Read 250 Things You Should Know About Writing for Free Online

suspense.
     
12. How You Succeed Is By Not Having Them Succeed
    You as storyteller are a malevolent presence blocking the character's bliss. You must be a
total asshole
. Imagine that the character is an ant over here, and over
there
is a nugget of food, a dollop of honey, and all the ant wants is to trot his little ant-y ass over to the food so that he may dine upon it. Think of the
infinite ways
you can stop him from getting to that food. Flick him into the grass. Block his path with twigs, rocks, a line of dish soap, a squeeze of lighter fluid set aflame. Be the wolf to his little piggy and huff and puff and blow his house down. Pick him up, put him in the cup-holder in your car, and drive him 100 miles in the opposite direction while taunting him with insults. The audience will hate you. But they'll keep on hungering for more.
Will the ant get to the food? Won't he? Will he find his friends again? Can he overcome?
Primal, simple, declarative problem. You are the villain. The character is the hero. The audience thirsts for this most fundamental conflict of
storyteller
versus
character
.
     
13. The Code
    Just as a storyworld is beholden to certain laws, norms, and ways, so too is a character: every character has an internal compass, an invisible set of morals and beliefs that comprise their "code." The audience senses this. They know when a character betrays his own code and violates the program -- it's like a glitch in the Matrix, a disturbance in the dream you've crafted. That's not to say characters can't change. They can, and do. But a heroic fireman doesn't one day save a cat from a tree and the next day decide to cook and eat a baby. Changes in a character must come out of the story, not out of thin air.
     
14. A B C
    The law of threes. Find three beats for your character -- be they physical, social, emotional -- with each beat graphing a change of the character of the course of a story.
Selfish boy
to
exiled teen
to
heroic man
. From
maiden
to
mother
to
crone
. Private, Lieutenant, General. Knows everything, everything in question, knows nothing. Birth, life, death. Beginning, middle, end.
     
15. Boom Goes The Dynamite
    Blake Snyder calls this the "Save The Cat" moment, but it needn't be that shiny and happy. Point being: every character needs a kick-ass moment, a reason why we all think, "Fuck yeah, that's why I'm behind this dude." What moment will you give your character? Why will we pump our fists and hoot for him?
     
16. Beware The Everyman, Fear The Chosen One
    I'm boring. So are you. We don't all make compelling protagonists despite what we feel in our own heads, and so the Everyman threatens to instead become the eye-wateringly-dull-motherfucker-man, flat as a coat of cheap paint. The Chosen One -- arguably the opposite of the Everyman -- has, appropriately, the opposite problem: he's too interesting, a preening peacock of special preciousness. Beware either. Both can work, but know the danger. Find complexity. Seek remarkability.
     
17. Nobody Sees Themselves As A Supporting Character
    Thus, your supporting characters shouldn't act like supporting characters. They have full lives in which they are totally invested and where they are the protagonists. They're not puppets for fiction.
     
18. The Main MC, DJ Protag
    That said, they don't call your "main character" the MC for nothing. Your protagonist at the center of the story should still be the most compelling motherfucker in the room.
     
19. You Are Not Your Character, Except For When You Are
    Your character is not a proxy for you. If you see Mary Sue in the mirror, put your foot through the glass and use
that
reflection instead. But that old chestnut -- "write what you know" -- applies. You take the things that have happened to you and you bring them to the character. Look for those things in your memory that affected you: fought a bear,  won a surfing competition, lost a fist-fight with Dad, eradicated an insectile alien species. Pull out the