Creating Characters to Love

People! They can be so difficult (says the devoted introvert).

They are extremely complicated beings with their likes and dislikes, their personal history, and so many different factors that go into how they see the world, how they speak, even how they dress.

And yet, as writers of fiction, we are called upon to create characters who feel like they could be living, breathing, real people. They need to be different from each other, speak differently, behave in a manner that is unique to themselves.

Authors need to be mothers and fathers, or, if you prefer, gods to create such people. And we need to do this all on paper (or virtual paper, if you will) so that whoever is reading these characters that we’ve created will feel as if they’ve met and interacted with these people.

We need our readers to have feelings for our characters — be it love, hate, friendship, or disgust. We need our readers to understand and empathize with our characters and do so in a very short amount of time — that empathy needs to happen within the first page, the understanding within the first few chapters. If that doesn’t happen, the reader will close the book and not pick it up again because they won’t care. Why should readers read about people they feel nothing for? Characters who are boring or not relatable? They don’t! And that is where a lot…