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How to Develop a Fictional Character: 7 Tips From a Best-Selling Author

Creating Likeable Protagonists

Character flaws: Creating lovable imperfections

Creating Authentic Character Relationships

Character relationships: 6 tips for crafting real connections

7 Tips for Building Relationships Between Your Characters

Writing Exercise

How to Develop a Fictional Character

We are often told that our characters should be “round,” rather than stick-figure drawings. If you were an artist and you painted a picture with stick figures, people would say, “Well, that’s not very realistic. It is hardly recognizable as human.”

The artist tries to create characters who have the dimensions of real people. The same is true with people in stories. They have (but are not limited to) the following attributes:

1) Real people have physical bodies with inherent limitations and strengths.

These bodies get hungry, hurt, and have urges all their own. They also have a history of ailments and injuries, various scars, and of course plenty of traits that we may or may not want to include in our tale—including things like foot size, ear size and shape, and so on. Trying to describe some of these traits is danged near impossible.

2) Real people have families and friends.

In young adult literature, just about everyone is an orphan. That’s because editors don’t want authors to have to deal with family issues, just focus on the kids. Yet far too often, authors don’t create extended families primarily out of laziness. Similarly, each of us has various levels of friends, business colleagues, people we are attracted to, and people who are attracted to us at some level. We might include in this list of associations things like pets and plants. Does your heroine keep African violets around the house, and tenderly nurse her geraniums? A likeable character is usually one who show kindness to others, who seeks out deep and lasting commitments—even if it is just to her flowers.

3) Real people have jobs—usually a history of them.

For example, I’ve been a meat cutter, a prison guard, a missionary, a movie producer, novelist, video game designer, technical writer and editor, grocer, gourmet ice-cream pie maker, and farmer. In the modern world, we tend to develop large skill sets as we age, but there was a time when a person started life as a farmer and ended up buried out by the grape vines.

4) Real people also have a place in society.

These societies might include political groups, religious and civic organizations, and so on.

5) Real people have an internal life, invisible to the naked eye.

This is a good category for a lot of things—emotional needs and phobias, ideals, and so on. These might include secret beliefs, hopes, desires. It also includes our own personal way of seeing the world, and includes how we cope with it. Sometimes our personal ideals are at odds with our public affiliations. For example, while most people profess some sort of religion, very often our personal beliefs might vary in some way from the official doctrine of the church that we espouse.

The internal life of a character is of course where we get the “meat” for our novels. A movie can easily capture the exterior of a character, but novels do a better job of capturing the internal feelings, moods, and beliefs. Yet that’s only part of the reason why novels are so popular and are often said to be better than the movies they inspire.

I’m convinced that we have an innate need to get to know one another from the inside out. You see, most people, if you look closely, seem to be rather odd and inexplicable. They act in strange ways and have crazy notions. (I, of course, am the exception!) So we learn quite early to distrust others, to fear them. As a child of four, I recall getting spanked in a grocery store by a cranky old lady. When I went to school, in the third grade I had a teacher who seemed bent on destroying the life of one little boy in our class. A couple of years later, I had a neighbor who tried to trap my little sister in his barn. I was able to stop him, and shortly afterward learned that he was the serial killer who had been haunting our town for years. In other words, people can be strange and scary.

Yet we have a biological impulse to “join the herd,” to find a mate, to interact with others, befriend them, serve them, and rely upon them. In order to do that, we have to learn to understand them, to figure out who is friend and who is foe, and the key to that is understanding why they act as they do.

So we spend a great deal of time analyzing the motives, beliefs, and actions of others. We compare ourselves to them, and sometimes we are changed by them—in ways that are rather dramatic.

Hence, the internal lives of our characters are the most fertile ground that an author may plant his story in.

6) As we explore the internal lives of our characters,

one of the most important areas to explore is that person’s internal conflicts. What happens when a person loves and fears the same thing? What happens when a man’s conscience won’t let him carry out his boss’s (or wife’s, or master’s) orders? Most people are filled with interesting contradictions, and usually that provides the best material for our novels.

7) Last of all, each character has a unique way of speaking.

Finding a character’s voice and accent is often a key for me when writing a book. The character never comes alive until I can hear him talking in my own imagination.

In conclusion, please note that people are not stick figures. Neither are they “round.” In a good novel, the author creates a number of characters who are put in opposition, and each of them is satisfying and believable. Your imaginary characters never really quite come alive, but at times it can feel like they’re taking over your story, bent on achieving their own ends.

From https://mystorydoctor.com/characters/

Creating Likeable Protagonists

1) Put your character in pain.

Putting a character in physical pain often doesn’t work well, but putting them in emotional turmoil can be very powerful. A person who suffers persecution for something that he can’t change, or who is falsely accused, or who simply faces an impossible challenge will garner sympathy quickly.

2) Have your protagonist

“Pet the dog.” Petting the dog occurs when your protagonist does something nice, particularly for someone who doesn’t deserve it. Thus, helping a neighbor, saying hello to a lonely coworker, or helping a kitten out of a tree—all are the kinds of things that will engender sympathy.
Well, that’s where Hollywood’s ideas run out, but here are a few more.

3) Make your character apologetic.

Let’s face it, no one is perfect, even your protagonist. Audiences will typically reserve judgment on a character who recognizes his weaknesses, feels badly about them, and is willing to change.

4) Give your character friends.

Likeable people have friends, and people who love them for what they are. Yet many new writers will forget to populate their story with friends and loved ones when creating a protagonist.

5) Make your character powerful.

To be compelling, your character often needs a “secret power.” He doesn’t need to be Clark Kent. His secret power might be something like a quick wit, the ability to recognize deception in another, or remarkable perseverance.

6) Make your character attractive.

In romance films the two most attractive people are typically the romantic leads. The same technique can be used in novels, but in books, internal beauty is more important than physical beauty. Here are some internal qualities that you might consider:

a) The single most attractive quality in a man, according to most studies, is a sense of humor. Does your character have a sense of humor? Does he tell jokes or notice funny things? Humor is a huge draw for audiences of any age, but very often as authors we take our work, and ourselves, so seriously that we lose our sense of humor when writing.

b) Some studies suggest that the most important quality in protagonists is a powerful sense of compassion, the kind of caring that make them willing to put themselves at risk for others. In the heroic journey, a person can’t become a hero until he learns to care about others. Why? Because a man (or woman) won’t put himself at risk for others until his compassion overrides his sense of self-preservation.

c) Honesty. Even a person who has a dark side tends to be likeable if they “tell it like they see it.” Back when I worked as a prison guard, I knew a couple of serial killers that I could trust to always “be straight” with me. I loved those guys. On the other hand, I’ve met high-ranking religious leaders who try to twist the truth for their own gain. You can’t trust a thing that they say. Which would you prefer to spend time with in a novel?

d) Courage. Most people would like to be more courageous than they are, so they enjoy reading about people who truly do face overwhelming difficulties with a sense of equanimity.

e) Loyalty. A person who stands beside friends and family is infinitely more likeable than one who doesn’t.

f) I could go on here with a dozen more “likeable attributes,” but you as an author need to decide what it is that you like in a character. Is tolerance a big factor for you; if so, where should it end? Or do you prefer a protagonist with a strong sense of justice? Is it more important to you that your characters know how to dance, or that they remain uncorrupted by power?
Your protagonist needs a certain degree of likeability so that as readers put themselves into the protagonist’s place, they slip into the protagonist’s persona easily and naturally. In other words, your protagonist is like a costume that the reader is donning, and as with any costume, the persona needs to fit comfortably. If it doesn’t, the reader will constantly be reminded that “that’s not me,” and will usually exit your fictive universe.

From https://mystorydoctor.com/creating-likeable-protagonists/

Character flaws: Creating lovable imperfections

Character flaws serve multiple purposes. Often, they’re the faults and shortcomings that create conflict between key players in a story. Yet flaws are also useful for creating attraction between characters. Without them, characters feel wooden, ‘too perfect’. Without them, attraction might seem too instant. Here are types of flaws that make characters interesting:

Character flaws serve multiple purposes. Often, they’re the faults and shortcomings that create conflict between key players in a story. Yet flaws are also useful for creating attraction between characters. Without them, characters feel wooden, ‘too perfect’. Without them, attraction might seem too instant. Here are types of flaws that make characters interesting:

1. Physical character flaws

‘Flaw’ is a strong word to describe a character’s appearance. Body-shaming is rife in popular culture. People don’t necessarily share the notion that one physical trait is ‘objectively’ more beautiful/desirable than another.

However you feel about norms of beauty in society, the truth is that cultural ideals (and pressures people place on each other and themselves because of them) do exist. So how can you make physical character ‘flaws’ – how they differ from the norm – part of what makes them lovable?

1. Give characters positive attitudes to their physical ‘flaws’

A person’s attitude to their own flaws may can modify their attractiveness. For example, a character might have ‘curves and swerves’; a voluptuous figure. Yet despite body shaming, they might carry their weight confidently. Or a skinny character has an irrepressible attractiveness despite hearing or thinking they look emaciated.

Many find a positive attitude attractive. You could also make your character’s attitude to physical ‘flaws’ reflect other positive qualities. Perhaps they’re funny about their features, for example.

2. Find beauty in the eye of the beholder

The common phrase ‘beauty’s in the eye of the beholder’ reminds us that attraction is often highly subjective. One character might joke with another, saying, ‘What do you call a potential boyfriend shorter than six foot? A friend’ The friend, on the other hand, might have a strong attraction to shorter men.

Often someone’s ‘flaws’ – a mole, some or other detail – is also what gives them their ‘them-ness’. It’s the distinctive detail that another character associates with them. It represents them in the other’s mind’s eye.

When writing romance between characters, think about physical details a character might dislike about their own appearance. There could be a ‘too much’ or ‘too little’ that a lover wouldn’t have any other way.

2. Emotional or personality flaws

Emotional character flaws can be both the source of initial attraction and the ultimate cause of conflict. Conflict between characters adds extra suspense and tension.

Here are some emotional qualities other characters could see as flaws. First, consider how these character qualities could come across as positive to begin. Then see how the same qualities might appear negative in time:

Character Flaw: Neediness.
Initially seems sign of: Desire for the other, emotional openness, paying attention.
Negative side: Suffocation, lack of space, imbalanced co-dependence.

Character Flaw: Narcissism.
Initially seems sign of: Confidence, strength, decisiveness.
Negative side: Self-focus, lack of empathy, arrogance.

Character Flaw: Shyness.
Initially seems sign of: Humility, endearing vulnerability, sensitivity.
Negative side: Lack of self-love, passivity, weakness.

Character Flaw: Need for control.
Initially seems sign of: ‘Take charge’ reliability, discipline, focus.
Negative side: Dominating, punishing, demanding.

We could go on, but the basic principle is there. The imbalances in people are often the things that attract and repel others.

This push and pull between finding emotional flaws or imbalances attractive and frustrating makes relationships interesting. The character who ‘chivalrously’ holds the door for the other could easily become irritating in their determination to hold up gender ‘roles’ or traditions.

These double-edged character qualities are especially useful when you want to show how characters pass from hating to loving each other (and vice versa). An extrovert character who finds another’s shyness off-putting, for example, might find themselves getting drawn more and more to their quiet or gentle quality.

3. Ideological character flaws

The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘ideology’ as ‘A system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.’

For example, ‘conservatism’ (holding traditionalist or nationalist views such as being anti-immigration) is an ideology. ‘Liberalism’ (e.g. pro-immigration or pro-choice views) is another.

Whatever your own ideological stance – the set of beliefs and values you hold dear – remember a character’s ideology can be a flaw and a source of attraction to others.

Let’s consider an example: A woman in her twenties meets a charming man at a bar. He’s intelligent and entertaining. But there’s a key difference in their ideologies. He’s a complete Democrat and she’s a staunch Republican.

These political differences are both flaws to each character, from where they’re sitting. They could be attractive flaws. Maybe the young woman is from a very Republican home. It’s exciting, the idea of ruffling feathers and bringing a non-conservative date to her family. Perhaps she wants to rebel, or is doubting her views.

Maybe the man in the bar thinks his super-liberal family should be more tolerant of conservative outlooks. People are capable of holding conflicting viewpoints and acting against their core beliefs.

Characters thus might find each other’s ideologies intriguing (or good fodder for jabs and jokes), at first. Yet the reality of these views would likely create conflict, too, in time.

Like emotional character flaws, ideological flaws may be sources of attraction and repulsion.

Tips for using different types of character flaws better

Now that we’ve discussed three types of character flaw, here are tips to use them well in your story [you can also brainstorm characters in the Now Novel dashboard process]:

1. Explain your character’s flaws

Whatever your characters’ flaws, explain them. While characters might be born with unusual physical features, their emotional and ideological flaws could stem from:

1. Traumatic backstory: Is there something in a character’s past that led them to hold a certain negative view or have a specific personality trait?
2. Conditioning: Have authority figures such as parents or teachers instilled values in your character that others might consider flaws?
3. Flawed logic: Sometimes characters make questionable deductions based on prior views and experiences. E.g. an experience with a person of a specific description leads someone to believe falsely that all similar people in that category (sex/ethnicity/nationality) are the same. This is the flawed logic of prejudice.

2. Make the flaw fit the character

Make the flaw seem reasonable to your character. It’s often said that villains don’t think of themselves as villains. To a villain, their flaws (greed, dishonesty) could easily seem like strengths (ambition, cunning). Think of flaws that make sense for characters’ goals – what they want to achieve – and the personality traits that tend to go with those goals.

3. Find additional character flaws as you draft

Flaws for your characters may be something that you plan ahead of time. It’s even more likely that they will reveal themselves along the way as you write. Try to think of each character, even the worst villain, through their own eyes. Having an empathic eye for humanity in general will help you create flawed, realistic and lovable characters.

From https://www.nownovel.com/blog/creating-loveable-flaws-characters/

Creating Authentic Character Relationships

As storytellers, we often look for ways to make our characters as lifelike as possible: we give them internal struggles, external goals, difficult challenges, and hard choices to make, all while raising the stakes and doling out consequences for every action our characters take.

Today let’s examine an oft-overlooked element of storytelling: character relationships.

I recently read a novel — a very good novel with fully realized characters, an interesting plot, and a compelling setting — but after I finished the book, I realized that the character relationships weren’t fully developed. Almost every character in the story intrigued me, but their relationships didn’t rise to a level that felt authentic. The reader was asked to believe that friendships were forming based on minimal interactions without much depth.

Relationships Are Complicated

Relationships are not easy to depict, because they are complex, complicated, and often difficult enough in real life — let alone in a made-up story. People in our lives will inevitably disappoint us, impress us, hurt us, and help us. And it takes time for bonds to develop and strengthen — bonds that could be shattered in an instant of betrayal.

The relationships in a story will resonate best if they reflect reality — if they are full of the depth and complexities, the ups and downs, that we experience in our own real-life relationships.

Plenty of stories do this well. In Harry Potter (aff link), three kids meet on a train, and then we watch their friendships flourish over the course of seven books, but not without the occasional setback. Every relationship in the story is earned, because we see the relationships forged over time. That’s what makes them believable. That’s what makes them resonate. They feel real.

Relationship Arcs

In storytelling, everything is about arcs — how things change over the course of a story. Every significant event in a story causes a change, big or small. And relationships change, too. Characters grow closer. They grow further apart. They fall in love. They become enemies.

But there must be conversations (dialogue) and events that cause these shifts in relationships.

Of course, romance writers know this: making character relationships feel genuine is their bread and butter. But even outside the romance genre, relationships can drive an entire story, providing the guiding light that leads the characters to their fates.

The Elements of Relationships

What happens in a relationship?

People meet and they hit it off. They get together again and bond over a shared experience. They swap secrets. They grow closer. They share meals, good times and bad. But then someone makes a mistake. Someone else gets hurt. The relationship suffers a major blow. Will the wound heal? Will they reconnect?

Or maybe there’s friction every time they meet. One of them always says the wrong thing. The other is always in a bad mood. The timing is off. They have nothing in common. They can’t get along. But they’re stuck with each other.

Relationships are full of fascinating dynamics: intimacy, betrayal, tension, loyalty, disappointment, camaraderie, and so on. Characters (and casts) that navigate through these dynamics in way that feels genuine will feel real and keep readers interested and invested.

Character Relationships

Stories are full of many types of relationships: friends, family, lovers, enemies, acquaintances, and colleagues. Some world views hold that all that matters in the end are the people who’ve touched our lives. This may not be everybody’s view, but memories are often less about where we were and what we were doing than who we were with. And stories often leave the same impression: readers may not remember every twist and turn of a plot, but they remember the characters. They remember the relationships.

From https://www.writingforward.com/storytelling/creating-authentic-character-relationships

Character relationships: 6 tips for crafting real connections

Writing character relationships that make sense requires thinking about how relationships work. How and why do people interact in harmonious or confrontational ways? Here are 6 tips for creating connected characters whose relationships are convincing:

1: Draw inspiration for characters’ relationships from real life

Writing great relationships between characters requires being observant about relationships in your own life and those of others. As an exercise, list your closest friends. Write next to each what they contribute to your life that few others do. Perhaps one friend brings an always-chipper, positive energy. Another is always down for ‘real talk’.

The exercise above is a good way to remind yourself how distinctive people are. It reminds of the many different reasons why we gravitate to each other and form bonds.

If you’re creating a character (for example, the cynical best friend of your main character), think of real-world examples of people who have similar traits. There may be some aspects you can borrow, such as:

• Body language and posture
• Political or world views
• Anything contradictory about the person (e.g. An outwardly cynical person may also have a hidden tenderness only few people see)

Character relationships in novels that show no tension can feel flat and one-dimensional. This isn’t to say characters have to brawl every other chapter. Yet characters’ flaws should sometimes create conflict as they often do in real life:

2: Give characters varied flaws that interact

Everyone has flaws. What do we mean exactly by flaws? Character traits that impact themselves and/or others negatively. For example, a character who is overly critical of others could sabotage a close friendship without meaning to. The over-critical character’s flaw could interact with a character whose flaw is needing to be loved by everyone.

Character flaws can be explained by backstory. A character who is slow to trust others romantically might have had a damaging previous romantic experience. Building backstory into your character’s behaviour in the present time-frame of your novel will make the way your character behaves in relationships more believable.

Even characters who are similar should have traits that rub each other up the wrong way when a situation arises that throws their differences into relief. For example, in a fantasy adventure novel, the main party might share an important quest. At a time of great stress, such as meeting a seemingly impassable obstacle, characters’ flaws might come out. The character with controlling tendencies might try persuade the party to take a course of action. Meanwhile, the character who sees everything from all angles (but is chronically indecisive) is certain the plan will fail. An argument ensues.

The above example shows that if you give each character distinctive traits, including flaws, pivotal scenes will become more interesting.

Just as the plot of your novel shows change and development, so should characters’ relationships:

3: Make sure some character relationships ebb and change

Sometimes, relationships do proceed on a single track. In JK Rowling’s Harry Potter, for example, it would make no narrative sense if the villain Lord Voldemort were to suddenly befriend Harry. It would be counter to the antagonist’s goals and would also destroy the narrative tension Rowling sustains across all the books in her series.

While some relationships may be fairly fixed, primary, intimate relationships in a story need to ebb and change. Think of the ‘5 w’s’ – who, what, why, where and when – and how changes in any of these areas could produce change in your character relationships.

For example, when a new character enters your main character’s life (a ‘who’ change), what impact will this have on their close friendships? Similarly, if the ‘where’ changes and your story moves to a new setting, how might this impact your characters’ relationships? Say, for example, two romantic leads move to a new city. The pressure of being in a new place with a reduced support network could force them to rely on each other more and fault lines could show in their relationship as a result.

Think about cause and effect this way and make sure that any momentous change reverberates through your characters’ primary relationships.

4: Avoid making characters instantly like each other

YA author Kasie West raises this crucial point in her blog post, ‘5 Ways to Build Solid Relationships in Your Story’. As West says, ‘Resist having characters immediately like each other. Avoid phrases like: drawn to him, instant attraction, it felt like I had known her forever.’

The problem with characters instantly liking each other is that this skips the interesting elements of character introductions. You can create curiosity and narrative tension out of the fact each character is still somewhat unknown to the other.

It’s entirely possible, of course, that two characters feel instant physical attraction. But building connection through multiple encounters makes this attraction, this story event, feel earned. In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Austen takes time to build the connection between Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy. This creates curiosity in the reader and satisfying narrative tension.

5: Know more about your characters than you will use

Know your characters inside out. It’s easier to create believable relationships when you have a three-dimensional understanding of each of your characters. This is why it is helpful to sketch character outlines. Note down essential facts about each character, even if many won’t get mentioned in your story.

Knowing more about each character than you’ll need in the final story will keep characters vivid in your mind’s eye. This will translate to the page, especially when you describe character relationships and are able to bring in your characters’ most crucial attributes and differences.

6: Find inspiration in the great relationships of literature

There are plenty of examples of believable, engrossing, non-static relationships in literature. If a specific type of character relationship is central to your story (such as a life-altering friendship or romance), find books where these feature and make a summary of the course of the relationship.

Take notes on characters’ first interactions and their last. Take notes too on any disagreements in the course of the book and why they arise. How do the characters’ personalities compliment each other? What types of differences create the biggest conflict?

In Emily Brontë’s Victorian Gothic novel Wuthering Heights, for example, Brontë shows the complex conditions under which characters form and abandon relationships. The rough-mannered Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw grow close and fall in love after Heathcliff is found in the streets of Liverpool as a child and taken in by Catherine’s father. Even though the two share a passionate love, Catherine is compelled to marry Edgar Linton instead, a man of higher social status than Heathcliff.

Books such as Brontë’s show how character relationships take place in (and are influenced) by societal and/or familial structures. Taking notes on book’s such as Brontë’s that focus on human relationships will help you write better relationships yourself.

From https://www.nownovel.com/blog/writing-about-relationships-how-to-make-them-real/

7 Tips for Building Relationships Between Your Characters

Give your characters unique traits. Most people’s favorite character relationships don’t involve stock characters who can be easily categorized as tropes. In Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy is the love interest, but he doesn’t read at all like a stock romantic lead. And yet because he, like the protagonist Elizabeth Bennett, is written as a strong character capable of change, he is able to evolve into Elizabeth’s true love.

Place your characters in multiple relationships. Three-dimensional characters should have many things going on simultaneously. It’s your job as an author to make sure your characters are involved in different relationships in different stages. Even a short story has space for its protagonist to be in a great place with one person (such as their husband) but in a terrible bind elsewhere (such as with a coworker). As the character changes, the state of those relationships may reverse, and such reversals are what keep a storyline interesting.

Let subtext carry the load. In real life, people aren’t always explicit about their true feelings and points of view. Nor do they call each other by name every time they speak. They may not even speak in full sentences, preferring to let subtext fill in the gaps. As an author or screenwriter, you must transfer this real-life behavior onto the page. Real relationships involve subtlety, and as you gain experience as a writer, you’ll be better able to rely on subtext to explain key information without being overly explicit or didactic.

Make a strategic narration choice. First-person narrators understand their own inner lives quite well, but they may have limited information about the other characters they interact with. This can produce fascinating relationship dynamics among your characters, but it can also slow down your storytelling. If you’re having a hard time with the limitations of a first-person narrator, switch to third-person narration; you’ll have a lot more omniscient information about your characters and what they really think of one another.

From https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-nuanced-character-relationships#7-tips-for-building-relationships-between-your-characters