Believable characters are the cornerstone of any great book. If your characters are cardboard cut-outs, stereotypes, or lacking unique wants and needs, your story could fall flat. If your readers cannot believe in and connect with the characters, they will not connect with the plot.
As writers, we all want to create characters who are so vivid they could step off the page and into the world. While writing a believable character can take a fair amount of work, it’s a part of writing that gets easier with practice.
If you’re struggling to create believable characters, we’re here to help. Read on for three great ways you can breathe life into your characters.
Get to know your characters
Before you start writing, and long before you edit your book, you need to think about who will appear in your story.
It is rare for believable characters to develop on their own during the writing process. This is because most of your characters’ backstories, and what they think and feel about the world around them, will not be explored explicitly within your manuscript.
For a more complete sense of your characters, it’s a good idea to make an outline for each one. Create vague backstories and add special details to their lives. This will help flesh out your characters and make them more real to you. In turn, make it easier for you to write them.
One way to create believable characters is by interviewing or going on ‘dates’ with the main cast of your book. Pretend you’re getting to know them as if they’re actual people. There’s no limit to how many questions can ask, and who knows what surprises you’ll uncover!
Whether your character loves dry toast, the colour yellow, or flashy shirts, such details will make them more relatable to your book’s readers.
Patricia Highsmith said it best in her handbook Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction: “one should know even about their childhoods, though their childhoods do not always need to be written into the book”.
Find real-life inspiration
If you want to write living, breathing people, the best approach is to find real-life inspiration! Paul Theroux, Stephen King, and Leo Tolstoy are all brilliant authors who wrote believable characters because they were great observers of the people around them.
The next time you find yourself in a social situation—whether it’s a face-to-face conversation with a friend or family member, or eavesdropping on any surrounding people (yes, writers do this)—focus on the quirks and mannerisms which make each person unique.
Maybe your local baker is soft-spoken but has loud, pink hair. Perhaps you know someone who plucks their eyelashes when they’re nervous. Maybe you have a colleague who is a sloppy dresser but a suave speaker.
Likewise, listen to what people say and how they say it. Do they hold different opinions to you but make convincing arguments? Do they find certain hobbies interesting that would fit the time and place of your novel?
Create arcs for believable characters
Your characters’ primary purpose is to drive the story forward. Without them, your narrative wouldn’t exist. Each major character (and even many smaller characters) should start out one way and, through a series of challenges and events (the plot), change in some fundamental aspect.
The easiest way to understand your characters’ arcs is to know their wants and needs. What do they think they want to achieve in the story? What do they actually need to achieve to fulfil their desires?
Wants and needs
The most believable characters have external and internal wants and needs.
The external wants concern what the characters think they need to accomplish to achieve their goals. For example, a protagonist wants to achieve a promotion because he thinks it will make him happy. His needs might be that he needs to quit his job and pursue something he’s passionate about. Because it relates to tangible events, the external wants/needs are often tied closely to the plot of the book.
Meanwhile, the internal wants relate to your character’s preconceived biases and beliefs. For instance, the same protagonist was told that money is the most important thing growing up, so he thinks he has to stay in his current job. Through confronting challenges over the course of the book, perhaps he realises that this belief isn’t true.
Like genuine people, your character’s internal and external arcs should influence each other. Often, a character’s goals are misguided or their beliefs prevent them from achieving their external goals. This makes for an excellent character arc because they will have to confront their beliefs before they can figure out what they really want. Only then can they set about accomplishing their external goals.
Ask others if your characters are believable
The most believable characters are complex, which is why creating them can be a complicated task. Like all things, it gets easier with practice. The more you “interact” with your characters outside of the story, the more you adopt the traits of people in the real world. And the more you understand their wants and needs, the better you will get at creating believable characters that connect with your audience.
Of course, a consequence of getting to know our characters is that we fall in love with them. Like with our own loved ones, the closer we get to them, the harder it is to see their faults. In these cases, it’s best to get fresh eyes on your work. A professional editor can identify if you have believable characters, or how you can bring them to life.
