Welcome to my writing pages! The main focus of this website is to offer writing tips, prompts, and inspiration to writers, no matter what their genre or skill level. You’ll also find information on my published works and the ones in progress. My schedule for posting is:

Monday Sparks: Writing prompts to fan your creative flame.

Thursdays – Writing tips based on a monthly theme

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First Impression: Protagonist or Sidekick?

I’m back again to get your first impression: protagonist or sidekick? Sidekicks and secondary characters add so much to a novel. I’ve had so much fun developing them for my Rae Riley Mysteries series. And the fun thing about writing a series is that a minor character in one novel can become a major character in another. I’ve also discovered that my protagonist, Rae Riley, can have different sidekicks depending on the mystery she’s solving. Her cousin Amber is her sidekick in my third novel, A Riddle in the Lonesome October, but she doesn’t play a role in the current novel I’m writing.

Let me know in the comments if he’s a protagonist or sidekick.

Here are more writing prompts for creating characters.

February 23, 2026 0

Three Tips for Creating an Antagonist for Your Novel

Creating an antagonist for your novel is as important as creating the protagonist or main character. Would Sherlock Holmes have achieved literary immortality if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle hadn’t created the perfect nemesis in Professor Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime? Below are three tips for creating an antagonist for your novel.

An antagonist does not have to be a villain.

Yes, you read that right. An antagonist is someone or something that prevents your protagonist for achieving the goal she is working toward in your novel. Let’s say your protagonist is a high school senior who wants to become a cop like her late father. Her mother is dead set against it because her father was killed in the line of duty. So Mom is the antagonist of the daughter without being a villain.

An antagonist does not have to be human.

If your novel is a story about how a family tries to survive on a mountainside when caught in a freak snowstorm while hiking, then nature itself is the antagonist. In a scene from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Captain Nemo and his crew from The Nautilus battle giant squids. In that scene the squids are the antagonists. If your protagonist is battling the oppression or corruption of a political system, then the characters advancing that system are the antagonists but the specific political system itself can be one too. That leads me to my next point …

Your novel can have more than one antagonist.

This concept is often used in mystery novels. A murder has taken place, so the antagonist is the murderer. But he may have a friend who is shielding him from the police. So you have a second antagonist.

My next example is a spoiler, but it’s from a very old novel, so I don’t mind divulging it.

In the novel, Too Many Women from the Nero Wolfe mystery series, a wealthy man commits two murders. He wants to prevent Nero Wolfe and his whip-smart assistant Archie Goodwin from catching him. Standard mystery antagonist. What makes this novel different is that the man’s wife is pretty sure she knows what he’s doing but says nothing because it would interfere with her luxurious lifestyle. To protect herself even further, she manipulates her husband into committing suicide. She’s antagonist #2 and I find her far more repellant than her obsessed husband.

Next week, we’ll dig deeper into creating an antagonist, just like we did when creating the protagonist.

Who are the antagonists that stand out in your experience?

February 19, 2026 1

First Impression: Protagonist or Antagonist?

I often start building a character by seeing a face that captures my attention. I try to pay attention to my first impression. When I see that character, what do I think first? Major villain? Kindly grandmother? A hero? Or the hero’s best friend. So when you look at this portrait, what’s your first impression: protagonist or antagonist?

I won’t prejudice you by giving my first impression; I’ll put my initial reaction in the comments.

Here are more tips and prompts for writing characters.

February 16, 2026 0

Dig Deeper to Write a Compelling Protagonist

Last week, I gave advice on beginning the creation of the main character or protagonist of your novel, developing their physical appearance, basic personality, and some backstory. This week, I want to dig deeper to write a compelling protagonist, delving into goals, lies and fears. All three elements can be uncovered with one question.

The Power of Asking Why

Sometimes, the genre dictates the goal of your protagonist. I write mysteries for teens. So the goal of my teen sleuth Rae Riley is to solve the mystery. But I have to go deeper with my why questions: why does Rae have to solve this mystery? Since I write a series, her goal can change for each novel. In the short story that started the series, “A Rose from the Ashes”, Rae is looking for the father she’s never known and trying to figure out if he attempted to murder her late mother when she was pregnant with Rae.

She wants to solve this mystery for personal reasons. But why? That might sound silly–everyone wants to know who their father is, but I need to find out why Rae does. Well, she was raised by her mother, who had no family. Now that her mom has died of cancer, Rae is alone. So loneliness and the innate desire for family are driving Rae to uncover a possible killer.

In later stories, the goal is still to solve the mystery but for different reasons. No matter what the reasons, they still have to fit with Rae’s basic character, which is she’s observant, curious, and likes to help people in trouble. Nothing angers a reader more than for a series character to suddenly acquire deep motivations that have never even been hinted at before because the author needed those motivations for this particular novel.

Does Your Protagonist Have to Believe a Lie?

Many tips on developing your protagonist say he must believe a lie, and through the course of the story, learns it is a lie and grows from this new knowledge. This approach works well for protagonists in stand alone novels. But if I have the same series character believe a lie in every novel, she will eventually come across as a nitwit.

Another way to create growth for a character is doubt, which works for both a stand alone and a series characters. In fact, I even put doubt in one of my titles, A Storm of Doubts. In that novel, Rae wrestles with the doubt that Mal, the man her late mother said had to be her father, actually is. Because Rae and Mal thought they didn’t need a DNA test, Rae worries that her con man uncle’s insinuations that he is her father might be true.

I like working with Rae’s doubts rather than her belief in a lie because it gives me more room to explore her experience and keep readers guessing about what will happen next. When a character believes a lie, most readers can pick it out easily and know right away that the story will be about the character learning it is a lie. I want to surprise my readers, and a protagonist with doubts lets me do that.

What is Your Character’s Greatest Fear?

In a stand alone novel, your protagonist’s greatest fear should be the most serious threat he faces as he works toward his goal. The hero of a fantasy novel fears letting down his father the king, once again, and the whole kingdom as well, if he doesn’t recover the item that will rescue it from the forces of evil on his quest.

Keep asking why questions to uncover your protagonist’s greatest fear. In A Storm of Doubts, why does Rae care about her uncle’s hints, especially when she knows he’s a con man? Because she loves Mal and the family that’s accepted her. His hints stoke her greatest fear, losing her dad and her family.

Since I write a series, I can’t invoke this fear in every novel–too repetitive. But Rae has other fears that mix with her doubts and are tied to the mysteries she solves.

What techniques do you use for digging deeper to write a compelling protagonist?

February 12, 2026 0

Where Do You Find Characters for Your Novels?

I’m always interested in how other writers, and even other artists, work and find and develop inspiration. So where do you find characters for your novels? Do you pull mostly from people you know? Are you inspired by characters in books or movies? Do you scroll online for inspiration?

Inspiration for my characters fall into two broad categories–inspiration for their physical features and inspiration for their personalities. When I see a face that catches my attention, whether I see it in person or online, it usually suggests a personality to me. For me, the face and personality have to work well together or the character will fail. If I decide this character will be a major one, I explore their personality based on my experience of human nature. So while the character’s physical appearance is inspired by a 1940’s movies star, her personality is based on a mom I know from my kids’ school.

One of my favorite places to find faces is old movies. Eighty years ago, producers cast roles differently from the way they do now, so you’ll see actors who can look different from the ones working now.

Let me know in the comment where you find characters for your novels.

Here are more tips for creating characters.

February 9, 2026 6

JPC Allen Writes