: Re: Needing Help Fleshing Out Male Character So He's Not Just a Stock Character I have been working on a fantasy novel for the past twelve years, during which time there have been drastic changes.

@Debbie451

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Give him his own arc.

(I am amused that the gender here is the reverse of what's been a problem for a long time, but the advice applies to any character of any gender.)

In the 2017 Wonder Woman film, Steve Trevor is Diana's love interest, but he has his own arc. His job is to be a spy: To spy on the enemy, to find out what they're doing, to report back or stop what they're doing to help the good guys win the war. When he finds out what they are doing, he ends up stopping them, at the cost of his own life. This arc could have happened if he was not lost on Themiscyra and did not meet and fall in love with Diana.

So give your Dad his own arc. It can be as simple as self-reflection: he knows that he didn't come by his family wealth honestly, and he decides that he doesn't like it, so he needs to do something to make him feel like he has earned money/his position/his wife/his children/his household etc.

Give him a goal (whatever relationship or thing he feels he doesn't deserve) and have him working on it throughout the story. He doesn't even have to reach his goal; failure is also a result, and can tell us about the character.

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