As writers, we know that the best, most captivating stories are the unhappy ones, which are full of conflict and obstacles that the characters have to overcome to achieve that happy ending. The key to writing the novel that readers cannot put down is to create well-structured characters and then give them a huge amount of adversity and conflict. It is how your character deals with the adversity that will determine if the novel is a horror, romance or comedy. Developing adversity for your characters is simple when you know how, and there are many ways you can achieve this to enable your characters to develop. 

Physical Adversity This type of adversity is normally seen in adventure novels. It is where the character suffers from an illness, the threat of death or injury. How would your main character react when they are faced with the death or illness of a loved one? 

Deception or Crossed Wires As a comedy writer, this is my favourite type of adversity. This is when one character purposely or accidentally lies or deceives another character. The deceived character then has a warped or wrong view of the situation. Sometimes a character can see or overhear something and come to a totally wrong conclusion. I think we have all done that at some point in our lives.  

Ambition or Desire Everyone has wants and needs and this is no different for the characters you create. Sometimes these are visible and others are hidden and revealed only by subtle behaviours or dialogue used by the character. An unfulfilled ambition or desire is a fantastic way to drive a storyline continually forward. How would that character have changed once they achieve their ambition? Or do they realise that before they can achieve one thing, they must alter a trait of their personality or some aspect of their lives first?

Relationships Adversity does not just have to involve one character. You can also use adversity within a relationship between two characters. Husband and wife, father and son, work colleagues or siblings. When there is adversity within a relationship, a character has to do one of three actions. They can either fight to change the status of the relationship, accept the relationship for what it is, or their character or worldview is changed by the relationship. 

Strange Surroundings This is when a character is placed in unfamiliar surroundings or situations. In science fiction novels, the characters can be transported into a future land with strange beings, or the displacement can be as simple as a new person entering the character's workplace and turning their boring daily routine upside down.  

While overcoming conflict will make the story more engaging, it is the injection of adversity and how well the characters deal with it that makes for well developed characters, and this is an essential ingredient for a novel. Without adversity, the characters will remain exactly the same throughout the novel, and therefore will lack any interest for readers.  

The more detailed you have made your character's backstory, then the easier it will be for you as a writer to explore how your character deals with adversity because you know how they process information. How do your characters change? What aspects of their personality will change and which remain the same? Why did they choose to change? Remember to mix things up a little, a character will deal with relationship adversity differently to desire adversity.