Part
Characters
You might say: cast, the people in the story
The people who do things in the story: a protagonist, an opponent and the cast around them.
- What it does
- Make events matter: readers care because things happen to someone.
- Ask
- Who wants what, and how do they get in each other’s way?
- Trouble
- Characters act only because the plot needs them to.
Parts
- Protagonist: The character whose goal drives the story.
- Characterization: How the text shows who someone is.
- Antagonist: The opponent attacks the hero’s great weakness; other characters may be friend or enemy.
- Character arc: How a character changes, or refuses to change, between the first page and the last.
- Character web: The cast as a network.
Sources
- Brandon Sanderson, Creating Proactive, Relatable, and Capable Characters (Writing Lecture #5, 2025), The Three Pillars of Compelling Characters
Think of proactivity, relatability, and capability as sliding scales.
Use it on your project
teardown-apply: hold "Characters" (characters) from the teardown at https://teardownatlas.com/fiction-writing/ against my project
Paste it into a coding agent that has the teardown skills.
An AI agent wrote this map with the teardown skill. It can contain errors: check the sources before you rely on a part. About and legal