Definition: difficult to understand or figure out; secretive
Characters in Literature & Pop Culture: Rick Blaine (Casablanca), The Cullens (Twilight), Jason Bourne, Aragorn (drool)
Common Portrayals: The bad boy at school; magicians and wizards; spies; aliens and paranormals; foreigners
Clichés to Avoid: tall, dark, and mysterious; the stranger with the mysterious past; the mysterious person that people are inexplicably drawn to, against their common sense.
Twists on the Traditional Mysterious Character:
▪ For some reason, most mysterious characters are men. Create a mysterious woman (with something other than sexual intrigue behind her mystery) and you’ll have something fresh and underrepresented in literature.
▪ Mysterious characters tend to appear out of seemingly nowhere with this huge question mark about their past. How about an Average Joe that comes back from a trip or school break with a new air of mystery about him?
▪ The typical mysterious character is gloomy, brooding, and dark. What about the secretive person who is an optimist, or terminally cheerful?
GOOD NEWS!
This sample, along with the rest of the character trait entries, has been expanded into book form! Together, THE NEGATIVE TRAIT THESAURUS: A WRITER’S GUIDE TO CHARACTER FLAWS and THE POSITIVE TRAIT THESAURUS: A WRITER’S GUIDE TO CHARACTER ATTRIBUTES contain over 200 traits for you to choose from when creating unique, memorable characters. Each entry contains possible causes for the trait, as well as positive and negative aspects, traits in supporting characters that may cause conflict, and associated behaviors, attitudes, thoughts, and emotions. For more information on this bestselling book and where it can be found, please visit our bookstore.
Love working online and having your favorite description resources in one place? We’ve got you covered. The entries from the Negative Trait Thesaurus book have been integrated into our online library at One Stop For Writers. Now you can search and cross-reference between all our thesaurus collections quickly and easily. Interested in viewing a free sample? Register at One Stop and see all that this intuitive library for writers has to offer.
In my story, I have a very cliche character. He is tall, dark, mysterious, and very Tom Riddle like. But he’s not evil, he is very friendly and owns a happy little bakery. This helped ALOT.
I totally agree, Elise! A mysterious character is full of potential and can take the story in a multitude of directions. 🙂
Mysterious characters can add so much color and depth to the story especially in helping to develop the plot more effectively. A writer can do alot of things in creating a mysterious person that can provide so many twists, turns, and climaxes to the story making it come to life on its own.
Great post, becca–I love characters who have a touch of mystery to them! 🙂
Angela
Love mysterious characters – especially Aragorn… 🙂
A mysterious woman, hmmm, I’m inspired. Thank you, yet again! You ladies rock.
Great post, Becca! I always love the twists and conflicting characteristics you guys come up with. I have a mysterious character who is smiling all the time and seemingly his one goal is to irritate the hell out of the others. It’s so much fun to write him!
My favorite kind of character. They’re always so magnetic. You can do loads with them. A female mystery character would be refreshing. Perhaps we’ll all have to concentrate on writing one…lol.