The Characters I Can't Stop Writing

Somewhere along the way, I stopped trying to write perfect characters.

Not all at once, not intentionally. But slowly. I found myself drawn to the ones that felt a little harder to hold onto... the ones who made choices I couldn't always defend, even when I understood them. Those are the characters that stay with me. And, inevitably, they're the ones I keep writing.

I'm drawn to characters who live in the space between right and wrong.

Not villains, not heroes. Something quieter than that, something more complicated. The kind of person who can do something terrible... and still have a reason that makes your chest ache when you see it clearly. I think there's something honest about that kind of character. There's no distance, no easy judgment. Just the uncomfortable understanding that, under the right circumstances, anyone could become something they never meant to be.

I'm also drawn to devotion... the kind that doesn't come without cost.

Loyalty that feels unshakable but isn't. Love that asks for more than it should. The quiet moment where a character realizes what they're willing to give up... and what they're not. There's tension there that I can't seem to let go of. Because devotion, at its core, isn't always gentle. Sometimes it demands everything.

And then there are the characters who hold power they don't fully understand.

Not just power in the obvious sense, but something deeper... something that shifts who they are, whether they want it to or not. The kind of power that feels like control... until it isn't. The kind that asks a question they can't avoid: What am I willing to become to keep this?

I don't think I write these characters because they're easy.

I write them because they're not. Because they sit in the tension between who they are and who they might become. Because they make choices that matter. Because they change... sometimes in ways that feel like growth, and sometimes in ways that feel like loss. And because, more often than not, they linger long after the story ends.

If those are the kinds of characters you find yourself drawn to also... the ones who blur the line between right and wrong, who love a little too fiercely, who carry more power than they know what to do with...

I think you're going to feel at home here.

~Nyssa

Not all monsters are born.

Some are made one choice at a time.