Common Writing Mistake: Illogical Characters
Creating characters is like playing a role playing game. In fact, now that I think about it, games like Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder are fantasy writing. The point being that you have to create your characters with abilities and limitations and then adhere to them in order to create a believable adventure. Continuing with the RPG (Role Playing Game) example, if a character has 20 health left and a sword with 5 attack, that's all that character gets. It's very straightforward. It means that once that character's health gets below 20, he's dead. If that character is facing a monster, the maximum amount of damage that he can inflict with one hit is 5. So a monster with 10 health would require two hits. I'm using the RPG example because it involves numbers. Numbers are simple and creating an immersive world for readers is not. However, the "environmental logic" is the same. Characters must adhere to a set of rules--th...