The most compelling characters aren’t perfect.
They don’t always know what they want.
They carry wounds like talismans.
They love too hard or not at all. They survive when they shouldn’t, and break when we need them strong.

But what makes a character truly unforgettable?
Not just likable, or interesting, but unforgettable?

Let’s dissect the alchemy.

Every character begins with a wound.
Not always a trauma in the clinical sense, but a moment, a split, a silence, a loss, that fractured the world they once believed in.

Backstory isn’t just about what happened before page one.
It’s about the echoes still ringing inside them.

In every shadowed corner of a story, there is a pulse. That pulse is not plot. It is not setting. It is character. And characters, whether saint, monster, or martyr- are built not from backstory alone, but from the invisible scaffolding of their traits.

Character traits are more than descriptors. They are the truths and contradictions that live beneath the skin. They determine not only how a character behaves, but how they are haunted, what they desire, and who they might become.