If I asked you why your favorite book is your favorite book, chances are high the reason will be because of the characters.Yes, a great plot and lyrical prose make for a compelling read, but it’s the characters we like to follow from page to page and revisit if they leave the right impression.So, how do we ensure we get this right impression? It’s actually a case of making readers care, and it can be easier than you think.
3 Simple Ways To Make Readers Care About Your Characters
Round Them Out With Relatability
Readers like to see themselves in characters. If they can relate to them, they will connect to them, and as a writer, you want that connection.Make your characters relatable with traits that are universal. It’s a good idea to throw in some quirks, too. You never know how many other people out there might like the same niche pastime that you do.You could also go the nostalgic route, adding that your character likes all the things you did growing up, like 90s rom-coms, cheese (who doesn’t love cheese?), puppies (who doesn’t love puppies?), or clowns (who doesn’t love… just kidding, no one loves clowns).Select a key relatable trait, a quirk, and something nostalgic to add to your characters and create fictional people that feel as real to readers as themselves.
Steep Them In Sympathy
There’s a reason Save The Cat! is a much-touted piece of writing advice. If you see a character, good or bad, demonstrating a moment where they’re worth rooting for, it ups the care factor.If you want such an endearing quality for your characters, it’s a good idea to find a way to do this.Dig deep for incidents that have made you feel sorry for someone, or tap into having others feel that way about you, and thread it into your characters and the situations you put them in.
Show Their Multiple Sides
Showing readers multiple sides to your characters not only helps play into relatability and sympathy but it’s also a great trick on its own!
If your character is one-note, always being the goody-two-shoes, the sarcastic side-kick, or the over-the-top-destroy-everything villain, they get pretty boring, pretty quick.
However, if you play in the gray, and show that your villain is over-the-top because they suffered a tremendous, life-altering loss, or that your hero’s goody-two-shoe act is in response to a promise they made to someone special, you’ve got multiple sides.
Layers like that add to the character rather than just that one be-all and end-all side, and this makes them well-rounded enough for readers to follow them from chapter to chapter, even book to book.
So, add all the sides you can and play up the sympathy and relatability as the base of your characters and sprinkle them throughout your story. Not only will you make that caring connection with readers, but some damn good characters too.
The article credited to — K.M. Allan
