by Elton Gahr

Created on: October 17, 2009

Creating a character that your reader cares about is not easy. It takes work, but there are some simple things that you can do that will make it far easier on yourself. And while you will not want to use every one of these ideas on every character they can all be very powerful.

Tap into the power of empathy. Humans are naturally empathetic, what this means is that if you put your character in real pain, either physical or emotional humans natural reaction will to be to care about them. This is one of the quickest and easiest ways to endear a character to a reader. This pain does not even have to be anything that major, in fact often smaller pain, such as the reader has endured often may be better. The pain of watching a loved one leaving, the simple pain of a paper cut or even a stubbed toe can form a quick connect.

Another important point is to create something memorable about the character. This may seem obvious but far too often, especially with the protagonist of the story we want to make characters who are perfect. Perfection in real life may be memorable but in stories it isn't and it makes a character difficult to relate to. Give your character a flaw or at least an odd quirk.

Have the character improve. People like characters who become better people. It is one of the things that draw people to stories. And this returns us to the problem of the perfect character. The ideal character is one who people like, but has a personality flaw that must be overcome. If you then put the character into a position where overcoming that flaw is the only path to victory you have considerable personal conflict.

Personal conflict is valuable in the creation of a endearing character. Depending on the story these can be very major or very minor conflicts in that character but they should be choices that the character has to honestly debate in his own mind. Should he stay with his girlfriend or leave her, should she eat an entire pie, can he bring himself to kill his brother now that he knows he is a serial killer? So long as it is difficult for the character it will make him interesting and therefor endear him to the reader.

We all have an instinctual understanding of what pulls at a persons strings and while that manipulation in real life is something many good people avoid, in a story manipulation is often the best thing you can do.

Learn more about this author, Elton Gahr.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.