Short post about characters

Got my Care Box (Amazon order) today. Good thing, for I was almost out of new reading material. Mind you, I have shelves of hard cover books, fiction and non, that I mean to read. Right now nothing beats the portability of a paperback.

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The three female lead characters in a story I'm working on could be called The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (inner, not outer ugliness).

How easy it would be to write them as stereotypes: the saint/martyr, the wicked/naughty, the cold/evil. In fact, I'll begin with the clichés and work from there to add non-typical qualities. The saint will have a dark side, the naughty will have a cause, and evil will have a weakness for puppies. Or some such.

I figure it might be easier to start this way because, though the characters themselves represent good, bad, and ugly, I need to flesh them out so they aren't too obvious.

A reader told me a female villain in my current WIP is too typically evil, so I need to give her a redeeming quality or two.

Like the main stars, supporting characters can't be throwaways. But to me stereotypes help a reader "see" walk-through minor players - a red-nosed drunk, a mustachioed bartender, a ragged urchin . . .

Now, I have characters to flesh out.

--Cat