How to Craft Compelling Characters

Where we talk about making your characters come to life and jump off the page

Writing advice, certainly when we’re talking about coming up with an initial idea or storyline, often focuses on plot. If you have a really great set-up, a compelling story and a neat twist at the end, it’s easy to think your book will be a sure-fire hit. But what writers sometimes forget is that we need to develop really strong characters as well as a really strong plotline. They might spend huge amounts of time on world-building and creating a setting, but fail to spend as much time building and creating characters.

Here's the thing. If you have amazing, life-like, nuanced and interesting characters, you can get away with an awful lot. If your plot doesn’t grab readers immediately but the characters do, you might get readers to keep going until the plot really takes off – if they are incredible they might even carry the whole book.

But if your characters are weak or cut-outs, if they do things because that’s what the plot demands rather than because it’s the natural, obvious thing for them to do next, it doesn’t matter how great your plot or twist or setting is. If the characters don’t feel real, readers will lose interest.

And this is all true for secondary characters as much as your protagonist. If a bit-part character turns up, does something pivotal in the plot, but then disappears again, with no discernible character development, readers will feel cheated.