by Joyce Good Henderson

Created on: February 14, 2010

Every writer wants to create endearing fictional characters who become the readers’ best friends, who live beyond the last page of the book, and make readers want to pick up your next book because they love your characters.  These steps may help you create endearing characters or move your characters from ordinary to extraordinary.

 M—Move over, get out of the character’s way.  Writers like to create characterization charts, the more elaborate and detailed, the better.  But the chart makes the character two-dimensional and memorable characters grow beyond that.  Give your character breadth, depth and a personality that jumps off the page.

 E—Empower.  Create characters who are quirky, eccentric, and real.  Give them a memorable flaw that can bring the hero and heroine together or develop the conflict between them.  Remember, it’s not the nice and normal readers remember. 

M—Magnify flaws and attributes.  Readers want to relate to characters who are like them, but braver, prettier, wilder, nicer, richer, funnier.  Readers also want characters who are the biggest, best, loveliest, kindest, worst, dumbest, smartest. Go for the “-er” or “-est” every chance you get.

O—Ordinary. Give them some commonality with the reader to encourage identification.  Characters should be the readers’ best friend, girl-next-door, first sweetheart, yet remain commonly uncommon at the same time.

R—Relationships.  No one lives in a vacuum.  Even though many characters who influenced the hero and heroine’s lives won’t make it onto the pages of your novel, they are still significant in their lives.  Relationships with family and friends determine who we are and who your hero and heroine are.  Know the families of your characters and include a family tree in the character chart.

A—Attributes influence behavior.  A woman who doesn’t like her freckles will avoid the sun.  A left-handed person may be concerned about what seat he takes at a table.  A headstrong heroine won’t stop to think before she acts, while an engineer may deliberate for months.  What if the headstrong, independent woman is an engineer?

B—Baggage.  Get to know your hero and heroine’s emotional baggage as well as you know their eye and hair colors.  Successful characters grow from page one to the end of the story by interacting with each other and the plot.  What happens if one grows and the other doesn’t?  We usually call that divorce.

L—Let the characters tell you who they are.  Ask them, listen to them, let them surprise you and they will surprise the reader.  Take a character shopping or on a dinner date to really get to know them.

E—Excitement.  Memorable characters belong in your brag book.  Establish immediately that these are people the reader wants to get to know, then build excitement into the characters’ lives with your own enthusiasm toward them. 

Memorable characters aren’t just born.  You give birth to them, you nurture them, then wean them and kick them out on their own to go live in readers’ hearts.

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