An Illustrated Look At Creating Dynamic Characters

In this post, we share an illustrated look at creating dynamic characters.

“There’s something wrong with your main characters, and you can’t quite put your finger on it. When we struggle with creating a compelling, believable story for our protagonists, it most often boils down to one thing: we haven’t fully grasped who they are, and what they want.

In a recent article on Reedsy, we looked at dynamic characters in fiction: that is, creating protagonists with desires, strengths, and flaws, who must grapple with internal conflict to achieve their goals. To help illustrate this idea, and how it applies to most narrative patterns, we made an illustrated guide.

[What is a dynamic character? A dynamic character undergoes substantial internal change — whether in personality, attitude, or worldview — over the course of the narrative. Static characters don’t develop in this way; their beliefs do not evolve and their personalities remain the same.]

In this comic, we took three popular characters, Han Solo, Walter White, and Katniss Everdeen and put them in a scenario of our invention: that of an author in search of a book deal.

We define each of their fundamental wants, strengths, and flaws before looking at how these factors influence the ways their stories play out. The results of this experiment are three different stories, with three different outcomes. Check it out.”

Top Tip: Use our Character Creation Kit to create great characters for your stories.