Greetings and salutations. It is I, Graham.

It’s thrilling and scary, but we have been writing these blogs for more than a year now. Week in, week out, only missing a very few weeks due to minor things like cancer or work horrors causing distractions. This means we have covered a lot of topics. This also means that coming up with new topics can start to become difficult. After all, how many writing related topics can you really come up with? How much can you tell of your own background and influences before you are spilling out the most mundane topics of your life? Nevertheless, today we have a new topic! Haha.

Today I would like to discuss a bit about the types of characters I enjoy writing about. Of course, this bleeds over quite well into the type of characters I enjoy reading as well, but just so that I don’t have to dig into their differences, I am going to stick to what I enjoy writing. There are really four types of characters that I really enjoy digging into. Each of these four can slip around into different genres and roles within the story, but for the most part, they each have their own niche they fit into the easiest. Each of these four I enjoy, not necessarily for their look, although that can augment their type, but mainly for their attitude, their emotional niche, and the mood they bring to any scene they are in.

The first character is the devious brainiac. This is the planner, the plotter, the chess master who is already thinking three scenes ahead of whatever chapter they are currently in. They don’t necessarily need to be evil or problematic. But I do enjoy the condescending attitude of everyone else seeming to be so far behind their thought processes. And yes, they do tend to be either the villain, or the reluctant ally. Often the fun of this type of character is when they tend to not have, or not bother with, the social skills normally expected of friends and allies.

Another type I enjoy writing is the calm, confident, everyman. This can often be the next door neighbor or the best friend. But they are the one that everyone around them can use as a shoulder to lean on, or for a bit of advice. I think that what I enjoy so much about this kind of character is how peaceful and relaxing it is to write them. They mellow the drama surrounding them. They ground the other characters. They don’t have to be Zen and full of deep advice. They just have to be reliable, friendly, and relatable.

I’m a smartass, a jokester, and a collector of puns. So give me a smartass sidekick any day of the week. I’m even good making the smartass class clown into the MC, if that is what the character calls for. I love writing this kind of character for the levity they bring, for the way they have a tendency to “poke the bear”, as it were. Especially when they can be used to deflate the egos of the bullies and villains in the story. Plus, I love using them to tell really bad puns on the pages of my writings.

The final type of character I really enjoy writing is the edgy, emo reluctant protagonist. Yes, I know, they are usually most people’s least favorite type of character to read in a story. But I’m not necessarily referring to Bella and Edward here. I love the “fish out of water” type character. I grew up on the Reluctant Hero, Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, pretty much any of the Ohmsfords from the Shannara series, any time there was a Hero’s Journey started by someone who was in over their head and #didn’twanttogo, I was there to follow along.

So there you have it. These are the character archetypes that I have a tendency to enjoy writing the most. Soon it will be time to hear what Clevenger enjoys writing. And then next week, I will delve into explaining the characters that I have the most difficulty writing, either due to them being technically difficult, or just disliking the archetype so much. Until then…

Don’t forget to love one another.

Graham