One of the most important fundamentals of a good story is characters; an antagonist that
creates conflict, a protagonist that tries to solve it, and all the many different side characters
they encounter on their journey through the plot. However, sometimes making these unique
characters and writing them to be cool and likable in the reader’s eyes can be the most difficult
part of the writing process. Here I will teach you a couple of tips on how to make your reader fall
in love with your story through your characters.

This first tip is likely the most important, but also the hardest to internalize. Readers love a tragic
backstory, but we need a person to carry that baggage. Angst is important for a good story, but if
the characters don’t have fleshed out personalities, then nobody cares about what struggles
they’re going through with their friends or that their family was murdered.

One thing you can do is give your characters hobbies. Give your characters some stuff to care
about that doesn’t have anything to do with their role in the story or their tragic backstory. They
can like reading, knitting, trashy soap operas… anything that suits them, really. It just makes
them feel more human when they care about something. You don’t even have to mention their
hobbies in the story! Just you, the writer, knowing that helps to write their personality by a lot.

Another thing that a lot of writer’s tips doesn’t mention is that while giving your characters flaws
is important, good traits are also essential to making your characters believable. Make your
heroes flawed, but give us a reason to care about what happens to them. Your villains are
villains, but nobody’s black-and-white. Everyone has good traits and bad, so express that
through your characters. Besides, positive or negative traits don’t define your characters; it is
how they go about using those traits. A strong sense of justice usually is good, but if a character
isn’t careful it can dip into vengeance. Patience is usually a good trait, but it can also delve into
passiveness.

One more thing you can do is give your characters a voice. And by that, I mean you should
know how they talk! Some characters use very relaxed English, some characters are more
formal and polite. Some characters are harsh and to-the-point, some characters use more
implications. Also, think about their culture, where they’re from. How does that influence their
accent or lingo? Knowing how your characters speak in casual conversation helps to better
understand the way they think, their vocabulary, and how they were raised.

In the next installation of this column, I’ll teach you how to break the caricatures of these
character personalities we have made effectively, causing emotion in the reader. For now,
remember to give your characters fleshed out personalities by giving them hobbies, equal
positive and negative traits, and a voice. Doing that will give your readers the characters we
crave.