I'm going to go a bit against the grain here and say the most critical element is often overlooked: the character's relationship to the setting's central power system. Whether it's magic, technology, social hierarchy, or the economy. How do they access it? Are they privileged or blocked? Do they exploit it, fear it, or want to dismantle it? This isn't just for fantasy. In any story, the system applies pressure. Defining their position within it generates instant conflict and motivation. Their skills and flaws should tie back to navigating that system. A backstory is just the report on how they ended up in that position. Focus on the systemic pressure, and the character's shape becomes clear.
2026-08-12 08:35:25
21
Valeria
Detail Spotter
Veterinarian
Honestly? A good photo or piece of art. I'm visual, and a strong image anchors everything for me. I'll spend ages on Pinterest or browsing art stations until I find a face that holds the feeling of the character. It instantly solves a dozen tiny descriptive choices—posture, expression, the kind of wear on their clothes. From there, I build a shortlist. Core motivation (what they think they want vs. what they need), one devastating secret, and a defining mannerism. The secret is key; it's the thing they're protecting at all costs, and it explains so many of their otherwise confusing choices. The mannerism makes them physically memorable on the page without constant description. I keep it all on one page, max. Any longer and I'll never look at it again after chapter three.
2026-08-12 10:19:44
3
Tessa
Spoiler Watcher
Teacher
Man, after filling out character sheets that felt like homework for years, I finally figured out you don’t need a novel for each person. The only truly must-have thing is the contradiction. A tidy librarian who secretly bets on illegal pigeon races. A fearless warrior terrified of butterflies. That single, sharp internal clash tells me more about how they’ll react under pressure than three pages of favorite foods and eye color ever could. I scribble that core tension at the top of my document and build outwards. Everything else—their voice, their goals, the wounds that shaped them—spirals out from that one broken place.
Some basic logistics are non-negotiable, but keep 'em lean. A concrete, tangible want that drives the plot right now, not a vague ‘to be happy.’ A deep-seated fear or belief, often rooted in a past wound, that actively works against that want. And a distinct voice marker, just a phrase or two of how they talk, so they don’t all sound like me. I used to waste hours on astrological signs and childhood pets, but now if it doesn’t directly fuel the contradiction or the plot engine, it gets cut.
2026-08-13 07:15:22
15
Clara
Responder
Student
The element I can't write without is the 'lie they believe.' It's the flawed philosophy that colors their every decision. The cowboy who believes showing any emotion is weakness. The scholar convinced she must earn love through perfection. The plot then becomes the series of events that brutally challenges that lie. Their voice, reactions, and arc all stem from defending, then questioning, then maybe overthrowing that central falsehood. Everything else is decoration.
2026-08-15 16:07:38
18
ดูคำตอบทั้งหมด
สแกนรหัสเพื่อดาวน์โหลดแอป
หนังสือที่เกี่ยวข้อง
GoodNovel Author's Guidebook
GoodNovel Academy
9.7
103.1K
Thanks for reading! If you didn’t find the answer to your question here, contact your editor who sent you the contract offer and tell him/her to improve this guidebook.
Also, don't forget to take the small quiz in the last chapter and share your score with us in the comment!
This is a brochure containing a collection of PROMPT IDEAS from our one and only GOOD NOVEL WORKSHOP. Every PROMPT is a thrilling idea that might inspire you and can be the foundation of your next book! If interested, Please send your summary to: workshop@goodnovel.com, and note which prompt is based on. Our editors will get back to you as soon as possible.
She looked at her with contempt, her red heels clicking on the ground. A sinister smile is plastered on her face full of malice.
"Whatever you do, he's mine. Even if you go back in time, he's always be mine."
Then the man beside the woman with red heels, snaked his hands on her waist.
"You'll never be my partner. You're a trash!"
The pair walked out of that dark alley and left her coughing blood. At the last seconds of her life, her lifeless eyes closed.
***
Jade angrily looked at the last page of the book.
She believed that everyone deserves to be happy.
She heard her mother calling for her to eat but reading is her first priority. And so, until she felt dizzy reading, she fell asleep.
***
Words she can't comprehend rang in her ears.
She's now the 'Heather' in the book.
[No, I won't change the story. I'll just watch on the sidelines.]
This is what she believed not until...
"Stop slandering Heather unless you want to lose your necks."
That was the beginning of her new life as a character.
Cover Illustration: JEIJANDEE (follow her on IG with the same username)
Release Schedule: Every Saturday
NOTE: This work is undergoing major editing (grammar and stuffs) and hopefully will be finished this month, so expect changes. Thank you~!
When the apocalypse came, she lost everything. Starving, hunted, and desperate, she trusted the one man she loved… only for him to betray her in the cruelest way possible. He stole her last supplies to please another woman and left her to die in a sea of the undead.
But death wasn’t the end.
She woke up days before the world collapsed.
After cutting ties with her ungrateful ex and his parasitic family, a mysterious voice awakens in her mind, LUS, a Level-Up System designed to help her survive the coming end.
With knowledge of the future and a system guiding her every move, she begins to prepare. She stockpiles resources, builds a base, and learns how to fight back against the horrors that once destroyed her.
And when the apocalypse arrives again… she’s ready. But survival isn’t the only thing waiting for her in this new life.
A silent killer who watches her like prey.
A manipulative genius who wants to unravel her secrets.
A gentle protector who sees the girl she hides.
And a dangerous man who thrives in chaos.
As the world burns and power shifts, they’re all drawn to her, each with their own motives, each with their own darkness. Even her past refuses to stay buried.
Because now, the man who once abandoned her is back, broken, desperate, and begging for a second chance. Too bad she has no time for regrets.
Not when she’s busy rising to power… and building a kingdom in the ruins of the world.
If you live in a world with special trait exist would you be the bad or the good one?
Iris lives in a world where everything is not fair. When your district is poor your trait is not that good. Until one day, she was invited to enter the Iliaden Traits Academy. She then realized that their world must be changed. But her ambitions were stopped the moment someone stole the traits stone.
The cold girl from district five then affiliated herself with a man who can catch the culprit and change the world.
Her name was Cathedra. Leave her last name blank, if you will.
Where normal people would read, "And they lived happily ever after," at the end of every fairy tale story, she could see something else. Three different things.
Three words: Lies, lies, lies.
A picture that moves.
And a plea: Please tell them the truth.
All her life she dedicated herself to becoming a writer and telling the world what was being shown in that moving picture. To expose the lies in the fairy tales everyone in the world has come to know.
No one believed her. No one ever did.
She was branded as a liar, a freak with too much imagination, and an orphan who only told tall tales to get attention. She was shunned away by society. Loveless. Friendless.
As she wrote "The End" to her novels that contained all she knew about the truth inside the fairy tale novels she wrote, she also decided to end her pathetic life and be free from all the burdens she had to bear alone.
Instead of dying, she found herself blessed with a second life inside the fairy tale novels she wrote, and living the life she wished she had with the characters she considered as the only friends she had in the world she left behind.
Cathedra was happy until she realized that an ominous presence lurks within her stories. One that wanted to kill her to silence the only one who knew the truth.
Sketching out a character sheet before I write always feels like putting down the foundation for a house. I used to just dive into a first chapter and let the people reveal themselves, but half the time I'd hit a wall in the second act because I didn't know what my protagonist would actually do. Having a document, even a messy one, with their core fear, a secret they keep, and what they think they want versus what they need, creates internal conflict I can mine for plot points.
For my last project, I realized the antagonist's motivation was just 'he's evil,' which made every scene with him flat. Filling out a sheet forced me to give him a tragic, misguided reason for his actions. Suddenly, the confrontation scene wrote itself—it became a clash of ideologies, not just a physical fight. The plot gained depth because the characters' decisions started feeling inevitable, rooted in who they were, not just what the outline needed them to do. It’s less about filling in eye color and more about knowing the engine that drives them.
Honestly? Character sheets are a life-saver for my chaotic brain, but I don’t think it’s about pure ‘realism.’ They’re more like a scaffold for making weirdos feel like real people. If I just list ‘brown hair, blue eyes, likes pizza,’ the character’s cardboard. But the sheet forces me to go deeper: what’s their posture? Do they mumble or project? What mundane thing makes them unreasonably angry? What’s their go-to lie?
I had a sheet once where I filled out a ‘most embarrassing memory’ that never made it into the story. But knowing it changed how the character held themself in a crowd. For me, the value’s in the contradictions. A sheet helps track the gap between what they say they value and what they actually do when stressed. That dissonance is where humanity leaks in. It’s less a checklist and more a conversation with a stranger in my head.
What flops is when I get too rigid, like the sheet is a final exam. If I stick to it religiously, the character stops breathing. It has to be a living doc I can scribble on and ignore when the story demands it.
Ever hit a wall where your characters feel like cardboard cutouts? That’s where 'Writing Interiority' absolutely shines. It dives deep into the messy, beautiful insides of characters—their quirks, fears, and unspoken thoughts—and teaches you how to weave that into prose without drowning in exposition. The book breaks down techniques like free indirect discourse in a way that finally clicked for me, especially after struggling with 'telling vs. showing' for years.
What sets it apart are the exercises. They’re not generic prompts; they force you to excavate your character’s subconscious. One had me write a monologue from my protagonist’s childhood teddy bear’s perspective—weirdly enlightening! It’s like therapy for your fictional people. After reading, my beta readers noticed an immediate shift in how 'lived-in' my characters felt, even in quieter scenes.