Creating Liminal Characters: Tips, Types, and Inspiration for Writers

In this post I will cover

• What is a Liminal Character
• What are some types of liminal characters
• Liminal character Inspo
• Make your own liminal character

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What is a Liminal Character

Let’s start with the word Liminal.

Liminal means to exist on both sides of a boundary, or in the transitional stage between two boundaries. Think between being awake and falling asleep, between running to a ball and kicking a ball, or between feeling mad and fuming with anger.

You might be wondering, how does this relate to liminal characters?

Well, liminal characters take the liberty of this world. It’s not restricted to perception or reality like liminal spaces may be (you could read more about liminal spaces here if you’re interested).

Liminal characters can exist in the phases of different focuses, such as existential, developmental, spatial, psychological, temporal, or moral focuses. It’s how you define the character that makes it come to life.

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Types of Liminal Characters

Let’s go into each of the categories and a couple examples of each:

Existential

• life and death
• meaning and meaninglessness

Developmental

• Childhood and Adulthood
• identities (mixed race, genderfluid, etc)

Spatial

• worlds (magical/real, dream/wake, exile/return, etc.)

Psychological

• Sanity and insanity

Temporal

• Between time periods

Moral

• Between truth and lie

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Now, how do you write narratives with these liminal focuses?

Liminal characters are interesting because of these thresholds. Many stories can come about these ideas. Here are a couple examples of how you might create stories and character backgrounds using these ideas:

Existential

Life and Death

• Ghost caught between worlds
• Coma patient suspended between consciousness and unconsciousness
• A revenant whose body survives, but whose soul hasn’t returned

Meaning and Meaninglessness

• Philosopher wrestling with nihilism
• Artist losing purpose after a creative block
• A ghost who starts to forget their own name
• A burned-out prophet wanders a dying world, searching for a sign that life still matters
• A robot gains consciousness and immediately questions the point of it
• A monk who achieves enlightenment and forgets they ever existed

Developmental

Childhood and Adulthood

• Teenager on the cusp of maturity
• Child prodigy avoiding adult responsibilities

Spatial

Between Worlds / Places

• Exile living between homeland and foreign land
• Traveler navigating magical and real realms

In-Between Spaces

• Person living in a border town
• Stranger caught in liminal architectural spaces (e.g., hallways, doorways)

Psychological

Sanity and Madness

• Someone experiencing hallucinations
• Character battling dissociative identity disorder

Memories and/or Reality

• Person with fragmented memories
• Dreamer unsure if waking or dreaming
• A person wakes every morning in a different life and doesn’t know which one is “real”
• A child insists the world blinked for a second and no one believes them
• A person who loses their name every time they speak a lie
• A humanoid AI designed to feel but starts to glitch when grieving
• A mermaid who keeps losing parts of her tail in the city
• A young cult member begins to doubt but has no idea what to replace the belief with
• A philosophy student’s thesis causes the unraveling of their mind and life

Temporal

Between Time Periods

• Time traveler stuck between eras
• Reincarnated soul recalling past lives

Suspended Time

• Cursed character frozen in time
• Person reliving the same day repeatedly (time loop)

Moral

Between Truth and Lie

• Spy living a double life
• Unreliable narrator blurring facts and fiction

Between Right and Wrong

• Rebel torn between justice and loyalty
• Vigilante operating outside the law

Liminal Character Inspiration

Looking for some inspiration to create a liminal character? Check out this post to find many examples of liminal characters I designed!

Now, It’s Your Turn to Make Your Own Liminal Character!

If you already have a character design in mind, great! I’m glad this post could help.
If you can’t decide on how to design your liminal character physically, I made a liminal character generator that can help you choose the threshold and storyline of your character, as well as up to 3 physical forms of your character. Try it out here!