Characters who’ve been told that’s why your important. Your worth something because this other person/ thing is important, and you are here solely to keep them safe.

Imagine you are dead. And then you are RIPPED from the embrace of decay into the world of the living again. Your memories are hazy and you don't recognize any of these people, but they act like they're close to you? Like they love you? So you try to get your memories back, to act like you belong here, but everybody tries to forget you died. And you can't. It is omnipresent. And just trying to grapple with that fact pushes the people who "love" you away, and they're incapable of understanding, and they're so confused, what's wrong N̶̄̀O̶͛͗T̷̉́ ̷͋͝Y̴̎̌Ȍ̴̈U̸̓R NÄM̴̃͑E̵̾̇? And you just need them to understand, you aren't that person! You aren't! You don't know who that person is! You don't know why any of this is happening, but they're unwilling to bend, they keep insisting you are that person, your memories will come back, everything will be normal again, and you want to scream and cry and claw yourself open to show them you're different. Your existence as a being wholly separate from whoever you "used to be" is a sin unto itself. All you can do is scrabble for life and to them, you're killing whoever they loved to do it.

Age

adolescent, afresh, ancient, antiquarian, antique, big, childish, crude, doddering, elderly, fresh, full-grown/full-fledged, green, hoary, immemorial, infant/infantile, junior, late, medieval, mint, modish, new, novel, older, old-fashioned, originally, outdated/out-of-date, passé, quaint, refreshing, secondhand, stale, state-of-the-art, undeveloped, up-to-date, well-preserved, youthful

Appearance

adorable, aesthetic/esthetic, artistic, beautiful, comely, crisp, dapper, decorative, desirable, dressy, exquisite, eye-catching, fancy, fetching, flawless, glorious, good-looking, graceful, grungy, hideous, homely, irresistible, natty, ornate, plain, pretty, refreshing, resplendent, seductive, spiffy, striking, stylish, ugly, unbecoming, willowy, with-it

Genuineness

abstract, actually, alias, apocryphal, apparently, arty, authentic, baseless, beta, bona fide, circumstantial, concrete, contrived, credible, deceptive, delusive, dreamy, ecclesiastical, empirical/empiric, enigmatic/enigmatical, ersatz, ethereal, factual, fallacious, fantastic, far-fetched, fictitious, foolproof, fraudulent, good, hard, historical, honest-to-God, illusory/illusive, imitative, indisputable, invisible, just, lifelike, made-up, magic/magical, make-believe, matter-of-fact, metaphysical, monstrous, mystic/mystical, mythical/mythological, nonexistent, openhearted, ostensibly, paranormal, physical, positive, pretended, quack, quite, realistic, right, sincerely, specious, spurious, supernatural, synthetic, tangible, true, unearthly, unnatural, unthinkable, unvarnished, unworldly, valid, veritable, wholehearted/whole-hearted, wrong

Movement

ambulatory, brisk, clumsy, fleet, fluent, frozen, gawky, graceless, immobile, indolent, itinerant, leisurely, lifeless, liquid, lithe, maladroit, migrant/migratory, motionless, moving, nomadic, oafish, passive, pendulous/pendent, portable, restless, roundabout, sedentary, slow, speedy, static, vibrant, winding

Style

adorable, baroque, becoming, black, bold, brassy, cheap, class, classy, contemporary, country, cultural, dashing, dowdy, eat high on the hog, exquisite, featureless, flamboyant, floral, flowery, formless, futuristic, garish, gay, glamorous, gorgeous, grand, graphic, hot, improvised, informal, innovative, kinky, loud, lush, luxurious, mean, meretricious, modish, neat, new, obsolete, old-fashioned, orderly, ornamental, ostentatious, outdated/out-of-date, palatial, picturesque, plush, posh, prevalent, quaint, refined, resplendent, rustic, scruffy, sharp, simple, sleazy, smart, snazzy, spiffy, spruce, stately, state-of-the-art, stylish, swank/swanky, tacky, tasteless, tousled, two-bit, unbecoming, unworldly, up-to-date, vogue

NOTE

The above are concepts classified according to subject and usage. It not only helps writers and thinkers to organize their ideas but leads them from those very ideas to the words that can best express them.

It was, in part, created to turn an idea into a specific word. By linking together the main entries that share similar concepts, the index makes possible creative semantic connections between words in our language, stimulating thought and broadening vocabulary. Writing Resources PDFs

it's really easy to fall into a rut when writing the same character or characters all the time, or even the same type of character all the time, where characterization tends to become muscle memory as much as anything else. You know what that character will do, so you know what characters of that type will do, so you know what characters will do, so that's what your characters do.

And when you don't have to think about it, you don't build--and can start to atrophy--those muscles required to do detailed, specific, engaging character building. What does it mean for this character, in this time, to do or experience this thing. What are the myriad of things that have built your character up to being who they are, and how do those things (individually and in aggregate) impact the choices that they make, the actions that they take, the reactions that they have, and the people that they engage with.

What can end up happening--and I see this all the time in published fiction--is that authors end up only being able to write 2-3 character types of each gender, and it all feels a bit samey.

Without opening a book by so many authors I have read, I can predict with a fair amount of accuracy what most of their characters will act like, because it's kind of the same across the board. Even when they start distinct, they end up drifting towards the same personality/character types like carcinization.

Writing from the point of view of/focusing on a range of characters (especially if they are different genders, of different backgrounds, with different wants and fears and habits and interests and personalities) forces you to actually be specific in your writing, if you want it to be any good.

Your 15-year-old B-student who really wants to spend their time playing rugby shouldn't sound like your 45-year-old businessman with a penchant for collecting Star Trek action figures who is trying to plan the perfect anniversary for his wife and neither of them should sound like the 23-year-old who spends their time going out at nightclubs and showing up a little bit hungover at work and worrying about finding a job that will let them move out of the apartment they're sharing with three other people.