: Re: I'm looking for advice on character development I'm currently working on a team based story with a lot of characters and am looking for ways to really make their personalities stand out from

@LarsenBagley300

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I'm going to offer one other thought to consider.

"I get to a certain point where, two male characters, for example,
seem like the same character wearing another face."

If you don't feel this way with a male and female character, for example, or if you think that changing one of these two males to a female might solve your problem ... then it is not their reactions that are telegraphing sameness to you, but aspect.

You may not need to change their character, but their aspect. How to do this?

~Give them different dialects--nothing extreme, but enough of a tipoff. Or if not dialect, change their speech patterns. One speaks in questions or tends to joke or runs off at the mouth while the other is more taciturn.

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~Give one distinctive physical appearance. Missing an ear. Wears a mullet. Always carries a ukulele. If you give one a physical trait that impacts his action (missing a hand; always has to do things left-handed) this can be subtly reinforced through dialog and narration.

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~Radically change the age of one.

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~Make certain their names have very different 'feels' to them. If one is named Adolf and another is named Joseph, that in itself suggests difference to the reader.

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~etc

I think you can get a lot of mileage out of a simple thing like changing character aspect.

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