Characters are the lifeblood of your story, whether a talking tree or a jaded knight. Crafting relatable characters can be challenging, and avoiding shallow or doormat-like characters is crucial to keeping the interest of your reader. Here are some tips from my own brainstorming process that may help you create compelling characters for your novel.
Give Them Motivation
From Katniss Everdeen to Harry Potter and Gollum, every compelling character is driven by motivation. This underlying purpose not only influences their actions but also makes them relatable. To create an engaging character, identify their desires and provide the drive to achieve their goals.
Give Them Weaknesses
Every diamond has its fatal flaw: Jay Gatsby’s disillusionment, Victor Frankenstein’s arrogance, Dr. Jekyll’s vanity, and Macbeth’s ambition, giving them a human aspect. Leaders can be arrogant, while empathetic characters may struggle with a martyr complex, sacrificing their own needs. Fatal flaws help the audience relate to characters.
Give Them a Voice
How a person talks reveals their thoughts and emotions, making voice a crucial aspect of character development. Understanding their language and dialect has the potential to offer readers insight into the character’s thought process and background.
Give Them Relationships.
Have you heard the saying, “Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future”? This applies to fictional characters as well. Relationships shape characters just as much as their backgrounds do. What influences do your characters have? Are they close to their parents? How have their dating experiences shaped them? Think about these ideas when developing your characters’ relationships.
Give Them a Background
Your character’s background—be it strict parenting, an absent parent, or a loving and attentive family—shapes their worldview, influencing whether they are distrustful, empathetic, or vengeful, thereby establishing the basis for your story’s hero or villain.
Give Them Beliefs
Does your character believe in truth and the existence of good and evil? Are they opposed to murder or arson? Essentially, what do they believe? Beliefs shape your character’s worldview, much like how real people’s beliefs influence theirs. When crafting your characters, think about your own beliefs and why you hold them.
Give Them Growth
Your characters can’t just drift through your story like jellyfish; nobody likes a pushover. Characters must learn and grow from their experiences. This character arc can take place in a single chapter or throughout the book, especially for late bloomers. Remember, characters don’t need to have everything figured out right away; give them the time to learn and grow!
Of course, these are just starting points for developing your characters. Keep refining them, and you’ll discover their complexity, a lot like real people. Let me leave you with this note of encouragement: get to know your characters as you would a real person. Strive to understand them and keep working hard, author! You got this!
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