In a post on Writers in the Storm, Lynette Burrows offers advice for creating characters your readers will want to follow. “You can create charming good guys and vicious villains, the hookiest of hooks, brilliant worlds, and twisty plots with the most intense cliffhangers, but if readers don’t care about your characters, they won’t recommend your book to their friends,” she says.
Readers will have a hard time connecting to your story if your characters have no serious problems, if the conflict occurs off-stage, or if your scenes feel disconnected from one another. Burrows suggests some fixes for these and other problems:
- The Problem Doesn’t Matter. The stakes of your story should matter to your protagonist. Even a superhero should have a reason to care about the story problem, Burrows says. “The challenges we choose or we make for ourselves may have some level of altruism, but deep down, it is something specific and personal,” she writes. “Look for a personal connection your protagonist has with the problem in your story.”
- The Conflict Occurs Off-Stage. “In fiction, conflict exists when some person, place or thing keeps your character from what he wants,” Burrows writes. “Let your reader see, hear, taste, smell, touch, and viscerally feel his emotional responses to the obstacle.”
- Unrelated Cause and Effect. “If your protagonist acts in ways that are unrelated to the main story problem or unrelated to previous actions by your antagonist, you have created a haphazard appearing plot,” Burrows explains. Review your scenes and ask how the actions of your protagonist and antagonist affect each other. Do your protagonist’s challenges escalate?
- Your Character is a Stereotype or Trope. Some genre stories can tolerate a one- or two-dimensional protagonist, but generally, you need something more. Find ways to differentiate your hero from whoever has come before.
- Your Reader Isn’t in Your Character’s Shoes. “To put your reader in your character’s shoes, she needs to do more than see what’s happening,” Burrows says. “She needs to feel your protagonist’s doubt, his hope, his fear. She wants to hear what he hears, smell what he smells, taste what he tastes, feel what he touches and how his body responds to the situation.” Observe how you and others react to emotional stimuli. Study how the body responds to excitement, stress, and fears. Use these physical manifestations to help put your reader into your protagonist’s head.
- Your Character Didn’t Earn the Ending. “When you create situations and conflicts that your protagonist does not or cannot solve, the reader will feel your character didn’t earn the victory or the tragedy at the end of the story,” Burrows notes. You might hate it, but you have to make your hero suffer on some level: physically, emotionally, psychologically. Your hero has to make tough choices. They should make mistakes and fail. They should be embarrassed, lose opportunities, or take hits to their reputation.
