The First Rule of Creating Fictional Characters
Creating fictional characters is a big subject, and something you simply can't afford to get wrong if you want your novel to be successful.
All of the articles in this section will teach you everything you need to know to build great story people in your imagination.
But there is a huge potential stumbling block you face right at the beginning of this process, and it is this...
Creating the wrong kinds of fictional characters in the first place.
Imagine if you went to a party and all of the guests were either dislikeable or, worse, deadly dull. How long would it take you to make your excuses and get out of there? Five minutes?
Well, it's the same with reading a novel: your audience just isn't going to stick around if all of the novel's characters, like the guests at that party, are either not very nice or not very interesting.
With that in mind, here is the first rule of creating fictional characters: Make the readers care. Make them care if your characters...
- Win or lose.
- Succeed or fail.
- Live or die.
How, precisely, do you make the readers care? You simply have to do some (but not all) of the following eight things...
1. Make the Characters Charismatic
Not good looking, necessarily - though readers will more readily warm to a handsome or a beautiful character than to an ugly one. (Shallow, I know, but such is life.)
Nor do your fictional characters need to be eloquent and witty and have the ability to always know the right thing to say - though, again, these things certainly won't hurt.
There simply has to be something about them.
They have to be the kind of people whose presence electrifies a room, the kind of people you can't take your eyes off. If a fictional character can walk into a room unnoticed, readers probably won't take much notice of them, either.
2. Make the Characters Likeable
Or better still, loveable!
We all know that there are people in life that we instantly take to, and people we duck into doorways to avoid. The question is, which qualities separate the nice from the not-so-nice?
- Kindness?
- Cheerfulness?
- Generosity?
- Selflessness?
Yes, all of these things - plus probably a hundred others - are important when creating fictional characters that are likeable.
Not that you should make a character in a novel too likeable - because that would make them two-dimensional and, well, kind of boring!
When creating fictional characters, beware of creating saints. But a likeable character's imperfections - or that little bit of "sinner" inside them - should be more endearing than outright villainous.
(A character's likeability, or otherwise, is an important aspect of character creation, which is why you will find a separate, more detailed article on it after this one: Creating a Character Readers Love or Hate.)
3. Make the Characters Interesting
Let's say that your central character is an accountant who has been married for over 40 years and is nearing retirement.
Yawn, yawn, yawn...
But also make him a roulette expert who is planning to cheat the casino out of millions with the help of a 19-year-old pole dancer called Kandy and the readers will sit up and take notice!
As with all of these character traits I am discussing, the specific qualities which make a character interesting - or charismatic, likeable, whatever - are ones you will have to decide upon for yourselves.
But here are some of the things that would make a fictional character interesting to me:
- The job they do - a spy, perhaps, or an Alpaca farmer or a tightrope walker with vertigo.
- The places they have been and the sights they have seen - the more exotic and unusual, the better.
- Their skills and talents - playing the harpsichord, perhaps, or the ability to perform magic or to walk on fire.
Your list would probably look very different, but if the things you use to make fictional characters interesting are interesting to you, you will be able to write about them with enough passion to interest the people who count: the readers.
4. Make the Characters Both Ordinary and Extraordinary
This one touches upon some of the traits I have already mentioned, but it is worth talking about separately because it is important.
Generally speaking, we are drawn to people who are "just like us" and wary of people who are not.
It follows, therefore, that for a reader to care about a character in a novel, at least initially, it helps if they are an ordinary, regular person - a kind of James Stewart or Tom Hanks "everyman" figure.
But that is only half of the story. As readers, we will soon grow bored of such a character if there isn't something about them that is unusual and exotic and mysterious.
The ideal fictional character, then, will be both...
- Familiar and unfamiliar.
- Just like us and not like us at all.
- Ordinary and extraordinary.
In short, creating fictional characters is a kind of balancing act.
It is a character's ordinariness that will make the novel's readers warm to them initially.
And it is whatever is extraordinary about them that will prick the audience's curiosity and make them want to stick around for more.
5. Make the Characters Well-Motivated
Which of the following characters in a novel do you think a reader will care most about...
- Rita, who takes a second job as a waitress to help put her teenage son through college?
- Or Mary, who takes a second job as a waitress to pay for cosmetic surgery?
It's got to be Rita, right? But what if I tell you that...
- Rita only needs the money because she blew her son's college fund feeding her drug habit.
- And Mary needs the cosmetic surgery because her ex-husband pressed a hot iron into her face.
(That's the great thing about creating fictional characters - as writers, we have an almost god-like power in changing how characters are perceived.)
Every character in a novel wants something. If we, as readers, can support their goal - and, more importantly, the motivation behind it - we won't only care about them, we'll be cheering from the sidelines the whole way through.
6. Make the Fictional Characters Dynamic
Life is full of troubles, and characters in novels face more troubles than most of us. (The writer John Irving once said that he doesn't create characters for a novel so much as victims.)
In the real world, we can get away with feeling sorry for ourselves and bemoaning the cruel hand of fate. But fictional characters can't, at least not for long - not if they want the readers to care about them.
Whatever problems a character in a novel faces - and they will face plenty - too much self-pity or stoical suffering just isn't an option for them.
Readers expect them to do something to make the situation right - and they expect them to do it sooner rather than later.
7. Make the Characters Good At What They Do
It doesn't matter what a character does in a novel, but they must be good at it.
For example, if your hero is a short-order cook, make him a great short-order cook - the best one in town.
The same thing applies if they are a cop, a circus clown, an assassin, or a city trader.
Alternatively - and particularly if you are writing a comic novel - you can make them truly terrible at what they do...
- Make your hero a stand-up comic who bungles every punch-line
- Make them a sports coach who has never won a game.
Make them very good (or very bad) at what they do, and the reader will sit up and notice them. They will admire them for being good or else sympathize with them for being inept (though trying hard all the same).
Either way, they will care. And getting the readers to care is the unbreakable rule of creating fictional characters.
8. Make the Characters A Little Unhappy
I'm being serious. Make a character lonely, bereaved, broken-hearted - something like that - and the readers will be sure to sympathize. (And what is sympathy if not a way of caring?)
Just don't go over the top with it...
- Give a fictional character a small shard of ice in their hearts and the readers will be sure to sympathize.
- Allow the character to truly wallow in whatever it is that is making them unhappy and the readers will start to think, Oh, for God's sake, pull yourself together and get over it!
Final Thoughts on Creating Fictional Characters
First, a brief recap...
The first, and most important, rule of creating fictional characters is to make the reader care.
To make the readers care about your fictional characters, simply ensure that the characters are...
- Charismatic.
- Likeable.
- Interesting.
- Both ordinary and extraordinary.
- Well-motivated.
- Dynamic.
- Good at what they do.
- A little unhappy.
However, don't give every single one of the characters in your novel every single one of these traits...
- Your leading man or woman should certainly have several of them, in varying degrees, because they are the ones the readers will spend the most time with.
- Other characters might have one or two or three of the traits, depending on how low down the cast list they are.
You will have to use your judgement and trust your instincts on this.
You want readers to care about all of your characters, even the humble minor with just one scene and a couple of lines of dialogue.
But your protagonist should always hold the number one spot in their hearts.
Oh, and one last thing...
Just because a character is a "baddie" doesn't mean that you can't get the reader to care about them, too - even if it is only to care that they get what is coming to them.
You obviously wouldn't want to make a villain too "likeable," but you can certainly make them charismatic, for example, and interesting and good at what they do.
Never create a plain, dull, ordinary character - because the readers simply won't care about them. But if you have to create a character whose defining characteristic is dullness, make them extraordinarily dull!
Next Step...
And that is the first rule of creating fictional characters. Now it is time to learn how to Create a Character Readers Love or Hate...
