Characters

Everyone can remember a book that they’ve read that had terrible characters. They were flat, had no personality and were all based on stereotypes, with minimal research. It was probably not a very enjoyable read, even if the book itself had an interesting plot.

That’s because your characters will make or break your book. You can have a fantastic plotline, with a twist ending and all of that, but if your readers don’t like your characters, they won’t read, or buy, your book. For an author, that’s a serious problem.

I am no expert on this subject, but I have read a lot of books, with characters that I liked and characters I didn’t. Here are some of my observations about what makes a character interesting and likeable.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

First, the reader has to be able to relate to them. Everyone has some kind of flaw, usually several, so a character that doesn’t have this essential part of being human won’t be relatable. For example, I hate a hero who is brave in every circumstance and never seems to be afraid. A pit of snakes? No problem! An army of bad guys? Bring it on! In this situation, showing your character’s fear will help to make them real, help to make them human. Sometimes it hurts to make your characters weak, because you, as an author, would like them to win, and for the reader to see them as the hero you do. They can win, and be a hero, and be weak, too, because you can use their weakness to make them stronger.

Your characters should each be unique. No one person is exactly like another, and none of your characters should be either. Give them personality, loves, quirks and faults, to turn them into a cast of people that might actually fit in the real world. For example, a character’s quirk in a book I recently read was that he was forever changing his heritage. In the first book he was Irish, the second Australian and the third English. He had reasons for changing, but it made him memorable as a character.  You want your characters to be memorable.

This one seems obvious, but too many authors fall into the trap of always making everyone in their tale handsome or beautiful. Life isn’t like that, and while I’m not saying that no one is handsome or beautiful, not everyone is in the same way. You can use that fact to make a struggle for a character. The appearance of the players in your story is as important as their personality, because their appearance will tell the reader something about them. Someone with lots of scars on his face could be a fighter. A woman with a white streak in her black hair could have a traumatic event in her childhood. A teenage girl who doesn’t care about her appearance or how she dresses could be an outcast.

You need to develop your characters, in ways that the reader will never even see. I use a questionnaire that covers many more aspects of the character than those that actually make it into the novel. For example, one of the questions is about what the character’s room looks like, or their hobbies. These seem minor and unimportant, but a character whose hobby is woodworking will be able to create things out of wood that a character who has a different hobby would not be able to make. This questionnaire would never make it into the novel, and many things you won’t even mention. But it’s good for you to keep these seemingly minor things in mind, in order to make an even more dynamic character.

Another thing is to avoid stereotypes, at least for your major characters. As an example, a murder mystery. The postman, who is murdered, can be the stereotypical postman, and, depending on your plot, the detective (if he isn’t the protagonist) can be the typical donut-loving, bumbling cop. Be careful though, that these stereotypes don’t creep into your main characters.

A way for you to help keep your characters unique and realistic is to research. Yes, it’s hard for you to research something that you are creating, but you can observe the real people around you. Take notes on the quirky habits you notice, on people’s appearance and mannerisms. Once you start to notice more of the little things, your characters will start to have them. Of course, don’t let the people you are observing know that you are taking notes on them. That can lead to awkward questions and theories. I find it incredibly irritating to have people ask me if a character in my book is based on them. The characters always have elements of everyone around me, but no one character is meant to be a specific person.

So. Keep these tips from a reader (and aspiring writer) in mind, and flesh out those characters.