Call me Robin. 🌹 Aspiring writer and human, She/Her, Californian, English grad student, Nerd I'm a blind screen reader user so don't expect too many images here--unless they happen to have alt text/descriptions. Image descriptions are the best. ♥ I bounce around many fandoms, but my favorites include Good Omens, The Good Place, Welcome to Night Vale, Vampire Chronicles, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Sailor Moon. I am also a huge Swiftie!
It’s one of the greatest challenges—and rewards—of writing: creating characters who are nothing like us. If you want your characters to feel complex and real, you can't just write yourself in a different hat. You have to build them from the ground up, with their own roots and unique growth pattern.
Here are seven ways to push beyond your own experience and plant characters with lives, beliefs, and souls completely different from your own:
1. Research the Worldview, Not Just the Job
Go beyond superficial traits like occupation. Research the cultural, socio-economic, or historical context that truly shaped their thinking. Understanding why they value certain traditions or why they fear a specific outcome will give you the necessary framework to write their choices convincingly.
2. Locate the Shared Emotional Root
While your character's experiences may be different, their core human emotions are universal. Find the common ground in emotions like love, loss, fear, or ambition, and use that as the initial, authentic entry point into their psyche. Even if they respond to grief differently than you, the source of the pain is recognizable.
3. Link Their Beliefs to a Specific Wound
Connect their differences directly to a specific trauma or formative event in their past. Their non-authorial beliefs aren't random; they are flawed coping mechanisms created to protect them from that past pain. Writing their different perspective as a logical defense against a past trauma makes their actions understandable.
4. Interview the Character Formally
Sit down and formally "interview" your character as if they were a real person across the table. Ask them questions you, the author, would find uncomfortable or confrontational, focusing on their prejudices and daily, mundane choices. You should genuinely aim to be surprised by their answers.
5. Focus on Physicality and Environment
Pay close attention to how their physicality, daily routines, and environment reflect their difference from you. Does their speech pattern betray their history? Does their posture reflect their profession? These external details serve as constant reminders that you are writing a person who moves through the world differently.
6. Embrace the Challenging Flaw
Give them a fundamental flaw or contradiction that genuinely challenges your own moral compass. The act of writing their flawed justifications without immediate judgment will deepen your understanding and prevent the character from becoming a mere puppet of your plot.
7. Explore the 'Wrong' Side of a Choice
When the character is faced with a choice opposite to what you would pick, write the internal monologue that leads to their decision. Write a short scene where they confidently defend their "wrong" position, exploring the internal logic that makes their choice feel right to them.
It takes effort to climb out of your own head, but the reward is a garden full of diverse, unforgettable life.
What is one trait your current character has that is nothing like you?
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Tangled (2010)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Eugene Fitzherbert | Flynn Rider/Rapunzel
Characters: Eugene Fitzherbert | Flynn Rider, Rapunzel (Disney)
Additional Tags: this is KIND OF pre-ship, but only because it's short so a lot has to be hinted at, Fake Relationship, Modern AU, coffee shop AU, narrator attitudes about ocd and also about egypt are not reflective of author attitude
Summary:
Flynn answers a want ad for a fake boyfriend.
An absolutely lovely Tangled fic I received as a gift!
Celebrate the works and world of Jane Austen! @firawren is hosting a Jane Austen fandom and Regency AU fanwork event throughout the entire month of January. Save the date and start drafting your creations!
Anyone can join, and all types of fandom works are welcome: fanfic, fanart, gifs, manips, memes, fanvids, podfic, mood boards, etc.
Each day has a new prompt to inspire your creation:
(Text version of prompts under the “keep reading” link below)
15 of these prompts are new for 2026, while 16 of the most popular prompts from 2025 have been retained for this year.
Please interpret the prompts in whatever way inspires you! For instance, for the “Court” prompt, it could mean courtship, a court of law, the king’s court, a basketball court, etc. It’s up to you!
You are NOT expected to do something every day! Just 1 work for 1 day of your choosing is enough, though you are welcome to do more if you like. And you are NOT expected to create your fanwork on that day, just post it on that day.
Your work must follow one of the daily prompts, be new for the event, not use AI, and include at least one of the following:
Character from one of Jane Austen’s works
Character from any Jane Austen adaptation (including modern retellings)
Jane Austen herself
Setting in a Jane Austen-like AU
For example, any of these would be fine:
Darcy and you the reader live in the Star Wars universe [character from Jane’s works]
Cher from Clueless marries Snow White [character from Jane adaptation]
Jane Austen is, inexplicably, on the TV show Friends [Jane herself]
Han Solo and Princess Leia live in Regency England [setting in Jane AU]
Darcy and Cher fight monsters in a fantasy land with Regency-like manners, dress, and speech [all three: Jane character, Jane adaptation character, Jane setting!]
Completely canon-compliant works are of course also allowed!
Read the full rules and FAQ for the event. If you still have any questions, feel free to send an ask or DM.
Please reblog this post to spread the word, and follow this blog to see all the works that are posted!
you guys, what does it mean if there’s rust all over my door that i swear wasn’t there yesterday and the air smells alarmingly salty? have i never needed anything more, or should i be concerned?
Looking for Alaska is 20 years old. It reads like historical fiction now. I mean, the plot turns on a PAY PHONE. Kids don't even know what pay phones are.
Hundreds of school districts have banned the book from libraries and classrooms, so much so that it's rarely taught in English classes the way that it used to be.
And yet somehow, improbably enough, it continues to find readers. Over a thousand every week. Incredible. I am so grateful that little book has stayed alive for so long.
Finally watching the Interview with the Vampire TV series, and I'm really into it! I'm so glad that they have audio description now. The changes from the books are really interesting and seem to match the spirit of the books while adding new dynamics.
my most self indulgent s3 wish that i still think is completely necessary and non negotiable is for aziraphale to list crowleys little demonic qualities (wily and temptuous and mischeivous and frustrating and exciting and rebellious and oh...) and say that if he wasnt like that then aziraphale wouldnt be very smitten with him at all
its like so important he makes it very clear he's miss it if crowley was well-behaved. he wants someone mean and diffucult and annoying and petty and selfish and sharp as much as he wants someone kind and cooperative and agreeable and mature and reasonable and sweet. its essential do you hear me !!!
Ok ok ok but the THING the thing that GETS ME about Aziraphale and I feel like I don't see as much about it written on here is that yes we all know that Crowley pretends to be cynical and dark because he wants so badly to be joyful and optimistic but he's been hurt & let down too many times so he puts up the cynicism as a facade.
But Aziraphale is ALSO DOING THIS, just using the opposite tactic.
Crowley assumes everything will go badly because he's protected from disappointment when it does, and gets to be pleasantly surprised when it doesn't.
Aziraphale assumes everything will go well because he's unBELIEVABLY anxiety-ridden ALL THE TIME and cannot deal emotionally with even the prospect of things going wrong. So not only does he optimism his way out of seeing issues that are right in front of him until he absolutely can't avoid them any longer (see: dancing in his bookshop surrounded by demons), but he also actively gaslights himself into thinking that the bad things that happened to him or that he was involved in weren't that bad, and pretends that he doesn't have negative emotions and is just fine and happy all the time because he doesn't know what to DO with those feelings-- he's an angel! He's supposed to be placidly happy forever! What do you mean he's angry or sad or disappointed or disgusted or lonely? Angels don't feel those things!
Season 2 showed us Crowley getting in touch with his feelings of love and care, and I think season 3 is going to show us Aziraphale getting in touch with his feelings of anger and disappointment, and I for one CANNOT WAIT.
Another reason why Aziraphale would want to go to heaven is the Book of Life
During all the season we were told about the Book of Life. All the season Aziraphale and Crowley were threatened with it and it scared the shit out of Crowley.
And you know what would eliminate that threat? Getting hold of that book.
And you know who has the power over that book? The ruler of heaven, exactly the place Aziraphale was offered.
“I have in my possession... the Book of Life! Oh, I know it’s meant to be used as a threat to keep occult and ethereal beings in line, but there’s only one and keeping it in my private collection prevents that!”
I'm just laughing at the idea of Aziraphale stealing the Book of Life to hide in his bookshop and Metronome (derogatory) sending an army to get it back. Aziraphale reluctantly surrenders at the end of a nasty battle and hands over the book. Angel Soldier #3 takes it back up to Heaven, hands it over to Metronome, who opens it up....
...only to find an unloaded Derringer tucked inside hollowed out, blank pages.
origamiaround
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