Writing characters that readers care about is a vital skill for any author who wants to write well. The story is king, in that without a great story—a strong plot with dramatic tension to glue the reader to the page—a reader will lose interest, but without characters that readers care about, the novel will fall flat. If a reader doesn’t care about a character, then even if you put the character in life-threatening situations, the dramatic tension doesn’t take hold of the reader, and the story loses its power.
I have read books where I’ve said to myself about a character, “Why should I care what happens to you?” I don’t finish such books; why would I? Reading a book is a big time commitment, and readers don’t want to spend a lot of time with characters they don’t care about.
The characters we care most easily about are the ones we like, so it’s good to make your central character(s) likable, but that doesn’t mean they should have no faults. Perfect characters are boring and readers quickly lose interest in them. You might want your protagonist to be a hero—which is good because everyone wants the protagonist to be a hero of some kind—but hero, or heroine, is not a character description; it’s merely a description of one kind of behaviour that a character may exhibit. Our hero or heroine might save the day, but they must be much more than a saviour if readers are to relate to them and care about them.
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What readers want in a character
Readers want characters they can relate to, and that means characters that seem like real people, that have the kinds of issues and challenges people have. We relate to characters who are like ourselves in some respect, and one thing that all human beings share is that we all have personal challenges. Anyone who thinks they are without fault has the fault of lack of awareness of their own faults.
Even if your central character is a robot or an alien, they need to have human characteristics if you want your readers to relate to them. A secondary character or antagonist in a speculative fiction book could be so alien that they don’t appear to have human characteristics, but they still need to have clear reasons for behaving as they do. They need a perspective that makes them behave as they do and react as they do.
Characters readers hate
Readers dislike characters who:
- Are whiny;
- Are shallow—concerned only with surface appearances, or overly concerned with one relatively unimportant thing, like their clothes and makeup—those kinds of characters are best as secondary characters;
- Are perfect—perfect characters are not only boring, they are also unbelievable;
- Require rescuing all the time—characters should grow as the story progresses;
- Are one dimensional—only evil with no redeeming features or all good with no faults;
- Are cold-hearted and care only about themselves;
- Make stupid mistakes that anyone with a brain can see is a stupid thing to do;
- The narrator says they are one thing but they don’t behave like it—like a university graduate who acts really stupid.
Readers don’t expect or even want to like all the characters in a book. Your secondary characters and antagonists can be unpleasant or annoying people, but don’t make your central character, the protagonist, the one you want readers to be rooting for, to be the kind of character readers don’t like.
Characters readers love
Your protagonist should be the kind of character that readers relate to easily, someone believable with real human characteristics, and preferably someone readers will come to love, or, at least, like. When readers like a character, they get very enthusiastic about the book they appear in, and they’ll read every book your write about that character.
Don’t make all your characters lovable or likeable, of course, just the central one. Readers love to hate some characters, and unlikeable characters make good antagonists.
Readers love characters who:
- Are decent or trying to be;
- Are naturally funny, but not flippant or forced;
- Care about people other than themselves;
- Have endearing characteristics—like a cute smile—but aren’t perfect—maybe they have wayward hair that drives them crazy;
- Have the kinds of challenges readers are familiar with, such as lack of self-confidence or other personal issues like having trouble trusting people, family troubles, trouble with relationships, struggles with school, work, earning money, and so on;
- Are honest about their issues and are working on them;
- Grow as the story progresses;
- Are noble.
Noble characters
Noble characters are the heroic kind and everyone loves a hero. Our most beloved stories are populated with noble characters. Even if they don’t save the day or save anyone, even if they are physically weak or without any special skills, they have noble characteristics that inspire readers. They are, to some extent, a role model of the best kind of human being. These kinds of characteristics are:
- They care about people, both individuals and groups;
- Ethics is important to them both personally and socially;
- They have a strong sense of what’s right and wrong and always try to do what is right;
- They are wise or have some insight into situations or are trying to make wise decisions;
- They are aware of their faults and weaknesses, or trying to be, and though they fall prey to them sometimes, they work to overcome them;
- They’re prepared to fight for what is right;
- They’ll protect the weak and fight on behalf of those who can’t fight for themselves;
- They don’t give up when the going gets tough—they may want to, they may even give up for a short period of time, but they will always pick themselves up and get back to work fighting whatever evil they’re facing.
Noble characters are not perfect, note the words ‘try to,’ and ‘trying to’ in this list and the points on being aware of their faults and weaknesses. What makes a character noble is a noble motivation; essentially they’re someone with some degree of wisdom and compassion or someone trying to act with wisdom and compassion.
Writing Characters
Three methods come to mind when thinking about how to write characters. One method is not better than another, and an author may use one method for some characters and another for others, or one method may come more naturally to an author than another.
- They appear: In this case, the author simply knows the characters in one glance. They come into the author’s mind along with the story as part of the creative process. The author sees them and gets to know them as they write. It’s as if the author, doesn’t create the character, but rather that the character exists somewhere in their imagination and the author uncovers the character as the story reveals itself to them.This is how my characters come to me, and the idea that the characters exit in a world I link to in my imagination is a concept that I go into in my novel Worlds Within Worlds.
- You create them: Here the author consciously creates the characters, often with the help of a character description form of some kind. The author comes up with a name and gender, and then lists details such as age, appearance, where they live, their occupation, their childhood background, family information, education, relationships, strengths, weaknesses, personal issues, what is important to them, what they care about, what they think about the issues explored in the novel and so on.
- They appear and you refine them: This is basically a combination of the two other methods. In this case, the author gets a sense of who the character is and starts writing, but at some point where they realise that they need to know more about this character, they set up a character description document, write down what they know about the character and fill in the gaps.I often do this for secondary characters, characters that simply haven’t appeared as fully in my mind as the protagonist usually does. I also find it difficult to remember all aspects of different characters, and so it’s handy to have it written down somewhere where you can refer back to the details. This is important so that George doesn’t start off with blue eyes and end up with green ones!If a beta reader or your editor says that your characters need more development, then I recommend using a character description form such as the comprehensive one available here: http://www.epiguide.com/ep101/writing/charchart.html
Using a character description form
The trick with using a character description form is to use it to help your imagination seek the details of your character. So don’t feel you have to fill in every part of the form, just fill in the main parts—name, gender, age, appearance, home, occupation, childhood and family background, education, relationships, strengths, weaknesses, personal issues, what is important to them—and then use the other parts of the form to get you thinking further. If something comes to mind, great, if not, just move on. The act of thinking about it is sufficient to set the process of deepening your character moving.
Then what?
Once you know your character, you then have to make sure that they act and react as such a character would, and the easiest way to do that is to become the character as you write them. Never forget who you are as you write from that character’s point of view. And, of course, you have to speak as they would speak, using the language such a character would use. If English is your second language, you’ll not be speaking perfect English, and if you went to a posh school, you’re unlikely to swear all the time.
Great authors are actors and actresses as well as writers; they play all the roles of all the characters in their work. Certainly when I write, I write as if I am the character. In fact, I immerse myself so totally in that character and in that situation that I am the character. This was the one thing that I could do right from the start in my writing journey, and it’s a good skill to develop if you want your characters to leap off the page.
This is part of a series of blog posts on how to write a novel. It won’t just cover the technical details, but also the emotional journey we take and the personal challenges we meet on the road from potential author to author. Join the journey now, and don’t miss a post, click here to sign up to get my Novel Revision Checklist and links to the articles sent to your inbox.
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