Things you like versus things you dislike about your characters?

Choose any character you want from any one of your stories.

Make a list of the things you like/love about the character then make a list of the things you hate/dislike about the character.

You can compare and contrast between the likes and dislikes to see where you stand with your character.

Enjoy!!!

NOTE: If you wanna list more than one character, go ahead because I’m pretty sure you are going to do that anyway.

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Alma

Pros:
He’s curious and enjoys learning, which makes him quite smart. He’s sensitive and authentic with his emotions. He doesn’t have fragile or toxic masculinity. He does his best to be open minded, even when he struggles with concepts that aren’t based in logic or are more sentimental. Despite his struggles with being socially challenged, he keeps trying and that has made him very loyal to the people he cares about that were patient and understanding with him. He has an overall gentle soul and ultimately just wants peace and compassion from and for everyone.

Cons:
His curiosity outweighs his self preservation instincts, which means he wants to pet every monster that wants to eat him. He is emotionally unstable and gets overwhelmed by emotional situations easily, which makes him shut down mentally and can lead to bad outcomes. His moral compass is broken so he relies on others for guidance too much, which makes him easily influenced by how others treat him. When they treat him poorly, he gets vindictive and his morals begin to slip. He is more passive which makes it difficult for him to make progress in the story. He is the dumbest smart person I know because he is oblivious to social cues and has no idea how to interact with other people.

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A lot of people will choose their main character, so I’m gonna choose someone who is a secondary character… and I’ll just randomly choose Fara, a Victorian (witch) who, at first, becomes my main character’s enemy until he realizes she isn’t because she had similar goals to him.

I really love how loyal she is to my MC and his crew. It takes a moment for them to realize she’s one of the good ones, but once they get passed it, she becomes really good friends with them all. I also really love how she’s the type of person you’d go to for advice or just someone you can lean on. I really love how badass she is. She doesn’t carry magic like the others like her because she was banished and had her magic taken away, but she still goes into every conflict ready to fight and rip the hearts out of her enemies. Haha.

But the things I hate? Ugh. I can hardly make a list about. Haha. I hate that she can be a little too arrogant. Then again, it’s what makes her a great balance with the main character because he’s also arrogant and she calls him out on his bull crap. xD I hate that she can be a little bit of a hypocrite at times, but I try not to hold that against her since I do that myself… And I hate that she built a wall around herself and won’t let it down, even when she has people to talk to. But I also try not to hold that against her because I do that, too. It can be hard when you take a few bricks out of the way so you can make space for someone else to come into your little fort, but then they show their true colors and you have to build it back up again and you’re hesitant to do anything more because you don’t want it happening again. It’s something that’s happened to both of us, and a trait I hate in both of us.

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I’m working on a new project featuring mean girls who have to step up and save the world. As you can imagine, they are both immature and petty, but also determined and charismatic.

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I’ll do Begging is for Losers Rachael and Nathaniel: the thing is that I lean heavily on my own personality for facets in other characters, so sometimes these things are close to home or they are issues I have with people close to me.

Rachael:

Dislikes:
Rachael gets verbally vicious when she’s pushed into a corner. I don’t show it as strongly from her because like most mean people, she can’t as easily see it, so it shows up more in Nathaniel’s comments about her.
I dislike her keeping her pregnancy to herself as best she can, before telling the baby daddy…and now that same attitude screws up other things later.
I dislike her lack of faith in people and even a goddess she believes exists. It’s a strong example of how belief ain’t shit.
I dislike that she was willing to run away.
I dislike that she allowed her mother to keep breathing.
I dislike that she effectively sold her mother off.
Overall, she has a colder personality than I have, and this affects decisions.

Likes:
She can admit to being wrong better than I can.
She can see her limits better than I can.
I like that she’s consistently antisocial.
I like that she’s honest about liking her mate as a person, even when she is distant.

Nathaniel:

Dislikes:
I don’t like fuckboys .
I dislike how irrationally territorial he can get from out of nowhere on the dumbest things.

Likes:
Thankfully he grew out of being a fuckboy .
I like how honest he tries to be.
I like that he’s not particularly dumb even though he has dumb moments.

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You know us very well :smirk:

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Hmm. Let me get my evil seer and good seer from Their Posthumous Lives duology.

Richard
I like how evil he is and how evil he knows he is. Unapologetic evil. He’s slick about it, too.

What I don’t like about him is how unwilling he is to be human, but this comes from him being unable to understand emotions very well.

He’s a psychopath and while I like that about him, boy does he make it difficult for me to write any remotely touching scene with him. He’s a villain, but he’s also got a heart “somewhat”. Come on Richard, admit it, you’re in love, you’re lonely, and sometimes you do wish you were not immortal.

He’s trying too hard to not be human and it’s getting ridiculous.


Mallord
He’s a smart detective, writer, and good-enough father. I like how affectionate he is toward his wife and how willing he is to show his vulnerability to her. He loves her so much and she’s his rock.

BUT, Mallord has hero complex. But who can blame him? He’s been called “legendary detective” for decades and he HAS been a hero to many. Also, he is a tad narcissist although he does not want to admit it.

But recently, he realized he had hero complex and he’s embarrassed about it. That he should be!

I’m tired of him not admitting he’s made mistakes that might have cost the lives of five people (not dead yet…YET). Admit it, Mallord, you’re not perfect. Make me write you admitting it, please, I’ve been dying to do it. Embarrass yourself in front of your friends. PLEASE.


Basically, that was me ranting about my characters, to my characters XD

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Too well actually. LOL!

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This is a fun question, so I’m bringing it back.

I dislike Bethany being the victim. She’s the victim. Oh, poor you. Poor little you, Bethany. What about everyone else around you? Ever thought about them? No? Ok.

To make it clear: Bethany is lost in a fantasy world. She’s not a victim.

But I do like Bethany being tough and strong and asking questions all the time. She’s not some whiny victim. She’s like “Why am I here? What are you doing with me? Who are you and why are you saying my father is a rat? That doesn’t make sense. And I did not just do something magical with my fingers because I’m a normal girl.”

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Well, what I mean is, she’s not going to say “oh poor me lost in a fantasy world so save me because I can’t do anything for myself”. She’s going to say “I’m lost in a fantasy world. What can I do to get myself out of it?”

I guess I didn’t make it clear what’s going on.

I edited it to make it clear.

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A big problem that comes with a lot of my protagonists is that they tend to overestimate their abilities and how much they can actually get away with before someone notices.

I have a pirate captain, Juno Blithe, she has enhanced charisma, where the major drawback is her over-inflated ego. She’s charming enough so you can almost look past it, excuse it, etc., but it’s still there.

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Thank you! I didn’t at all want to be mean or hurtful about it. Now that I understand the context of the situation, I understand a lot more so thank you for the clarification <3.
Edit: deleted my original post to avoid any potential conflict :slight_smile:

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Korain, from Glance and the Blue prophecy

I originally planned him so that he’d be very immature, that he’d be brash and cause a lot of fights and drama, and that he’d be so full of himself, all to the point where he’d be unlikeable. And he was all of those things in the book. He would make me so angry/frustrated because he kept giving me more and more issues to fix and sometimes I was so lost on how to go about it!

But, somehow, despite everyone’s expectations, he grew to be the most mature and empathetic person in the story, the most willing to admit when he was out of his league, and probably the most comedic, too. And that’s why he became my favorite character. He surprised everyone, including me :laughing:

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Holland from my Nano project.

I like that he is loyal to the few friends he has & isn’t interested in fake friends. He has strong goals and is driven. He’s extremely talented, but is generally not egotistical about it. He’s mindful of people around him, like he once made sure a group of drunk girls had a safe ride home from a party, so they wouldn’t be taken advantage of.

I don’t like that he’s ashamed of where he’s from so it manifests as him being extremely secretive about his personal life. He judges people pretty harshly and is stubbornly set in his opinion of things. He’s happy to hook up with girls as a stress release, but isn’t actually interested in knowing or seeing the girls as people (because he’s afraid of getting attached and derailing his life plan, but I still don’t like it).

So he’s a bit of an oxymoron, a sweetheart, but an asshole.

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No problem :blush:

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