Wattpad 101: Your guide to the world of Wattpad

How to Write an Interesting Story

So where does that leave you when creating a character? I'm not saying you need to polarize your character. I'm DEFINITELY NOT saying you should create a character that cranks some personality trait up to eleven. However, if you want a story, that's interesting, you're going to need to create characters that pop.

You need to find an interesting way that this character will interact with the world, and then you need to drape the character in it. Go all or nothing.

But Dorian, the strawman whines, then you will have built a 2D character that is predictable and boring! To which I answer, NO, no you haven't. You see, even if you build an exaggerated money hungry protagonist, you can still give him a range of characterization. The only thing sticking to a quirk does is close the range. It's refining, not destroying.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. True creativity does not come from having free reign to do whatever crazy thing you want... true creativity comes from being restricted in what you can do and finding new ways to build within that construct.

So in the end, what I'm saying, is that the characters you make can't be every character. If you make a character who is happy, then sad, then crying, then depressed, then angry, who loves money, hates the world, but loves people, maybe perverted, a stark atheist... you're pulling a character into too many directions. When you pull a character in too many directions, what they end up looking like is everyone else.

And that would be the point I'm making. Real people... we aren't interesting. You, me, and billy-bob may have disagreements here and there, but 90% of people (at least within any given culture group) probably don't think all that much different than others. So if you want a character to pop, you need to give them extreme points. You need to make them "the character who is like this". That's the character people will remember. After that, it's up to your creativity to make that character that pops more than a 1 trick pony, giving him more personality and dimensions. How? With subtlety of course.

Include Side Characters with their own Stories

First off, when I'm talking about side characters, I'm not talking about the hero's companion or the MC's best girlfriend. I'm talking about the random NPCs, mobs, and characters that they run into in their day-to-day life.

Most of the time, a side character is just uninteresting. You wouldn't even bother to describe their hair color, let alone give them a name or a personality. That's kind of how we do things in real life, right? I certainly don't remember the face of the person who sold me my Big Mac last week when I went to McDonalds.

Of course, I must say it again. Real Life is boring. If you want things to be interesting, then try building up the side characters with a little more eccentricity. These are living, breathing people too, and while you have a story going on throughout your book that you want to focus on, every side character in your story has their own lives going on too.

Since they're not the focus of your story, the main character may never know everything that is going on. However, you can include hints and side characterization. These little interactions may help build up the story. It'll make your world feel more alive. It will may your characters feel like they exist within a world that wasn't built specifically for them. Most importantly, it will be less boring.

I'm reminded of a story in the TV show Community. In a certain episode, a character named Abed isn't in the majority of the episode. As characters talk and do their own thing, he shows up in the background. First, he's shown meeting a pregnant girl, getting into a fight with boyfriend, her going into labor, and then her having a baby in the back of a van. At the end, he's asked "do anything interesting this week?" and he responds "Naw." In 4-5 short scenes, an entire story is told, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the main character.