There's something about contrasts that makes stories more interesting. Last night, I watched the first three or four episodes of the SPY x FAMILY anime dub. The pilot sets up the first of the main characters, Twilight, as this loner super-spy with no family and no ties to
A passage from Terry Pratchett's Jingo!, page 392, giving some dialog between a Klatchian prince (first) and his general (second): "And why are we going out to meet [the Ankh-Moporkian army commander] before battle commences?" "It's... it's a goodwill gesture, sire.
There's a passage from Stephen King's On Writing about how art is a support for life. This rhymed with some other things I've been thinking about, and I couldn't find it online. On pages 100 to 101 of my recent-edition print copy:
(Status: Feels close to something right. Make things up and see what sticks.) (Spoilers for Time to Orbit: Unknown through chapter 42, and minor spoilers for later. Minor spoilers for the 2022 movie Death on the Nile.) A mystery story breaks up into two parts: Long-running mysteries and small mysteries.
I suspect that to feel deep, a character needs to show up in multiple roles in their story. I mean roles in the broadest possible sense: "mother," "daughter," "sister," "annoying {older, younger} sister," "thoughtful {older, younger} sister," "weeb,"