What are some common pitfalls to avoid when designing characters for different genres and audiences?

While stereotypes are boring, if you're having trouble avoiding them, push yourself to go deeper. What is beyond the stereotype? If your character is a "valley girl", what makes her that way? What situation happened in her past that made her feel like she couldn't express her authentic self? Why is she working so hard to fit in, or why is beauty on a surface level so important to her? Is she avoiding becoming like her intellectual mother who never made her feel worthy? Does she have a father who values looks and makes her feel like that's the only thing that makes her "valuable"? How does that make her feel when she's alone? Give yourself permission to explore stereotypes beyond the surface and you'll find much more interesting characters.

Common pitfalls when designing characters for different genres and audiences include stereotyping, lack of diversity, excessive sexualization, unrealistic body standards, and inconsistent characterization. It is important to consider cultural sensitivity, depth, and relatability to create well-rounded and inclusive characters.

Always consider choices made from your character's perspective. How do they move when something is heavy? Which leg do they favour on a cold day? When they're trying to hide their emotions, what's their physical "tell"? Putting yourself in your character's shoes is so helpful. Walk like them, talk like them, move like them. Improvisation is a great way to explore movement work and physicality, but also gets your brain working in new ways around character development. If you're stuck, take a class!

In character design, it's crucial to maintain both variety and contrast to captivate your audience effectively. Variety ensures each character stands out with unique features like shapes, colors, and styles, while contrast adds depth by incorporating opposing qualities such as values and roles. By infusing these elements, characters become more engaging, memorable, and dynamic. To steer clear of this pitfall, focus on diversifying your character design through experimentation using challenges and prompts that encourage exploration of different design principles like balance, harmony, rhythm, and emphasis.

Something I've found helpful is finding a character's laugh. How does it sound, where does it come from in their body? What makes them laugh? Everyone has a different sense of humour, so start there. A sense of humour is something that everyone can identify with, too. Also, if you're struggling to find variety, assign your character a secret. A secret love, a secret passion, a secret child... A secret influences every choice characters make, and no one person has the same secret.

Unoriginalitu and Plagiarism can severely undermine character design, making characters dull and unethical. Avoid these pitfalls by ensuring originality and authenticity. Use design challenges and prompts to generate unique ideas and concepts. Always reference and acknowledge your sources of inspiration to maintain integrity. By doing so, you create characters that are fresh, engaging, and ethically sound, resonating more deeply with your audience and standing out in the creative landscape.

If you want to pay homage to characters you love, that's fine, but never pull from a single character. For example, your character has the gravitas of Gandalf, the wit of Captain Piccard, the gruffness of Jayne Cobb, and the gait of Drax. Now you have lots of inspiration, but a completely new character. Borrowing traits is fine, but carbon-copies are boring. Mix it up!

Again, everyone has secrets. Those secrets influence us. Give everyone something to hide, something to love, and something to die for. We may never know it as the audience, but it will change, challenge and inform all that character's choices. And who knows, you may become inspired by their story too, and that side character might just star in your next story.