I find myself reading books a lot where I want to stop reading because the characters are annoying and/or whiny, especially when the main characters are girls, and it sucks! Does anyone have any tips on how to avoid writing characters that don't push characters away? Specifically on how to make strong female protagonists that aren't cliches all of the time?
Okay. For female characters, avoid weepy and whininess. This is especially common in female characters undergoing the whole "well ACTUALLY there's this whole other dimension/world/magic exists/your parents are dead/etc." You have to try and make her reactions to things believable, not just like "eh okay let's role with it", but also not letting them get weepy.
The other thing you want to avoid is trying much too hard to make your female characters badass because that often ends with an overly sassy, cocky, self-assured girl who I kind of want to slap in the face. These types of characters also tend to have dark pasts which they proceed to get broody and overly dramatic about. Your character shouldn't be useless but you don't want to make them too OP, either.
It's hard to find a balance between the two—I myself struggle with it. The protagonist in my first big project fell under the first category so I basically scrapped her entire personality and started over. However, it is achievable—@Carbon managed to do it with their character Raven.
I hope this helped. :) Good luck with your characters!
Give them something you'd like to see in a character, because most people will agree with you. Idk if that makes sense but I hope you get the gist lol
Another thing, have your character learn from their mistakes that they made earlier in the book. Maybe she was a arrogant and headstrong character, in the end, she could be developed into a peacekeeper and a leader.
One thing that is super important that loads of writers tend to make, your character MUST have a life outside of romance!! Don't create a character and expect her to be 'a strong' character if she only exist to fall for a guy. And one thing that is important, i'm going to explain it slowly for the people that forgot this exists:
The list goes on but I have to go to sleep, so hope I helped!