How I Write I: What Greg & Wildbow Taught Me
Greg Veder is, objectively, a nobody.
In Worm, Wildbow’s sprawling 1.3-million-word web serial about teenage superheroes and the apocalypse, Greg gets maybe fifteen lines of dialogue. He shows up in three scenes, none of them pivotal, and yet he stands out.
Not because of what he does—he’s barely a blip in the story’s progression—but because of how much you feel him, this awkward, overeager, borderline-obnoxious kid who only exists on the page for a few minutes.
When I asked Wildbow about how to write Greg, he handed me a few paragraphs on Reddit. That was it. No grand thesis, no breakdown of Greg’s backstory. Just a snapshot of who Greg is and how he moves through the world.
But in those paragraphs, I learned more about character writing than I have from entire books on writing.
Wildbow’s metaphor for Greg stuck with me: “Greg is like a car with bald tires. No brakes, skids like hell.” That’s the first lesson Greg taught me about character writing. A good character isn’t just defined by their actions or dialogue; they’re defined by the way they move through the world.
Greg doesn’t just interact with people. He barrels into them. He doesn’t just have interests; he obsesses over them to the point of suffocating anyone nearby. Greg isn’t a series of traits you list out on a character sheet. He’s momentum, and that momentum is him.
The takeaway here is that a character’s personality isn’t just who they are—it’s how they move through their environment. Do they drift through life, barely noticed, like a shadow? Do they bulldoze through situations, creating chaos wherever they go? Greg skids. He starts fast, crashes often, and rarely figures out how to stop.
When I wrote Greg, I leaned into this. Every line he spoke, every action he took, was driven by that momentum. He doesn’t stop to think, he doesn’t second-guess, and he doesn’t ease into conversations. He’s there, all at once, full of energy and zero self-awareness.
Greg’s emotional landscape isn’t subtle. “He’s not just excited, he’s double excited—vibrating with anticipation.” This idea of emotional doubling became another critical tool for writing Greg—and for writing characters in general.
Greg’s emotions aren’t inherently bigger than anyone else’s, but he lacks the filters most people have. He doesn’t tone things down for the sake of social norms. He doesn’t express disappointment with a shrug and a quiet, “Oh, that’s a shame.” When Greg’s upset, you know. When he’s happy, he’s practically bursting at the seams.
This kind of emotional transparency is rare in characters because, let’s be honest, most of us are conditioned to avoid it in real life. But leaning into Greg’s lack of emotional restraint made him feel alive. It also made him exhausting—intentionally so.
Writing Greg taught me that characters don’t need to be likable, but they do need to be relatable. And there’s something deeply relatable about someone who feels everything so fully, even when they don’t know what to do with those feelings.
One of Wildbow’s final notes on Greg hit me like a brick: “Greg is a puppy given human form.”
This was a revelation because it highlighted what not to do. Greg isn’t angry, jaded, or cynical. Even when he crosses boundaries or makes a mess of things, it’s not out of malice—it’s because he doesn’t know any better. Greg’s optimism, his relentless enthusiasm, his inability to read the room—those are his defining traits.
Wildbow warned me against taking Greg in a direction that would break this. Making him bitter or angry would destroy the essence of who he is. It’s not that Greg can’t grow or change, but any growth has to feel authentic to his personality.
This taught me an essential rule of character development: Not all arcs are the right arcs. You can’t just put a character in any path. Characters should evolve, but their evolution has to fit the core of who they are. Greg might learn to hold back a little, to consider other people’s feelings, but he’ll never stop being a puppy at heart.
Greg’s dialogue was another revelation. Wildbow described it as “verbal diarrhea,” this endless stream of half-thoughts and trivia pulled from his latest obsession. Greg doesn’t have a coherent narrative when he speaks; he just dumps everything in his head onto the table and hopes some of it sticks.
This taught me that a character’s dialogue doesn’t need to be clean or polished. In fact, it shouldn’t be—because people aren’t. Greg’s rambling, his inability to stick to a point, his tendency to over-explain or get sidetracked—those quirks made him feel real.
When writing dialogue for Greg, I leaned into this chaos. Every line was a balancing act between being genuinely funny and deeply uncomfortable. It wasn’t about making him sound clever; it was about making him sound like Greg.
Writing Greg taught me that characters don’t need to be complex to be compelling. They don’t need tragic backstories or grand arcs. What they need is clarity. They need to feel like themselves in every moment, every action, every word.
Greg is a side character in a sprawling narrative, but he doesn’t fade into the background because he moves, feels, and speaks in a way that’s unmistakably him. He taught me that characters aren’t built out of traits—they’re built out of momentum, emotional transparency, and the ways they bump up against the world around them.
And maybe most importantly, Greg taught me to know what not to do. Because sometimes, the best way to write a character is to understand exactly what would ruin them—and then avoid it at all costs.
So, here’s to Greg Veder. The car with bald tires. The human puppy. The verbal wrecking ball. The kid with maybe fifteen lines who somehow taught me everything I know about character writing.