3 Tips to Create a Memorable Main Character
Creating characters that stick with your audience can be a delicate process for any writer. Ye, it can also be an extremely rewarding and satisfying experience.
To ensure you’re creating a character that folks will remember, consider these three tips:
Desire Something, Real Bad-
Giving your characters a goal and desire is a must. We all want something. In order for your character to come alive on the page, your character should be striving for something and their motivation should be clear.
To get started, think about what your character wants most in the world and why. This could be something tangible–like a job promotion or a new car–or something intangible– like peace of mind or the satisfaction of achieving a goal. Make sure the goal and desire are something that will push your character to take action and make choices, sometimes even questionable ones, throughout the story to get what they most desire. Once you have a goal and desire in mind, consider what obstacles they will have to face in order to reach them. This could be anything from external forces–such as another character who complicates their life or a catastrophic disaster–to internal forces–such as fear or self-doubt. By giving your characters a goal and desire and creating obstacles for them to overcome, you will be sure to craft an exciting and captivating story for your readers.
Fu*k Up from Time to Time-
To be real, you have to be imperfect, amirite? The easiest way to make your characters flawed is to think of them as real-life humans. Consider what wakes them up each morning, their pet-peeves and turn-ons, and any other traits that makes them real. Most importantly, excavate their reactions when they’re triggered. If your character is always doing everything right, the story will, without a doubt, fall flat. To avoid this, make sure your characters have obvious flaws.
An easy way to do this is to consider what are the strengths and weaknesses of your character? Next, think through how their experiences and environment have shaped their behavior (see point three), and how they have coped with their shortcomings. This will assist you in making the character more believable and easier to relate to regardless to if their a goodie-goodie or a straight up asshole. Additionally, consider how their flaws affect the decisions they make and their relationships with other characters (sign up to my class for more on this.) No one is perfect, so make sure your character has flaws and weaknesses that lend to their development.
Have Lived a Life -
Writing backstory for a character can be a great way to give them depth and complexity. When you give your character context and history, it helps to shape their actions and decisions. Desires and flaws cannot exist without a foundation of experiences, so backstory becomes super important.
To begin, consider your character’s motivations, beliefs, and goals. Once you have a better understanding of your character, you can start to craft their backstory. Think about the character's history, family, childhood, and any other important events that have shaped them. Start by writing a timeline of their life, noting major events and how they have shaped your character. Finally, you can use this to write scenes or short stories that help to bring your character's backstory to life. Writing backstory can be a great way to invest in your character and create a bank of flashbacks or context scenes to pull from to create an engaging story.