Character

How to build characters readers follow: want and need, the lie and the wound, arc types, agency, motivation and stakes, Sanderson's sliding scales, McKee's character under pressure, antagonists, supporting casts and archetypes, voice, and the common failures. Plot shape is in story structure; point of view, dialogue and prose are in scenes and prose. Cultures, religions and professions that shape a character's values are in societies and cultures.

What a character is for

A character is a set of desires and choices the reader can follow. Traits, backstory and appearance matter only in so far as they explain or complicate choices.

The rest of this sheet expands each row.

Want vs need

The want is the external, conscious goal that drives the plot. The need is the internal lack that drives the theme. The best stories put them in tension: getting the want requires facing the need, or the character must give up the want to get the need.

John Truby's seven key steps (The Anatomy of Story, 2007) put the pair at the start of plot design:

The lie, the ghost and the wound

K. M. Weiland's Creating Character Arcs (2016) builds arcs from a set of linked terms. The vocabulary overlaps with screenwriting: John Truby's The Anatomy of Story (2007) calls the backstory event that still haunts the hero the ghost; many craft books call it the wound.

How the pieces connect:

GHOST (past)   -> planted the LIE
LIE            -> shapes the WANT and blinds them to the NEED
WANT           -> drives the plot (try/fail)
FAILURES       -> expose the Lie's cost
CHOICE         -> accept the TRUTH (positive) or refuse it (negative)

Cautions:

• Not every character needs a tragic backstory. A ghost can be small (a humiliation, a parent's offhand remark) and the reader rarely needs all of it; hint, then reveal late.
• Trauma is not a personality. A wound should produce specific, surprising behavior, not generic brooding.
• Avoid the "tragic backstory reveal" as a substitute for a present-tense story.

Arc types

Weiland's taxonomy has three main arcs; the negative arc has three variants. The examples are mine, not hers.

Notes:

• Flat arc ≠ flat character. E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel (1927) distinguished flat characters, "constructed round a single idea or quality", from round ones, whose test is "whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way". A flat-arc protagonist can be richly round.
• Ensembles mix arcs: one character changes, another stays steadfast and triggers the change, a third falls. Contrast makes the theme visible.
• The arc is proven by a choice the character would not have made at the start, under pressure, at cost.

Agency and the active protagonist

Agency is the character's capacity to make choices that change the story. Readers follow people who want and act; they drift away from people things happen to.

Ways to add agency without changing the plot:

• Give the character a plan in every act, even a bad one; let it fail ("no, and").
• Make the character cause the inciting incident or the midpoint, not just witness them.
• Replace a rescue with a trade: the character pays for help.
• Let the character refuse something: refusal is a choice.
• At the climax, the protagonist, not an ally or luck, makes the decisive choice.
• Reactive openings are fine (the call to adventure happens to people); reactive midpoints and climaxes are not.

Motivation, goal, stakes, conflict

A chain from inside the character to the scene on the page. If a link is missing, the reader asks "why would they do that?" or "why should I care?".

Rules:

• Personal stakes beat global stakes. The end of the world is abstract; a sister's life is not. Tie the global to the personal.
• Stakes must be credible. If the reader knows the hero cannot die (book one of a series), shift the stakes to something that can be lost: a friend, a secret, a relationship, self-respect.
• Conflict comes in layers: character vs character, vs society, vs nature or the world, vs self. Strong scenes stack two or more.
• Motivation by plot convenience is the most common fault: the character goes into the cellar because the plot needs them there. Fix it by giving them a reason that comes from their want or lie.

Sanderson's sliding scales

Brandon Sanderson's BYU writing lectures describe three independent scales that shape how readers respond to a character. His names have varied: earlier lectures use proactivity, likeability, competence; his 2025 lecture uses proactivity, relatability, capability.

How to use them:

• Characters rarely max all three. A common pattern: strong on one, middling on another, low on the third, with the arc raising the low one.
• Moving a slider is itself an arc: a bumbling apprentice gaining competence; a cold assassin becoming likeable.
• A highly competent but unlikeable character (a Sherlock Holmes type) works if their proactivity is high and a likeable viewpoint (Watson) carries the reader.
• A low-proactivity protagonist can work in early chapters if they are likeable or competent, but they must become proactive by the midpoint.
• If the villain is far more proactive than the hero, readers root for the villain's plot. Give the hero small proactive moments early.

Characterization vs true character

Robert McKee's Story (1997) separates characterization, the sum of observable qualities (age, looks, job, speech, home, habits), from true character, which only choices reveal: "True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure—the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature."

The most interesting characters show a contrast between the two: characterization says one thing, the choice under pressure says another. Build scenes as dilemmas: two goods (loyalty vs honesty) or two evils, not a good vs an evil.

Antagonists and villains

An antagonist is whoever or whatever opposes the protagonist's goal. A villain is an antagonist with bad intent. Not every antagonist is a villain: a rival, a loving parent, a storm, society, or the protagonist's own flaw can oppose.

Mirror and foil characters:

The strongest antagonists are what the hero would become if they chose the lie: the villain embodies the negative arc the hero avoids.

Supporting cast and archetypes

Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey (1992; after Campbell and Jung) lists eight archetypes. Vogler treats them as functions a character performs, not fixed identities: one character can be a herald in act one and a shapeshifter in act two.

Other functional roles:

Economy rule: combine functions where possible. Two minor characters who both give the hero advice can become one character with more to do. Each named character should want something.

Ensembles and relationships

An ensemble story splits the protagonist function across several characters. It needs:

• A shared goal (the heist, the war, the voyage) plus conflicting personal goals inside the group.
• Distinct roles (leader, planner, muscle, heart, wildcard) so each member is needed.
• One anchor POV or a clear rotation, so readers know whose story each chapter is.
• Different arcs: at least one positive, and often one flat and one negative, to show the theme from several sides.
• Relationships that change: alliances, betrayals, romances. The dynamics between characters are often the story.

Track each important relationship as its own mini-arc: where it starts, where it ends, and the turns in between.

Voice and distinctness

Each character should be recognizable without a dialogue tag. Voice is vocabulary, rhythm, what they notice, and what they avoid saying.

Build speech from the character's culture, class, education and profession; that is where worldbuilding shows up in dialogue (see societies and cultures).

Test: cover the tags on a page of dialogue. If you cannot tell who is speaking, differentiate by goal first (they want different things in the conversation), then by voice.

Introducing characters

The first appearance sets the reader's model of the character; later scenes revise it.

An unlikeable protagonist can work if they are compelling: proactive, competent, funny, or wronged. Likeability is one route to investment, not the only one.

Diversity and avoiding stereotypes

This is a craft issue: stereotypes are unspecific, and unspecific characters are weak characters.

• Specificity over category. Give each character a particular history, contradictions, wants and a voice, not a set of traits borrowed from a group.
• Watch the roles. If the only character from a group is the villain, the sidekick who dies, or the helper with no arc, readers notice. Count who has agency, goals and arcs.
• Research lived experience: memoirs, interviews and writing by people from that group, not other outsiders' fiction.
• Sensitivity (authenticity) readers: readers with relevant lived experience who flag inaccuracies and harmful patterns. Hire them after the draft is stable, pay them, and treat their notes like any other editorial feedback.
• Invented peoples in fantasy and SF can reproduce real-world stereotypes (the "savage" nomads, the scheming merchants). Build cultures from their environment and history instead; see societies and cultures.

Common mistakes

About "Mary Sue". The term comes from Paula Smith's 1973 parody "A Trekkie's Tale" in the Star Trek fanzine Menagerie, mocking idealised young female self-insert characters in fan fiction. It is a useful name for a real flaw (a character with no meaningful weaknesses or costs), but critics such as Valerie Frankel and Camille Bacon-Smith have pointed out that it is applied far more often to women than to equally overpowered male heroes, and can be used to police female characters and writers. Judge the character by the craft test (do they struggle, fail and pay?) rather than the label.

Templates and exercises

Character profile

NAME:                     ROLE (protagonist / antagonist / ally...):
ONE-LINE HANDLE (how readers will remember them):
 
WANT (external, concrete, could be photographed):
NEED (internal; what they'd deny they need):
LIE THEY BELIEVE:
THE TRUTH (thematic opposite):
GHOST / WOUND (event that planted the lie):
ARC TYPE: positive / flat / disillusionment / fall / corruption
 
MOTIVATION (why this want, now):
STAKES (personal; what they lose if they fail):
GREATEST FEAR:
WHAT THEY WILL NOT DO (a line they won't cross... yet):
 
SLIDERS (1-10)  proactivity __  likeability __  competence __
  which slider moves during the story, and when?
 
CHARACTERIZATION (look, job, home, habits - 3 telling details):
TRUE CHARACTER (the hardest choice they make, and what it shows):
 
VOICE: vocabulary / sentence length / what they notice /
  metaphors from / verbal tic / what they never say:
CHARACTERISTIC MOMENT (first scene):
 
KEY RELATIONSHIPS (for each: what they want from each other,
  how it changes):
FOIL / MIRROR:
ARCHETYPE FUNCTION(S) (herald, mentor, shapeshifter...):

Interview questions

Answer in the character's voice, first person, fast. Keep the answers that surprise you.

1.  What do you want more than anything right now?
2.  What would you never admit to wanting?
3.  What are you most afraid people will find out?
4.  Who do you blame for how your life turned out?
5.  What is the worst thing you have ever done? Why?
6.  What do you do in the first hour after waking?
7.  What do you own that you would run back into a fire for?
8.  Who taught you how the world works? Were they right?
9.  What makes you laugh? What makes you angry fast?
10. What do people get wrong about you?
11. What do you believe that most people around you don't?
12. What would you betray a friend for?
13. What does home mean to you, and where is it?
14. What do you say when you're lying?
15. What would have to happen for you to change your mind
    about the thing you're surest of?

Exercises

1. Write your protagonist's want, need and lie in one sentence each. Check that the want and need pull against each other.
2. Write the characteristic moment for your protagonist in under 300 words. It must show the want and the flaw.
3. Put your protagonist in a dilemma between two goods (loyalty and honesty, safety and freedom). Write the scene; the choice is the point.
4. Rewrite your antagonist's key scene from their point of view, where they are the hero.
5. Take a page of dialogue, delete every tag, and hand it to a reader. Revise until they can tell who is speaking.
6. Rate your main cast on Sanderson's three sliders. If two characters have the same profile, change one.
7. Pick a public-domain novel and label its characters with Vogler's archetypes. Find one character who shifts function during the story.

References

• K. M. Weiland, Creating Character Arcs (PenForASword, 2016) and Helping Writers Become Authors: negative arcs (opens in a new tab): the lie, want, need, ghost; positive, flat and negative arcs
• John Truby, The Anatomy of Story (Faber and Faber, 2007): the ghost, weakness and need, the seven key steps
• Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting (ReganBooks, 1997): characterization vs true character
• E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (1927): flat and round characters
• Christopher Vogler, The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers (Michael Wiese Productions, 1992; 3rd ed. 2007): the eight archetypes as functions
• The Writer's Journey (Wikipedia) (opens in a new tab): editions and archetype list
• Brandon Sanderson, Creating proactive, relatable, and capable characters (lecture 5, 2025) (opens in a new tab): the sliding scales
• Blake Snyder, Save the Cat! (Michael Wiese Productions, 2005): the "save the cat" moment
• Mary Sue (Wikipedia) (opens in a new tab): Paula Smith's 1973 origin and the gendered criticism
• A Trekkie's Tale (Fanlore) (opens in a new tab): the original parody and Menagerie #2
• Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843); Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813): public-domain arc examples used above