The worst thing a writer can do is neglect their characters. It doesn’t matter how exciting your plot is, how interesting your world building and lore are, or how much steamy romance you include if you don’t create realistic and relatable characters. Many writers often mistake the plot or action of the story as the most important part, but it’s really your characters, specifically your protagonist who carries your story.

Why are characters so important? It’s because the story wouldn’t matter if it weren’t for them. How they react to the events of the story and what their goals are are the reason why there is a story in the first place. If you have a short story or novel with a half-baked character, your story just isn’t going to work. But don’t worry, I’ll be breaking down all the ways to craft a compelling character.

What Makes a Character Compelling?

In order to make a truly compelling character, you need to unpack three crucial aspects of character:

1. Relatability- Readers connecting emotionally to the characters.
2. Complexity- The flaws, strengths, and contradictions of the characters.
3. Motivation & Goals- The reason a character wants something and how they plan to get it.

Of the three, relatablility is usually the trickiest of three for writers to approach, but the answer is actually pretty simple. You have to show the reader what your character is feeling. It’s not just about what they do, but how they respond to things emotionally and mentally. Those are the things that really grab us, either consciously or subconsciously as readers.

And of the three new writers need a gentle reminder for most is making their characters complex. This means giving them gasp flaws. Your characters cannot be perfect because perfect characters are boring. No one wants to read about a perfect character, and chances are, they will come to hate that character if they even continue reading at all.

You also want there to be parts of themselves that conflict with one another. For instance, maybe they are extremely skilled at public speaking but they have stage fright. Another example might be that they need to use some magical power to save the day but they are afraid of hurting anyone by using the power.

Most importantly, and what I would suggest you start with, is the motivation for your character. What are they trying to do? What do they want? The goals your character pursues will naturally stem from their motivations, shaped by the world and situation they’re in. Then, when things don’t go their way or they are getting distracted, you will know why and then be able to show their relatable reactions.

Building a Strong Foundation for Your Character

Another crucial aspect of your character that informs their reactions is their backstory and their values/beliefs. This is where you establish a character’s perspective, how they see the world. If you have a character who has a history of being lied to, they are going to be far less trustworthy of strangers than someone else who has never been betrayed.

You don’t have to have all the nitty gritty details of your character worked out before you start writing. The belief that you do often keeps writers from sitting down to write the actual story. If the details need to come up, you can establish them more as you write. Figure out key life events, the defining relationships in their past and present, the environment they grew up in, and the skills they have. Once you have those things established, you have your strong foundation.

Developing Character Voice & Dialogue

How do we know what a person sounds like without ever meeting them before? It’s a strange concept to be sure. The better you understand who this character is, though, the more naturally their voice will come to you. Let’s break down the two types of voice you’ll be developing for your protagonist:

• Internal Voice: How your character thinks and feels, expressed through narration
• External Voice: The characters dialogue and the word choices within said dialogue

Even if you are writing in third person, the internal voice will still need to come through the narration. No matter who your narrator is, they will make clear to the reader what the character is thinking and feeling. For instance, if a character is having to make a decision between saving the day and betraying a friend, we need to see the inner conflict the character has to truly understand how difficult the decision is for them.

While many believe external voice to be far more straightforward, there is a lot to consider with how it might conflict with the characters internal voice. Think about all the times you had a bad day and played it off like nothing was wrong. People regularly mask their emotions and inner thoughts, especially depending on the relationship with the character to whom they are speaking. As an example, in The Hunger Games, Katniss’s internal voice reveals her skepticism and fear, while her external voice often masks these emotions with confidence and defiance.

Giving Your Character Agency

Not every character in your story needs to change or take charge in a situation, but your protagonist does. Plot-driven stories often neglect the main character to the point of making them two-dimensional husks that just have things happen to them. Think Bella Swan from Twilight: when she was left alone in the second book, literal months went by with nothing happening (the author actually made her readers flip a page for each month). Sure, her months of inaction reflect her emotional paralysis, but they also highlight the challenges of maintaining character agency in a plot-driven story.

But while we for sure don’t want characters who are passive, we don’t want characters who are just reactive, either.

In every single scene of your story, your main character needs to have a goal that they are striving to achieve. It may be a small goal, like needing to find a bathroom or write a letter to a friend, but there still needs to be one. The protagonist’s drive to achieve their goals, whatever they may be, should be the driving force of your story’s plot.

Now, that’s not to say the character has to be proactive right from the start. Harry Potter and Bilbo Baggins are two examples of reactive characters written well. But, over time, they eventually do become proactive characters, making decisions to help their friends and save the day.

While characters need goals, there’s nothing to say that you have to actually let them achieve those goals. In fact, I’d encourage you to sparingly provide your protagonists with achievements. Typically what they want isn’t actually what they need, but going after what they want will send them down the path to getting what the character needs.

Conclusion

While it seems daunting, crafting compelling characters doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Not only are you human, but you also spend a lot of time around other humans, so you naturally understand human behavior. Establishing ideas like character motivation and goals, backstory and worldview, and agency, your character will then start to take on a life of their own.

Best of luck on crafting compelling characters, and be sure to leave a comment if you have any questions about this topic or other ideas you would like to share. You’ve got some writing to do!