[Feanaro]

Check that. Second time reading through I realized my error in terminology. Forgive me, but it was late at night. Rather than having an incomplete or incorrect theory, I have modified and made the proper corrections.

In order for your character to be interesting, you must know them fully. You must have every detail about their lives mapped out. This will save you alot of time in future when confronted with that ever-so-frquent "I don't know what the character should do in this situation." If you know your characters inside and out, you find they will be more interesting just from being more realistic.

Now then, on to the flawed point I made last night. I said a character should have a ruling emotion.. I was wrong. A character should have a ruling passion that drives his/her every action. I think this is an easy enough concept to grasp, but I shall further elaborate. This passion is made up of many things including their dominate emotion and their past. In my previous post I substituted "passion" for "emotion", and got carried away on a midnight tangent.

Want to avoid a Mary-Sue? Naaramare's right. There is no one trick to make your character more realistic--it's more of an ability if anything, and one I find difficult to explain. If this is the one point that you find hard, well, I don't know what to say other than give your character some reasonable flaws--either in their personality or physically. Physical flaws don't necessarily mean lack of beauty and whatnot, but an ability as well. Perhaps the character isn't as good with a sword, or combat in general.

Lastly, if you do favor a certain character (perhaps the villain) over the others, why not make the tale from two points of view? R.A. Salvatore has done this with great success. He shows what both sides are doing at the same time, which really helps to build up the climax/final confrontation, because you already know what the strengths/strategies of both sides are. He does this in a very nice method, by alternating between the protagonist and the antagonist from chapter to chapter. If you do the chapter by chapter method, there is less risk of one character going off on a long tangent.

It is a rule that in every piece of dramatic writing, the main character must change as a result of the developing plot. If the character doesn't change, then your work is not a dramatic story. It is this change that also helps to keep the readers interested, as they see your character grow from the circumstances around him/her.

[ August 17, 2002: Message edited by: Feanaro ]