It is very important that the characters you create are ones that will resonate with readers, and make them feel a strong connection to them. We want our readers to become emotionally invested in what happens to these characters; or we want our characters to be so interesting and entertaining that the reader won’t be able to stop wanting to read about them.
Think about people from your own life that are interesting. What makes them interesting? You need to make your characters have very human qualities; just like real people it is a character’s authentic humanness that makes them compelling to a reader.
Your character should have a very unique and interesting point of view.
Qualities that you might consider to giving to your characters:
- Are they religious or not? Are they spiritual in some way?
- What odd behaviours and habits do they have?
- Do they have any noteworthy physical characteristics?
Now think about how these qualities would impact how your characters behave.
It’s important to understand how your characters work emotionally, what motivates and triggers them. In particular, your main character or protagonist should be a complicated character to make them interesting.
Also, the readers need to understand how the character feels about themselves. What is the character’s self-image? Do they feel pride or shame in themselves? Do they have regrets?
All of this complexity adds up to what is known as a “well-rounded character.”
In addition to the protagonist, we must also develop an interesting antagonist or villain. An ideal villain is very crafty and is constantly coming up with new ways to frustrate our protagonist.
What are the ethics and morals of the antagonist and protagonist? How do they compare and conflict?
Beyond the antagonist and protagonist there are going to be supporting characters. There can also, of course, be more than one antagonist and protagonist, but supporting characters aren’t either an antagonist nor a protagonist.
Some writers find it useful to write long biographies of their characters, describing their history, previous experiences and personalities in great detail, writing 10s of thousands of words for this exercise. It will likely be useful to you if you are a new writer.
Some things to think about when developing your characters:
- Are they in search of something, do they have something missing in their lives?
- What do they need and want?
- What long term personal relationships do they have and do they have a healthy or unhealthy relationship with these other people?
- Do they hold grudges against any of these people? Blame them for something? Have they been hurt by them? Conversely, are there people that inspire them, that they would suffer for?
- What is their ordinary pattern of behaviour? What would motivate them to do something out of the ordinary for them?
- What do they do for a living? Where have they lived before?