Character writing tips.
Characters are the heart and soul of every story.
Almost every great story is about people. Plot, setting, theme, and other elements of fiction are secondary to realistic characters that an audience can connect with on an intellectual or emotional level.
There are exceptions, of course. Some readers enjoy plot-driven stories, but they never seem to achieve the massive popularity that stories with rich, layered characters achieve. Why do fans adore Luke Skywalker or Katniss Everdeen? Because they feel like real people.
We connect with characters in fiction for any number of reasons. Maybe the character reminds us a little of ourselves. We might love her because she represents who we want to be, or we might hate her because she reminds us of the parts of ourselves that we are ashamed of. Some characters feel like friends; others remind us of our enemies. We might admire a character’s heroism and relate to his philosophy, or we might admonish his acts of destruction and hate.
Some writers argue that it’s not necessary for readers to connect or identify with characters in a story. That might be true to some extent, but the most beloved stories throughout the history of literature are populated with characters we love and characters we love to hate. There’s something to be said for making readers care.
Character Writing Tips
Readers won’t care about characters unless they are believable. So how do we make our characters realistic? Why do the most celebrated characters seem so real even though they are made up? How have some writers managed to render animals, aliens, and even inanimate objects into characters that we embrace emotionally?
The answer is simple: the best characters come with all the flaws, quirks, and baggage that real people possess. They are not just names on a page. They have pasts and personalities, and they are unique.
Here are some character writing tips to help you develop characters that feel like real people:
- Backstory: We are born a certain way, but our life experiences continually mold and shape us. Each character has a life before the story begins. What is it?
- Dialogue: The way we talk depends on the language we speak and where we live (or grew up) but there’s also something unique to each person’s style of speaking. We repeat certain words and phrases, inflect certain syllables, and make certain gestures while we speak.
- Physical Description: Our primary method of identifying each other is the way we look; hair and eye color, height and weight, scars and tattoos, and the style of clothing we wear are all part of our physical descriptions.
- Name: Esmerelda doesn’t sound like a soccer mom, and Joe doesn’t sound like an evil sorcerer. Make sure the names you choose for your characters match their personalities and the roles they play in the story.
- Goals: Some say that a character’s goals drive the entire story. He wants to slay the dragon; she wants to overthrow the evil empire. Goals can be small (the character wants a specific job) or big (the character is trying to save the world). Come up with a mix of small and large goals for each character.
- Strengths and Weaknesses: Villains sometimes do nice things and heroes occasionally take the low road. What are your character’s most positive and negative behaviors and personality traits?
- Friends and Family: These are the people in our inner circles, and they have played important roles in shaping our personalities and our lives. Who are your characters’ friends and family before the story starts? What new friends will they meet once the story begins?
- Nemesis: A nemesis is someone with whom we are at odds. This character doesn’t have to be a villain, but the goals of the nemesis definitely interfere with your main character’s goals.
- Position in the World: What do your characters do for a living? What are their daily lives like? Where do they live? What is a character’s role or position among his or her friends, family, or coworkers?
- Skills and Abilities: A character’s skills and abilities can get them out of a tight spot or prevent them from being able to get out of a tight spot. Skills can be useless or they can come in handy. Does your character have an education or special training? What can they do?
- Gestures, Mannerisms, and Quirks: One character chews her nails while watching movies. Another runs his hand through his hair when he’s trying to figure something out. Give your characters identifiable quirks and behaviors, like real people.
- Fears: An old fiction writing trick is to figure out what your character is most afraid of, and then make the character face it. We all have fears; characters should, too.
How to Put These Character Writing Tips into Practice
Characters need to be detailed and complicated in order to seem real. These character tips give you a lot to consider, but how do you put them into practice?
You could tackle each idea as a separate exercise. Write your character’s backstory one day. The next day, do a page of dialogue to see how the character speaks. Then spend some time looking for the perfect name for your character. If you work through all these tips as separate exercises, you’ll end up with a robust character sketch, and your character will be ready to enter the plot of your story.
Character sketches are by no means mandatory. You could also start writing the draft of your manuscript and see how each of these elements develops organically for each character. During revisions, you can check your narrative against this list to make sure the characters are consistent and have all the depth of real people.
How do you create characters? Do you start with a character sketch or do you just start writing? Do you have a checklist (like the one above) to help you know and understand your characters? Got any character writing tips to add to this list? Leave a comment, and keep writing.
And remember that Character is timeless. But characters do not grow chronologically. They grow sometimes in one dimension, sometimes in another. Sometimes there are whole dimensions in which there is little or no growth. It is a very uneven process. It is all partial and relative. A character can be mature in one realm and quite childish in another. A genius in one world; an idiot savant in another; autistic in a third. The character ego attempts to serve as a mixing board to all this input, hoping to be able to distill and mix out a commercially acceptable product. Something with a strong sound and a good beat; something you can dance to.
You make great points, especially when you say “A character can be mature in one realm and quite childish in another. A genius in one world; an idiot savant in another…” Just like real people!
Great advice. My theory with characters is that its their emotion that makes them tick. Its the driving force behind their actions and the key to getting readers to emote. I write to try and put the reader in the characters shoes and to elicit an emotional response based upon that. Thanks for the help though.
Getting characters to emote is pretty tricky. I do think it helps readers strengthen their connection to a character, but the readers probably need a connection before the characters’ emotions matter. Think of it this way: if you see a total stranger crying or yelling angrily on TV, you won’t care unless you know more about the character and/or their situation.
I love to see myself in any character I read. Thanks for this post. Wonderful tips altogether! These could even help me build a novel.
You’re welcome, Lena. Good luck with that novel!
I just start writing. If the character doesn’t introduce him/herself to me in a few pages, he/she probably isn’t going to.
You might not want to give up so soon. I’ve had characters who didn’t show their true selves for thousands of words.
Great tips! It’s often been said that every great story begins with great characters. For me as a reader, the characters are at the core of the story and are the basis of what I get out of the story. Thanks for posting this.
I feel the same way, although I don’t mind the occasional plot-driven story.
Little tip I find useful – after characters have been fleshed out, I have a music playlist set for each character (genres, bands and songs they like) and play their music in the background to quickly fall back into character without having to scroll back, re-read and assume the role again. I’ll have this playlist set into a loop (because at first, there may be only a couple of songs as the character grows), and after 10-15 mins, mostly I don’t even care about the background music any more. Even if the music does get to me or I find it repetitive, it’s time to explore more music they would indulge … it’s just another opportunity to add dimension and understanding to the character. Also, for me … I find doing this broadens my own perspectives I wouldn’t normally touch with someone else’s 10 foot pole 🙂 btw, loving this website BIG TIME
Ooh, that’s a good activity for adding depth to characters. I like it!
Hi, I’ve been wondering if I have the ability for a full novel for ages and never had the confidence to try. Being a strong reader doesn’t necessarily make one a writer. However, a little story I wrote (blogged on my page) starts with the name of the character first and things carry on from there. I think I wrote it in a week.
You might try signing up for NaNoWriMo this November. After several failed attempts, I too started to wonder whether I could finish a novel. NaNoWriMo proved to me that I could. I will probably never polish or publish that novel, but it was one of the best experiences of my life.
Thank you, I will consider it. Also, I’ve written a poem and published it on my blog on wordpress. If you can have a look and comment, I’d really be grateful. I’ve written a few poems but this is the first time that I’ve done it with a specific audience in mind. Else you can explain how to send it to you on this site. I find this site very helpful. It is bookmarked on my computer.
Hi Petru. Unfortunately, this isn’t a critique board, and we don’t publish poetry here at Writing Forward. However, readers sometimes share poems they’ve written from our prompts and exercises in the comments sections.
Thank you so much, I am loving this site. I have been blogging for years but just joined a creative writing group as I want to write a book about growing up in the Bronx. Your tips here will help me flush out the characters I grew up with.
Thanks, Ronn! I appreciate your kind words. Keep writing!
Something that I find interesting in reading or creating charters is that they evolve during the course of the story. The little character defects, flaws and fears are overcome. The characters should undergo a metamorphosis that makes them a better and stronger person having faced the great difficulties within the plot line. Thank you for the great tips Melissa. Awesome page, glad i found you 🙂
That is the truth, and it bears repeating: “The characters should undergo a metamorphosis that makes them a better and stronger person having faced the great difficulties within the plot line.” Thanks, Rylee!
Hey there, thanks for all the tips! For other writers, I like to base my characters off of real people. For example, I have a close friend whose character traits and quirks are mirrored in a character of the novel I’m writing (with her permission, of course). This is a great base for developing characters that are more “real,” and easier to connect with.
It’s a good way to find traits and behaviors that make your characters more realistic. We can get a lot of inspiration from other stories and characters, but real life is one of the greatest sources of ideas.
The writing tips shared by you in this article are truly very good. I will definitely keep in mind all the points that you have shared with us in this amazing article when I decide to write my own book. Thank you for sharing these tips with us.
You’re welcome! I’m glad you got something out of this article. Thanks!