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Plottr – Story planning software for plotters and pantsers
“Every character has a little piece of the author. My cheat code for writing distinct characters is figuring out their motivation, their worst fear, and how they deal with conflict. You don't need a page-long list of personality traits.
Also sometimes I reference zodiac signs if I'm having trouble with a personality that's different from mine. Kinda silly but I was into zodiac signs when I was like 13, so it helps when I'm trying to construct a character that behaves differently than I do or has different values. Once I feel like I "know" the character, I totally disregard it. You can do the same thing with MBTI and enneagram types.
I mean you don't wanna reduce your characters down to archetypes, but it really does provide a nice structure to build off of. That way you aren't your only reference point.”
“Anything that you hate, make them love. Anything that you don't believe in, make them believe in it. Anything that you know, research and give it to them. Anything that you don't agree with, make them agree with. Anything that you find weird, disgusting, scary, stupid, ugly, evil, good, anything at all.
Destroy your own views. Ignore them. Untangle your presuppositions and open your eyes to new ideas and viewpoints. Try to think about things that you don't typically think about. Like how is paper made. Or how computers are made. Think about why people do the things that they do, including criminals and psychopaths. Sure, evil people are evil, but evil is not born. It’s created. People become evil. They are not born that way. Think about why people have belief systems. Why do they subscribe to religion or don't. Try to stray away from how you typically think. If you think something is wrong, then that might be exactly the answer you seek. You may find that there are so many ideas that you don't even realize you have because in your mind, they don't matter or don't fit with the way that you operate thus you completely toss them out of your mind without a second thought to even rationalize the significance of said idea.”