This will not be a cheat sheet, because there are no cheat sheets for this. Instead, it will provide useful perspectives and questions to ask yourself about your characters, and some important recommended reading/watching.

Sexual assault is a topic that’s famous for being badly done by male writers. It’s often inserted into stories to provide motives for male characters, or create drama and tension that serves the plot while somehow not affecting the victim/survivor character at all.

In this instalment we’re going to look at wives and, more importantly, how to inject character into the person behind the title. Wives often form background depth to male protagonists and as such they can be treated as little more than narrative wallpaper. But as writers we should always be aiming to make every character a well-rounded human being.