Writing Interesting Characters (part 5)

There is a lot more to writing characters, but I'll quickly touch on a few other tips that will help make your characters interesting. Does your character have a secret? How would the character change if the secret became known, and how far might that character be willing to go to keep the secret safe? Is your character funny? If so, make sure that you can be funny, too, or you may be writing a character so different from yourself that it will be a burden to write. Does your character have an interesting contrast, such as an impressive strength but a hidden fear? There is a huge variety of character traits that you can play with and ascribe to your characters, but a common mistake is assigning too many unusual traits to a single character. Sometimes the most memorable characters are those with only one or two traits that set them apart from others, whether it is a habitually uttered word or a frequent, stubborn insistence over something trivial. Keep in mind that some characters will initially seem bland and uninteresting—often different people strike us that way in real life—until you get to know them!