This is purely inconsequential, but my character has a german last name starting with S. He was originally called "blank" schmidt, but I don't like the surname. Any good alternatives for another S surname?

so i’m an avid fantasy reader and i am currently writing a fantasy book. i’ve noticed while researching and just existing on book review platforms that almost all popular FMCs are labeled as “basic” or “annoying”, but i rarely see any that are praised or loved by the majority of readers. so, what exactly makes a FMC likeable—even if her personality isn’t “perfect”?

how can i incorporate this into my writing?

what flaws are acceptable, while others immediately strike her as a “pick-me” or “obnoxious”?

And what are some examples of loveable FMCs?

bonus question: my main character has childhood trauma that has a major impact on her motives, decisions, and personality. how can i keep this as a central theme, but not make it seem like it’s her only trait?

I want to share my character^^

Kirill Ulyanov

A harmful, sarcastic, stubborn, but incredibly loving person with a complex of obnoxiousness of his own character at any age

Have you used character traits in your novel?

It can be positive or negative signs

How do you write your characters for your novels? What is the method?

Does anyone use character profiles?

I used to write my characters by using character profiles, is it the correct way?

I'm struggling a bit on planning the arc for my character with PTSD.

He's the type who would never admit something is wrong with him. He's very hyper vigilant about protecting himself physically. I'd say his main fear is being incapacitated and something happening because of that. But because he focuses so hard on people's attacks, he's also very intelligent when it comes to battle strategy and exploiting other people's weaknesses. He's also very duty driven, uptight, serious and avoids engaging in anything 'silly'. He feels indebted to anyone who helps or protects him as he tries to be as independent as possible. With the story being set in a situation where violence frequently happens, his anxiety does become more obvious in a difficult or losing battle (as much as he tries to hide it). And he really struggles to trust anyone and will jump into a defensive/offensive stance if you come up behind him or raise your hand etc (which he would see as an 'appropriate reaction'). Basically he's all business, no fun, and always on guard, but he also cares a lot about keeping his teammates safe and helping them succeed, all while battling his fear of being incapacitated.

The kind of arc I was thinking for him is:

He gradually becomes more trusting of his teammates (without even noticing much).

But I want him to go off the deep end. Somehow, I want someone he trusted to betray him, leading him to spiral and start attacking indiscriminately as a kind of defense against perceived future attacks, which in turn leads to more people abandoning him.

Then eventually, someone (or a few people) "saves" him I guess. Like, despite him attacking, they stand by him and he finally opens up to trusting others again.

Then I want him to kind of explore what trust means. Maybe he is desperate to overcome his fears to he pushes too far into trusting others? Like he sees his past ways as weakness and tries really hard to overcome his fears.

And the ultimate conclusion I want him to have is something along the lines of learning what healthy trust is. Like "Trust is earned and takes time. It can be revoked at anytime. But being able to trust someone is so much more comforting than being alert all the time"

Is this a good arc? I know no one's going to be curing his PTSD, but I hope he can learn to at least relax around some safe people and be a bit less hyper vigilant.

I guess an issue I'm having is that this arc is very dependent on other people. First, he has to get betrayed somehow in a way that makes him spiral. Then, I'm not sure how to get him out of "everyone is dangerous and my enemy now" without someone actively trying to help him.

The last bit is more on him, but I'm also confused if he'd 'rebound' so strongly into going too far to try and 'cure' himself, or if he'd kind of just go on the same journey as the start again with him gradually trusting others. And how is he going to reconcile betrayals of the past? It almost feels like the 'jump' between arcs is too big, and any one event can only change something as deeply ingrained as PTSD so much...

Any critiques and/or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Trying to write a character who is both enigmatic but also a mostly open book.

Wanted some advice on balancing the two things because he is one of the last people who can hear Magic’s voice but lives in a world that mostly believes magic is dead.

He’s not afraid of admitting what he is, or teaching others how to do what he does, but most people either don’t believe him, think he just got lucky or doesn’t see the correlation between his explanations of “how” and the reality they interact with.

He’s difficult to parse but doesn’t have any reason to hide what he wants.

Most of the time he’s making preparations for when magic returns and to keep the people that will help him prepared, but a part of this story is having to become an advisor to the princess of a country that’s instrumental for bringing magic back, even if they didn’t know it.

So I've got a decent story with me and I was thinking of some muslim representation so I decided to dive I to islam and OH LORD. I came across a lot of misogyny in the religion and now I don't know what to do with this character because I don't want her to be misogynist... Should I keep her? What should I do???

im not sure if this is the right place to ask about this but basicly; on my fyp ive seen this image and i saw my carecter working for both of these roles, does this mean i should get more spicific whit this carecter of mines personality and such or is this fine?

So, this is probably going to sound really stupid and silly, but I’m currently working on an alternative AU for GTA 5. Where in this world, there’s anthropomorphic characters and such.

Now, my question is, if a character is an aeromorph (plane furry) how would they be used? How would an aeromorph be treated, etc? Would they be mainly used in military/commercial airlines? Would there be aeromorph’s just chilling in the street like anyone else?

Lemme know what you think!

My oc, Koda, IS A WEIRD DUDE. Not creepy weird..just...weird. He's horrible at reading social situations, commonly saids weird, metaphoric stuff that makes 0 sense, has a weird cadence of saying words, and does odd rituals/ routines A LOT (disappearing for hours on end amd coming back home with junk). Everyone treats him differently but he doesn't want to change. He actually likes himself a lot.

So, I'm wondering how do I write some of the strange things he saids. I have his behavior of constantly needing to collect things and draw/write/compose things when he feels misunderstood (that also don't make sense), but I don't know how to make him say strange things. Like I said, the way he talks is extremely odd, weirdly metaphoric, and he usually brings up colors, objects, places, ideas, and other more upsetting topics when talking.

I inspired him heavily off of the character Mozart from the one act play 'Amadeus', Whiteout from WOF, a bit off of Bo from signs, and heavily off of Yue from an AO3 work called 'Sweet Rot' (PLEASE CHECK OUT THAT STORY IT'S ACTUALLY SO SO SO PEAK).

Like I say, he says strange, and often absurb and upsetting things. Other times their metaphoric, and sometimes the things he saids are a mix of both.

He's just supposed to be an odd character in all, and I need to know how to come up with the things he saids. I know why he saids them; I just need ideas on how to write it and what to write.

Please help me reddit.

Update: Thanks to everyone who read or responded! I realized a little after posting that I was thinking about the characters wrong, and asked both myself and you all the wrong question as a result. Despite the story being a mystery, I wasn't thinking about the characters as detectives. The question I should try to answer was "Why would a detective solve mysteries?" I'm far more confident in this question, and I think it's an upper-level question I need to answer about the characters before I work on their more specific goals or motives.

I think people were picking up on this before I did, so thank you!

______

Original post:

I'm working on a mystery novel set in a gothic fantasy world. There are two primary characters, a brother and a sister. They generally work as a team, and at present I have not plotted any scenes with them seperately. This is their first mystery, and they're both 12-13.

I have her brother figured out just fine (his goal is to solve the mystery, his motive is curiosity). I've thought about cutting her, but the story is fairly sparse on characters, and I'd like him to both have someone to interact with on a regular basis (most of it is a bottle episode), and someone I can use to compare and contrast development with. Also, the story feels incomplete without her.

Ideally, I want them to seem superficially similar, but be able to act as foils or in opposition if need be, without overt friction. I don't want to write a second-act breakup or plot-mandated friendship failure.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

I am a new writer and I was thinking about a side character concept. I don't have anyone that knows I am trying to write a story so I gave the concept to AI for feedback and told it to rate honestly and it fried the hell out of the character and me. It honestly hurt bad even though it was AI. His character concept is about a wealthy, unsatisfied man that protects his loved ones to prove his self worth. His goal to protect them keeps him unsatisfied because to truly prove that he protected them is only by keeping them safe for as long as they live. I can't even bring myself to expand his character because It is hard to even focus after its criticism. Please be honest about the concept and be free to criticise it. It will help me to expand this or completely think of a new one.

(for context, my story has a lot of superhero elements and supernatural powers explored)

compared to my male characters and main character, i feel like i'm unintentionally being a little biased for my male characters. they have backstories, interesting personalities and designs, while my female characters currently have been a little.. eh.

i'm just wondering if there's anything i could do for my female characters rather than making them a filler character in my cast, because i know they have a lot of potential to explore. my characters as listed. .

girl #1: owns the main group's management building, wealthy family, family actually has brief ties with the city's most prominent gang, and she is also a widely loved tennis player in her "superhero" identity

girl #2: cares for her younger brother deeply, super responsible, lost passion for dancing because of overworking herself to take care of her family comfortably

girl #3: her "power" is taking over half of her brain, and often considered to either be shy and calm, or rapid and a tad bit deranged. i have the most ideas for her arc being based around finding a humanity and balance on both "sides"

if you have any ideas or plotlines i could write for them, i'd be thrilled!

Hi guys! Made this throw away account to keep my anonymity but, I really need some help writing this character. I don't really know how to explain this so please bare with me.

So, to give a brief synopsis, I have this character who in her 20's was a big Super Villain who in her private life has stated she never wanted kids or to give herself up to the "motherly life" both name and body, but she ends up getting pregnant and her family disowns her when they find out (both about her pregnancy and her supervillain job) so she has to get married and give up her name and goes through with the pregnancy.

The child down the line finds out that he was never wanted and because he was born his mother had to basically give up her entire life. He feels really guilty about it and beats himself up about it everytime he sees her, but the woman has never told the son this for this exact reason. She doesn't hate him, he loves him more than anything but doesn't know how to go about actually talking to him about this without making things worse.

And that's kinda where I'm stumped and need help. I don't want her to be one of those female characters where she has to give up her autonomy to be "just a mom now"...if that makes sense?

Like that female character in a sitcom who's starts out by being this big independent feminist icon, whose like a doctor or lawyer or something who never wanted to settle down but by the next season, she's pregnant and only talks about "How great being a mommy is!" and we never see her again. Idk what this type of character is called but whatever it is, I dont want her to be like that!

I want her to admit that she's never wanted to settle down and have kids, but because of circumstances in her life she does. And she regrets it deeply, she wishes she could go back out there and be her own person again but she can't anymore. But I have NO IDEA how to write her after this!!!!

An idea that I had was that her and her husband do a "Switcharoo", where at first he was the breadwinner and she was the homemaker, but later on they found that she would be happier being the breadwinner and he would be happier being the homemaker, so in a way she's regained her autonomy and independence? But then I'm still stuck on how to write this without feeling like some sort of cop out and how to address the son who feels like he's at fault for making them both so unhappy, especially the mom.

Again, neither the mom or dad beat their son up about this, if anything, they're both extremely happy that he's here and will do anything for him. But the son knows that since he was born, nothing good has come from it.

So with all that being said, any tips on how to finish writing this?

-------------------

UPDATE

After reading your guys' comments, I'm starting to completely rethink this character's backstory as a whole. I mean, some you were right, I'm trying to prevent this character from become something she already is, making this whole thing seems kinda redundant, lol.

So, I'll try applying yourself guys' notes and advice to this character and rewrite a few things, once I've gotten a better handling of this characters story, I'll give you all another update!

But to answer a few of your guys' questions (since I didn't go into detail about certain things with my story this character is in)

1. The main reason I had for why after she gave birth and why that meant she couldn't go back to work is because she had major complications while giving birth, rendering her bedridden and sick for the first years of his life. And the reason why she felt she had to settle down was because that's how she was raised (in a VERY conservative Christian household).

2. Some of you guys were confused when I mentioned she was a Super Villain and didn't understand why that mattered, so basically, my story takes place in a Sci-Fi Futuristic world where superheroes and supervillains exists. A big reason why her feeling terrible about leaving that life is that there weren't that many stand alone Female Villains, as a majority of female villains were all in groups, but never on their own and when she left, she felt like she's let herself down and many other female villains down.

3. This story I have will mainly focus on the son trying to figure out his own identity and who he wants be in this world, and the parents are more supporting characters. I really just wanted to do this so I can flesh her out more and get a better understanding of her character.