r/CharacterDevelopment

hello everyone, I'm currently plotting my next book and I need ideas to create the best female protagonist I could ever write about. Recently, and in the past, I've read some books where some female characters were elite and they were almost the only thing why I would keep reading the book (Jude Duarte from The cruel prince, for example). Till this day, I still think about some of them. Now, I have some ideas in mind and inspirational characters, but I would like to know what other readers think about this topic.

• What are your favorite female characters and why?
• What is one particular detail that makes you love them so much? (spoiler free)

Let's talk about your main character. The thought process that lead you to create them (why do they exist to begin?), their purpose and why are we following them instead of, I don't know, the comedic relief with a tragic backstory and a nefarious conclusion?

Your main character doesn't have to be a good person to be likeable, it just what you intend the audience to like about them or find engaging.

Just wrote a scene where the guy murdered his wife, and I can't help but feel bad for her, even though she never existed, does this happen to anyone else?

I’ve been interested for a long time in a particular kind of “fallen hero” — not the kind where we discover that a supposedly good character was corrupt all along, and not necessarily the traditional arc where a hero gradually turns into a villain.

What interests me more is something much more unsettling: when a genuinely elevated, pure, or morally responsible figure remains the same person and yet becomes capable of doing something profoundly low.

One of the examples I find most fascinating is David.

He became one of the great images of the hero in Western culture: the young man who faces Goliath, the chosen one, the future king. Art almost turned him into an archetype of heroic youth — think of Michelangelo, Donatello, Caravaggio.

And yet the same David, once king, desires Bathsheba and eventually arranges for her husband Uriah to be sent to his death.

What interests me isn’t simply the idea that “heroes have flaws too.”

It’s something more radical.

How far can someone we have known at their highest fall without everything they were before suddenly becoming false?

David isn’t interesting because we discover that the hero never really existed. He is interesting precisely because the hero did exist — and that same person was also capable of this.

I find it especially powerful when, in fiction, the “high” and the “low” sides of a character don’t erase each other. When someone can genuinely be responsible, generous, admirable, even symbolic to others, while still possessing desires, weaknesses or fears powerful enough to drag them toward something terrible.

Maybe that is what makes a fall truly tragic: not discovering that purity was a mask, but discovering that purity does not make someone immune to falling.

As readers or viewers, how much of that contradiction can you accept?

Does one sufficiently serious act inevitably change the way you read everything the character did before?

Or can both things remain true at once — the hero and the person who fell?

I’d especially love examples of characters where this tension isn’t resolved by simply deciding that they were “good” or “bad” all along.

Pollux, an alien who is from a species called Hetero Morphines who are having the ability called morphological plasticity.

Pollux was born into a civilization of conquerors. His parents were spies sent to Earth as part of an operation connected to their species' plans for invasion. They concealed their identities among humans, but their mission ended tragically when they were killed by humans while Pollux was biologically fifteen years old.

Left alone on Earth, Pollux had to survive without his parents or the protection of his own species. Rather than pursue their mission, he chose to remain on Earth and find a way to live.

He eventually settled in Mexico, in villages near Mexico City. Using his biological abilities, he transformed his appearance to resemble a light-skinned Mexican teenager with layered, curly hair. He also reshaped his pointed ears to appear human. Under the identity Pollux Hernandez he learned to blend into human society.

Pollux struggles to survive in Mexico. Without a family or a reliable source of income, he sometimes begs for money and food and collects discarded belongings that might be useful. He avoids unnecessary transformations and tries not to attract attention.

His home is a cave hidden behind a waterfall. It offers him privacy and shelter from a world in which revealing his true identity could put him in danger.

Pollux also has a small connection to human kindness through Señor Rodriguez, an elderly restaurant owner who gives him a burrito once a week. Rodriguez doesn't know that Pollux is an alien; he simply sees a struggling teenager who needs help.

Although Pollux is thirty years old chronologically, Hetero Morphines age more slowly than humans, leaving him with a biological age of approximately fifteen.

Next character is an American girl who is from a rich family and is named Christine Robertson , she is from Texas and she has some Latino friends where she knows some Spanish,she is usually comfortable living in a lower or middle class areas as her family wants her to have a normal life, once her family went on a vacation to Mexico.

Even tho I know how these two characters origin story , idk how to introduce each other

Hi everyone, I’ve run into a recurring issue with my character design and would love some advice.

I have a bad habit of giving my characters tragic backstories or toxic family dynamics.

Subconsciously, I feel like suffering is the only thing that gives a character real depth. I realize this is a flaw in my thinking—partly because I personally find myself reflecting more deeply through painful experiences, so I project that onto my characters to make them feel grounded.

My main issue is: how do I write compelling characters without relying on trauma as a crutch, or making it feel like I'm just trying to make the audience feel bad for them?

I have two specific questions:

1. If a character does have a tragic background: How do I write them so their story feels genuinely deep and meaningful, rather than just cheap "woe-is-me" angst/pity-baiting?
2. If a character has a normal, healthy background: How do I build depth and complexity into them without relying on a traumatic backstory?

I realize I’m naturally drawn to flawed, tragic characters and sympathize with them more, but logically I know depth doesn't strictly come from trauma. How do you guys approach this in your writing?