How to Craft Relatable Characters

Hello dear readers, and welcome back to the Bookshelf Blog! Recently I’ve been rereading some favorite book series for inspiration (one of which was The Wingfeather Saga, for anyone wondering) and I noticed something that may have been the reason these books became favorites in the first place. There’s something in a book that makes it stand out from others, and despite what I would wish, no, it’s not worldbuilding! It’s the book’s characters. After all, that’s who the book is about.

All of my favorite books and book series stood out to me because the characters were realistic and, I’d say more importantly, relatable. I connected with them, which made them real in my mind. This is how we remember books and become immersed in them even more so than great worldbuilding (which I still highly recommend spending time on if you’re a fantasy writer…here’s why!) If I asked you to tell me about your favorite character in a book, more often than not you’d be able to tell me not just what their favorite color is but how they act, what made you like them, and what similarities you see between them and yourself. It’s this relatability that will cause readers to love your books and characters.

I’m sure that you’ve read a “bad book” in your lifetime– a book that lacked a compelling plot, interesting characters, or immersive worldbuilding, not to mention an inspiring theme. A book that just didn’t deliver and felt flat. Often, this will happen because of the characters. Either they are unrealistic, or they’re not relatable. Both of these problems will be tackled in this post as well as practical ways to combat them. Let’s jump in!

Problem #1: My Characters are Unrealistic

When I see unrealistic characters in a book, it’s often because they aren’t fleshed out properly. You never seem to know the character on a deep, personal level that is often shown in good books. They seem to be one person, and then all of a sudden they know a new skill that normally would take years of training, or they don’t react realistically to something that would be life-shattering, or their entire personality changes halfway through the book. It’s all too easy for your characters to be flat and unrealistic, but there are some ways that this problem can be fixed.

If you have yet to start writing your first draft (or you’re a little ways into it and realized that you know nothing about your character– I’ve done this a few times!) then here are some things to think about when crafting everything from their personality to their favorite color.

• Remember that your job as a fiction writer is to suspend disbelief– especially in fantasy! You need to craft your character as if they are a real person. If you believe they could exist in real life, then your readers will too.

• Bouncing off the “suspension of disbelief” rule, remember to present your characters realistically as you write. Simply planning them out beforehand isn’t enough– you need to follow through with it. Don’t tell the reader everything about your character all at once. Hold back some things, but hint that this character has secrets so we’ll want to keep reading!

• Think about if things your character can do would work in real life. I understand that magic doesn’t exist, but think about the rules of magic in your world. How long does it take to learn? Can anyone learn it? Are there different levels? Apply questions like these to other skills your character may know. Something that will turn readers away is if a character who has shown no fighting prowess in the story all of a sudden knows how to shoot a bow or wield a sword halfway through the book. Make sure surprises like these are hinted at so readers won’t feel lied to.

• Make sure that everything has a reason. If you have a brooding, reserved character who doesn’t talk much and sticks to the shadows, ask yourself why? Add backstory and think about the character’s fears and motives, and how they might cause the character to act that way. What happened to form your character? The same can be said for happy, bubbly characters who may not understand how the world works. What has their life been like to cause that? If your character hates water, or gets scared around horses, or is trapped in a castle, why did that happen and how?

If you’ve already finished a first draft (or two…or three…) but you feel that your characters could use some work, think about these:

• Remember the tips above. They might be hard to implement on an already-finished draft, so I’d recommend examining your characters first. Figure out the biggest things you need to change and start there. If you have a personality change halfway through the draft, decide which demeanor you like better and change the other half to match it. It doesn’t have to be huge changes either– simply changing the tone of dialogue or the reason a character does something might solve the problem easily.

• Once you’ve changed the big things, read through the draft again (or get someone else to look at it! Feedback from others can help you see things you would have missed or looked over on your own.) Sometimes after solving the bigger inconsistencies, the smaller ones won’t be so jarring to readers. If there are still some problem areas, decide what needs to be done to fix them, and don’t overthink it!

• Sometimes (and this is a hard one, I know) a character might be unfixable, at least from an editing standpoint. Consider rewriting some or all of your draft in order to make your characters work. I know it sounds daunting and impossible, but remember why characters are the most important. Believe me, it’ll be worth it in the end!

Problem #2: My Characters are Unrelatable

You may have gotten some feedback from readers that goes something along the lines of, “I just don’t like this character,” or “I don’t understand why they would do this.” It can be hard to hear that your characters are unrelatable, especially if it’s your main character. But don’t fret– there are ways to fix it!

Oftentimes it comes from not developing your character as if they could be real. Relatable characters are going to have two things: a goal and a flaw. These two things have a few subcategories, and they can show in different ways, so let’s break down what each of them means and how you can implement it in your characters.

First let’s start with the goal. Have you ever had a goal, whether it’s something as small as cleaning your room every day or as big as writing a whole book? (And yes, that’s a BIG goal!) Goals are a natural thing that we do. And since we are trying to convince readers that our characters could be real, our characters need to have goals too. Often these goals are easy to see, like cast the One Ring into Mt. Doom, or stop Gnag the Nameless from destroying Aerwiar, or rescuing your parents and sister from Morbin Blackhawk. These are known as external goals and usually relate to the plot. If your book’s plot is that a knight must rescue a princess from a tower (super unique example, I know 😜) then the knight’s goal might be to rescue the princess, while the princess’s goal might be to warn the knight about the dragon, and the dragon’s goal might be to stop the knight. Every character needs a goal, even if it’s just surviving, like Katniss in The Hunger Games (in The Hunger Games, Katniss, rather than acting against an evil force in order to defeat it, is simply affected by said evil force and must survive, which is a lesser-used but still potent plot structure.)

Another facet to a character’s goal would be their internal goal. This is like their desire, or the reason why they have their external goal. Going back to the princess example, the knight’s internal goal might be to find a croquet partner, while the princess’s internal goal might be to avoid cleaning the tower every day, and the dragon’s internal goal might be to keep the princess from leaving so that he won’t be lonely. (Now it’s getting creative…😂) This is the part of your character that will make them seem more relatable, because everyone has a reason why they want something, which means that they have two goals: the external goal and the internal goal.

Now let’s move on to the flaw. Just like with your character’s goal, they’re going to have an external flaw and an internal flaw, and just like with the goals, the external flaw is going to be fueled by the internal flaw. In The Wingfeather Saga, Janner’s external flaw is that he doesn’t trust his brother, Kalmar, to be a good king. This is fueled by his internal flaw, which is selfishness. He sees Kalmar mess up all the time, and while internally scolding him (and sometimes externally) he also is priding himself on his ability to be a good Throne Warden, the protector of the king. He wonders why his brother can’t just grow up and be a good king, all while he selfishly acknowledges that he has. A character’s external flaw must be fueled by their internal flaw. This is what makes them relatable!

Now, here are a few more tips for crafting relatable characters using the goal and flaw strategy. Remember to think carefully as you create your character and experiment with different goals and flaws.

• Oftentimes a character’s internal flaw will be based on a fear they have. To go back to the example from The Wingfeather Saga, Janner was selfish in reminding himself how great of a Throne Warden he was at Kalmar’s expense because he was afraid of not doing his job well. The reason he motivated himself with pride was to try to ward off the possibility that he was just as bad as Kalmar at doing his job, and deeper than that, to ward off the possibility that it was his fault what happened to Kalmar. (I won’t say what happened because, spoilers!) Just like people can be afraid of things and everyone has a fear, characters should also have a fear that might influence their internal flaw.

• A character’s external goal should be easily visible to readers. If I asked you what Frodo’s goal in The Lord of the Rings was, you’d probably answer immediately with “Destroy the Ring!” But if I asked you what his internal goal was, you might have to think a bit. You see, internal goals are often connected to the theme of a story, or the message that an author wants to convey to the reader through the plot and characters. The theme is almost never stated outright, but with enough close examination you’ll be able to see it in the way the characters respond to the events of the plot. Frodo’s external goal was obviously to destroy the One Ring and end Sauron’s invasion of Middle-Earth, but his internal goal was to overcome the self-doubt he had and to prove that he was resilient enough to complete this harrowing task. This goes back to the theme of the entire trilogy: you don’t have to be someone extraordinary on the outside to do extraordinary things (Or in the words of Gandalf, “Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”)

• Characters can’t remain static throughout the course of the book (unless they’re a static character, which is another subject entirely…) They have to have arcs. A character arc is when a character begins the story with one goal (an external and an internal) but by the end of the story they’ve changed, and their goal becomes something greater. In The Green Ember, Heather and Picket’s goal is to find out what happened to their parents and why the wolves attacked them, but by the end of the book their goal is to help the rebellion fight Morbin Blackhawk. Over the course of the story your character learns more and realizes things about the world and themself, and this affects their goal. Usually the character will also overcome their flaw, which is part of their arc as well.

There is so much you can learn about how to craft amazing characters, and this is only a basic outline, but I hope it’s helpful to you! If you want to learn more, I’d recommend you check out K. M. Weiland’s blog, Helping Writers Become Authors. It’s an amazing library of blog posts that go into much greater detail and have so many different methods and character types on there to learn from.

In order to help you implement what I’ve discussed in this post, I’ve also created a printable character building worksheet! It covers all the topics I talked about, like external and internal goals and flaws, backstories and skills, personality and traits, and character arcs! Feel free to go through this post again with the worksheet and fill it out for your characters!

You can access the worksheet by signing up for my email newsletter, where you’ll receive notifications for new blog posts as well as behind-the-scenes updates on my current writing projects and more! (And you can unsubscribe at any time– I understand inboxes can get pretty crowded pretty fast!)

Thanks for reading this week’s blog post! I would love to hear from you in the comments! Did any of the tips help you? What are some topics you’d love to see me blog about? Do you prefer ice cream or brownies– or both? (I’m an ice cream on top of brownies kinda person 😝) I hope everyone has a great rest of your week and I’ll see you in the next blog post!

See you among the shelves,

Emma G. McKee

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