Strong characters grow from choices, contradictions, relationships, and change—not from a checklist of impressive traits.
- Start with a premise.What makes this person worth following?
- Choose a desire.What do they want badly enough to act?
- Add resistance.What fear, flaw, duty, or opponent complicates that desire?
- Build relationships.Who challenges, supports, misunderstands, or changes them?
- Place them in a world.Culture, history, and rules should shape their assumptions.
- Let them change.Decide what they learn, lose, protect, or refuse to become.