don't forget that they also have to have a killer smile and a sense of humor that enables them to have a quip to say in any situation.

Read that again and tell me that you don't think of at least ten characters that fit that description.

To give many authors and the market credit, though, there is a subtle change appearing, and I promise you that I'm not saying that every male lead is like this. All I'm saying is that it's pretty darn common.

Here's the thing: your male leads don't have to fit that  archetype in order to be alluring and worthy of becoming a fictional boyfriend that readers swoon over.

In the same way that readers enjoy seeing a "strong" female lead, they enjoy a "strong" male lead. And just like that post three weeks ago, I feel the need to explain the fact that "strong" does not have to equal big muscles and looks so good they would make the Greek gods jealous.

One of my best friends and CPs is Brie Moore, and she's spent the last two years working on her MS. The male lead is an adorable boy named Oliver, and guess what? He's a painter. That's it; he arts a lot. And unlike many male leads that I see, he doesn't even know how to fight. He's a peaceful guy who's rather lounge around watching the clouds go by than assert his control over anything or anybody.

But he's charming, sweet, and when he loves somebody he will protect it. His loyalty knows no bounds, and while his character changes over the course of Brie's novel as he's confronted with situations that grow more intense as a war looms, deep down he's just Ollie. The Painter. The Friend. In fact, it's the female MC, Collins, who teaches him how to fight.

A reverse of gender roles? Maybe.

Brie's come to me many times asking if I think Ollie's too "feminine," or if he's not strong enough. My question? Why does "strong" have to equal physically fit? Why does the guy always have to wear the pants in the relationship? You know what, why don't the male and female leads each take a leg and wear the pants together, and if that mental image doesn't make you grin I don't know what will.

What I'm trying to get at is the fact that strength is in the eyes of the beholder. The capacity to be gentle and grant mercy requires the same kind of clout and courage as standing up in a physical fight against your greatest enemy that's determined to destrpy the world.

Instead of trying to give your man every superhero trait in the book, why not make them ordinary in the way that they have weaknesses, or that they have an artistic talent that doesn't involve killing a man five different ways with a spoon. Give them imperfect looks that, in the eyes of the love interest, are nothing short of perfection.

I'm not bagging on all of those dark, brooding, and mysterious guys that take up a lot of YA shelves (particularly in paranormal). I'd be an absolute hypocrite if I did, because in all honesty I love those guys (I'm a huge fan of the whole "good heart beneath all that steel" kind of thing). I just think that, occasionally, we need a reminder that that's not the only kind of guy out there who can make a difference.

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Female Characters

I purposely made the title of this post a bit broad, because I may or may not start babbling my way through three or more topics relating to female characters. Therefore: generalities are occasionally my friend.

Last week, I was reading a blog (*le gasp*). I tend to read a lot of random posts on random blogs, things that catch my eye on Facebook or the Twitter-sphere. Which means I also tend to read book reviews. Now, I apologize in advance because I was a dolt and didn't make a note of where I found this, but then I realized that it also doesn't matter for a reason I will soon specify.

As I read this review, I got to the part about characters. I can't quote it exactly, but the author of the blog post basically said, "The main character is a girl named [name], but she wasn't a girly-girl, or anything."

You said it, Mac (Image (c). Click for source)

Whoa. Whoa there. Okay, I admit to adding a little bit of my own snark, but I'm not kidding that the author of the blog post stated outright that he/she was glad that the female main character wasn't a girly-girl. The term "girly-girl" was legitimately mentioned.

Remember me saying that it doesn't matter that I didn't make a note or record where I found this? That's because this is a widely-explored topic of conversation: female main characters need to be "strong."

Seriously, what does that even mean?

I admit to being drawn to the "tougher," more "kick-ass" female characters, lead or otherwise. I love the Katniss Everdeens, the Clary's, the Isabelle's. I like reading about girls who know how to stand on their own if they have to and who fight for what's important to them.

Oh, I'm sorry. Did you notice the quotations? Let me ask you something: how do we even define "tough" or "kick-ass"? They're adjectives I use to describe a lot of characters from a variety of novels and genre's. But still: what is it?

It does not mean they're not "girly-girls." I've hated that phrase my entire life, just as often as I've hated the term on the other end of the spectrum: "tom-boy."I don't like when people use that to describe people. There's so much more than the female gender than either loving the color pink with a passion or hating it.

Here's a conversation I was forced into a lot as a kid:

Person: "Are you a girly-girl or a tom-boy?"
Me: "Neither."
Person: "...well, do you like pink?"
Me: "Not really." (This was before I actually began to appreciate the color as much as I do, now)
Person: "So you're a tom-boy."
Me: "No, I'm not."

And so it goes. I don't know if kids still have that same conversation in today's time, but the 90's (and early 2000s) were kind of rough. The fact that we, as kids, were able to put a negative stigma on enjoying bright colors and frilly things was brutal, and I was one of those people who refused to play into it (I hate stereotypes with an absolute passion).

The sad thing is, this stigma exists today, and it can be seen right in that example I gave you: "The main character is a girl named [name], but she wasn't a girly-girl, or anything."

Somebody please just tell me what that means. Because this stigma carries over to the aspiring writers who, in the name of feminism or some other trope (please, please, please don't start a feminism debate; that's not what I'm getting at), believe that they have to have a "strong" female character. They need somebody whose witty, who can pack a punch, who knows how to fight. They need somebody who wears tennis shoes/sneakers, who prefer ratty t-shirts and tank tops to blouses and lacy things.

I only have one thing to say to that, and it comes from all of those taco commercials that you see everywhere with that cute little girl asking: "Why not both?"

Isabelle Lightwood, who I've already mentioned, is a bit of an example. She's gorgeous (and I could go on a whole 'nother rant about that, too, but I'll save it for another day), and she fights "like a man" while also enjoying flirting, wearing impossibly high-heeled shes, and occasionally wearing the skimpiest dresses she can find just so she can show off her body and get a few looks her way. So she's a bit of both worlds, right? Even counseling the lead gal, Clary, into how to be "pretty."

There's somewhat of a point: Isabelle Lightwood is the best of "both worlds," but she's not the main character in The Mortal Instruments series. That would be Clary Fray, who apparently doesn't know the first thing about makeup, dressing up, or hooking up (okay, sorry, that was a bit lame, but it made that sentence sound fantastic).

So are we doomed to never be able to read about a lead character whose a "girly-girl," because heaven-forbid a woman or teenage girl enjoy something as simple as bright colors and shiny shoes?

This is the problem I'm getting at, the one that provides no end of extremely daunting problems for aspiring writers who think their lead characters need to be "strong." Because if they're "girly," it suddenly makes them lesser in the eyes of the reader.

If that's the case, let me tell you about one of my favorite lead female characters of all time. MacKayla Lane (known as "Mac" by her friends) is the star of the FEVER series by Karen Marie Moning. This set of books is dark: it's all about the Fae who hunt humans, and eventually they completely invade the human world, turning it into a place where hundreds of humans die daily, essentially as sport for the Fae. Mac travels to Ireland to look into the murder of her sister, and winds up becoming the annoying charge to Barrons: a man who's also some kind of creature, extremely violent; he's the kind of guy that the things that go bump in the night are afraid of.

Mac needs to learn how to fight. She gets her hands on a spear that's one of two weapons that can kill the Fae. She becomes a target because her sister was involved with the Fae, somehow, and also because she becomes a weakness to Barrons, who also have a lot of enemies. Despite being in higher waters than she can swim in, Mac knows how to hold her own and fight for what's important for her, and becomes enmeshed in the Fae world as she tries to survive it.

Sounds like a strong, kick-ass female lead, right?

Mac's favorite color is pink, the only shoes she owns are high heels, sand Barrons at one point describes her as a perky rainbow. Southern Belle is her middle name. She bakes Barrons a freaking birthday cake in the middle of a Fae invasion and there's not a single thing in her wardrobe that's black, gray, brown, or anything on the darker color spectrum. She accessorizes with purses, rings, jewelry, and (eventually) that spear.

Would you call her weak?

So here's what this post is about: write your female lead (if you have one) the way your female lead came to you. Don't try to change her because you think society is going to look down their noses at her. If she likes to wear dresses, let her wear dresses. She likes pink, then she likes pink.

The trick to avoid is to not go overboard and shove it in your readers' faces. Whether they're a prissy debutante or an independent street-fighter. Nobody likes that.

There's a line between "weakness" and character traits. Don't let a fear of the former persuade you to change your characters until they're "acceptable" by society's standards.

And now that today's post turned into a little rant, now I apologize: if you made it this far, then kudos. I don't go off like this often, but when I do it tends to be a doozy.

Right. Then. Happy Monday? (and don't worry; next week I'll go after male MCs).

Rae

Villains Are People, Too

To quote my favorite Broadway musical, "Are people born wicked, or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?"

Every story has a villain. They might be obvious, like President Snow in The Hunger Games, or  (in my opinion) they might be less obvious: a character's own self-destructive nature. Essentially, the villain is the force working against your protagonist.

For the purpose of this post, I'm going to concentrate on the obvious ones: the President Snow's, the Queen Levana's, the wicked step-mothers. In every tale, we tend to see only their bad side: their attempt at gaining and/or keeping power. What the audience rarely sees, however, is the steps in life that led the villains to becoming who they are.

So I ask again: Are people born bad, or is the badness created?

Your villains need a backstory. The catch? You, as the author, are probably the only person to ever know what that backstory is, unless, like Marissa Meyer, you write the villain's story (Fairest, coming out in early 2015).

The trick is to understand that villains aren't bad just for the sake of being bad. There's a reason they are the way they are, and they do the things they do. Looking for their motives will help you understand where they're from, and where they hope to go. It'll help you see why they're bad, or why they want your main character dead.

As already mentioned, a large motivation is power: gaining it, and then keeping it. Your job is to become the psychologist and dig down within their brains and figure out how power became so important to them. Were they orphaned as a child? Maybe they saw their parents killed in front of them. Maybe they loved somebody, once, and then were betrayed. They were wronged in some way, and now they're trying to make up for it.

Figure it out.

Villains are tricky. If you just have a guy with a monocle sitting in a chair petting a fluffy cat, and occasionally laughing maniacally, he's going to come up flat and unbelievable, and more comical than anything. Typically, that's what you want to avoid.

Look at President Snow. Sure, you see him as the guy who wants to keep the districts under his control, and keep the annual Hunger Games happening. This means he needs to kill Katniss, send a message. He's a character who's just a little bit more believable because you, as the reader, understand in book one that there's actually a law that was created about the Hunger Games, which has a base in the conclusion of a civil war that occurred seventy four years earlier. So, now, you understand that in a twisted way, he's only trying to keep the peace.

Most villains tend to believe that they're doing good. They're saving lives, they're creating order. Many dystopian societies revolve around rules and measures that were put into place to ensure the majority's survival. We might think they're far-fetched and too extreme, but to the people leading these societies they're performing a righteous task.

Other villains, in paranormal books, perhaps, might believe themselves to be ridding the world of weakness. Or they have personal vendettas that put one group of people against another in an invisible war that lasts ages. These villains, just like President Snow, believe themselves to be in the right.

I'm not religious, but you can even look at Lucifer (the devil). He was cast out of heaven for challenging his superior, acting on his own pride while believing God to be too prideful in himself. In classic belief of the devil being out to collect souls for hell, he, too, his basically just doing his job.

See, there's four kinds of villains I just explained (I hope?), and the trick is to understand that they, like all of your characters, have histories. Your job is to understand the history of your own villain, and ask yourself why they're the villain, and what happened to make them that way.

Heck, even take Voldemort. He was an orphan who was always picked on by the other kids, so when his magical abilities showed themselves randomly he wasn't sorry. Then, when he found out he was a wizard, he was able to grow and take vengeance against the muggle father that he'd always hated for giving him up. That's a backstory, too.


If it helps, try checking out movies or television shows that chronicle or retell the histories of famous villains. I quotes Wicked at the beginning of this post; that musical is based on the book by Gregory McGuire, which tells the "untold story" of the Wicked Witch of the West. In that tale, the Wicked Witch isn't, well, wicked, only politically misunderstood; she was even best friends with Glinda, the Good Witch. The movie, Malificent, recently came out into theaters, and attempts to explain why the famous Sleeping Beauty villain cast the spell on Aurora in the first place. This fall, Fox is coming out with a new show called Gotham, that follows not a young Bruce Wayne (well, okay, I think it sort  of does, in a small way), but the classic villains he'll fight in the future, including (but not limited to): Catwoman, the Penguin, and the Riddler.

Tapping into entertainment like that described above can help you shape your own villains by studying the way others are portrayed.

Remember, when it comes to villains you're probably the only one to ever know the full story. Understanding them to that extent, though, will help you anticipate the way they'll act, and it'll help you create more three-dimensional antagonists.

Rae

Parents: Missing, Dead, or Deadbeat

Sometimes they're all three.

I have to send a quick shout-out to Sarah at Birds of a Writer, because I had absolutely no clue what to write about for today. Thankfully I decided to put out my feelers and she came up with this, and I thought it was a wonderful idea.

Parents are interesting creations, particularly in the world of YA fiction. Most of our main characters are so young that they're still minors, which means they're still under the legal guardianship of their parents. Considering the kinds of trials and adventures most of our teenage characters are forced to go through, they can't have their parents hovering over them every second telling them it's too dangerous, or worse: call the police and let them handle it instead of their underage children.

See, problem. Parents present problems, which means that the authors get to have to get pretty creative when they search for ways to get rid of them for part or even all of the plot. Because no parents means that the characters can basically do anything they want (within reason, of course).

Here are some common solutions for getting those pesky parents out of the way:

Dead parents are pretty common. What's more, their deaths could even have something to do with the plot. When I read Dracian Legacy, the main character's parents had died before the events of the novel, but later you find out that their murder is very much tied into the main events.

A danger of using dead parents? If you're placing your novel in modern times and your main character is under the age of eighteen, they need to have a guardian of some kind. Another family member, godparents, etc.

Neglectful parents. This category includes both the kind that are too busy with other things (like work or other family) or are too drunk/etc to notice their children. Or they hate their children and simply try to pay as little attention to them as possible. This category can apply to guardians, as well (since I already gave ya'll the warning about minors).

For example, in Cress, by Marissa Meyer, Cress is trapped on a satellite orbiting Earth. Her "guardian," Sybil, comes around once a month or so to take progress reports on her work as a spy and also bring provisions. Besides that? Cress is alone.

A perk of this is that you still have a parental figure of sorts, so you ca avoid any sticky legal stuff in regards to why the child has no parent. Because, technically, they do have a parent, That parent just doesn't pay much attention to their kid, which opens a world of possibilities.

Missing parents. Like the dead parents, parents that have disappeared can play an interesting role in the overall plot of the novel because it raises a lot more questions than the previous two. The main of these questions is: why did they leave? It can make way for a pretty tortured child. What's even funner is when those missing parents show up again during the course of the novel, such as in Marissa Meyer's Scarlet.

So those are three categories you can put those pesky parents into if you're having trouble working your way around them. There's other ways, of course. If you want them to be those caring parents who are around as much as possible, but they really interfere with some of the plot, another thing you can do is what Kate Karyus Quinn did in Another Little Piece: Anna's parents were in and out of the hospital, and at one point spent more than a few days there, with some medical issues that the mother was going through. Ergo: no parents around to keep an eagle eye on Anna, but at the same time they were those really awesome and nice parents who actually had an itnerest in their kid and cared about her.

Brainstorm. Trust me, it's actually kind of fun figuring out a way around the parents, and many of those ways can tie directly into the plot and create loads of conflict for you to work with.

Stay Crazy,

Rae

Character Motivation

I decided at the last minute that I'm going to talk about characters today because I feel like it's been awhile, which made me a bit sad because characters are my favorite part of any given novel due to the fact that they're just so . . . interesting, I guess?

Run-on sentence, I know.

So I thought I'd bring up motives.

See, characters do things, right? Katniss volunteered as a tribute in the place of her sister, Tris chose Dauntless over the familiarity of Abnegation, and so the bell tolls. The thing is, both of these characters did things that shocked their communities, and they did them for different reasons. Katniss's sole purpose in volunteering was to save her sister, even if it meant her own almost certain death. Tris was looking for a way to simply find where she belonged after her test failed to give her an answer.

Family and self-identity. Two reasons.

The question you have to ask yourself with your own characters is: why?

Most people don't just make decisions-particularly life changing ones-just because. More than likely there's no easy answer, either. The answer to "why did you go to the store" isn't "to buy food," it's more like "because I am human and I seek socially acceptable ways to curb my instinctual hunger."

Okay, that's probably pushing it.

What I'm trying to get at is that every character has a motive. They have reasons for keeping their head down and following the rules, they have reasons to fight back. And every character is going to be different based off what's the most important thing to them and how they interpret the world.

Last week I wrote a post called Creating History, and it kind of ties in slightly. Your character's history-as in, every moment that's led them up to the present-will have a huge impact on the way they act and the choices they make, so knowing your character inside and out will help you realize why they need to make certain decisions. This is particularly helpful for if you ever put your character in a no-win situation; in that case, you're going to need to put yourself in your character's shoes in order to weigh the pros and cons and help them make a decision.

Here's a few examples based off The Hollow Men:

Moe's motives come strongly from losing her parents three years prior to the novel. At this point in her life, her older sister, Hadley, left to join a secret rebellion group housed in Iota, which meant that the majority of the time she was a city away. Thus the job of keeping herself and her younger sister, Kara, alive on the streets was left to her. She has a strong sense of loyalty to her family and the few people she can call friends, as well as an urge to protect them, and she also has a forceful curiosity that makes her want to know what, exactly, Hadley was up to.

Her motives all trickle down to family.

Ronnie is a bit different. She's bionic, which makes her super strong, super fast, and really hard to kill. She also has no memories prior to six months before the novel begins. She gets small glimpses, sure, but those glimpses are practically nightmares. Her anger also gets ahead of her sometimes, leaving her to do things she regrets, which means that she tends to avoid people because destroying a room or an abandoned portion of a city street is a lot better than hurting those around her.

Her motives have to do with identity and self-acceptance.

Wow, those sound really familiar to Katniss and Tris, don't they? I promise it wasn't on purpose. Ever hear of the "seven basic novel plots"? Motives act in the same way. When you really get down to the grit and basics of who your characters are, there's only a handful of motivations that tend to drive them (this goes for people, too). What makes them stand out is how they go about fulfilling those motives.

Don't forget, they can be selfish, too. An example is the primal instinct that humans feel to survive. This means that there are some people and characters who wouldn't hesitate to throw others under the bus in order to save themselves.

Take Ronnie. She wants to know who she is. What if she has the opportunity to discover her history, but at the cost of Moe's life?

Once you know what your character's motives are, you've opened up a world of possibilities. You now know how they might think-even if they aren't consciously thinking about their motives. Your question becomes: what would they do to fulfill those motives?

And you also have the other question you can ask yourself: what wouldn't they do?

A really fun thing to do in a novel is to always make your character's motives queantionable. Then make your other characters question them. I'm not going to lie, this is an aspect that I'm playing on a lot within the character dynamics of The Hollow Men, and even I get surprised sometimes.

This means that while you can give your characters motives, and they can also have ulterior motives. What are they really trying to do? Ha, now there's options for betrayal. You're welcome.

I might be getting ahead of myself, but something else to keep in mind is that motives will change. On some level, the things your characters want will probably shift, or else the ways in which they go about getting them will change. This is called character development, which I'll talk about sometime in the future. Hint: character development is super important.

Happy Monday!

Rae