The Craft of Writing Realistic Characters

The Craft of Writing Realistic Characters: Storytelling Tips that Work

It was almost always a challenge for me to write characters and make them feel like real humans. I know some of you might feel like this too. Sometimes I had vivid ideas about what I wanted my characters to convey, but they fell flat when I started writing my first draft.

But it gets better the more I write. I'm sure yours, too, will get better if you keep writing.

You may ask, why are characters so important?

Characters are the ultimate foundation of stories. They are the ones who carry the story in which from their actions, perspectives, and transformations the story will progress. The idea of having characters is they're the ones who will convey the story truth aka the truth that you want to tell your readers. It can be a moral lesson, it can be a challenge to basic assumptions, it can be anything.

In my article How to Write a Novel For Beginners, I've explained how to write some basic personalities traits for your characters, but let's dive a little deeper than that. We will explore why characters are important; characteristics and personalities, motivations; WANTS vs NEEDS; and rationalizations.

Let's dive into it.

1. Characteristics

They're pretty obvious, right? Characteristics usually refer to physical descriptions.

Outlining physical descriptions is fun, so much fun that you make dedicated Pinterest broads for your characters and their aesthetics. You search hour upon hour for a celebrity who matches your hero's appearance until you forget your job is to write.

Here's the thing. They don't matter most of the time. You will only need some basic characteristic descriptions, let the rest be in your imaginations. Save yourself time. When you write the draft, your characters will get more vivid.

It doesn't mean you don't need to do it at all. You may need to or not, it depends on what works for you.

Let's see the basic lists to fill in below.

Name:

Age:

Sex:

Height:

Eye colors:

Hair color:

Personalities: (bitchy, sarcastic, argumentative, fun, clumsy, etc.).

A little social/family background:

Unless you're writing a fantasy story, you won't need to dig into your characters' races and other complex things. Also, it's important not to overdo it. Don't write "His blue eyes," "Her brown hair," or mention their characteristics too much. You will sound boring and amateurish by doing so.

2. Personalities

Now for your characters' personalities, you don't want to say in your narration that, for example, John Doe was an anxious person. You show it. If you want John to be anxious, you must show your readers through his actions, you want to show it through how John sees the world as an anxious person.

So, instead of telling "John was an anxious person," try writing: John sat on his windowpane as a parade marched through the main street. There was a child amongst the crowds. The kid wasn't aware of where she was going, continued to eat a giant lollipop as big as her face. She wore a traditional witch costume that went longer than her own feet. One clumsy movement and she might fall on her face. He wanted to jump onto the street to take that little girl away and cut her overly long costume, whatever the consequence would be. John's heart pounded in his chest. He gulped. And after what seemed to be a painful minute, he took a deep breath and sprinted to the main street.

See? Instead of telling your readers about John's anxiety, show your readers how John's heart pounded when he saw that little girl; how he was desperate to fix the girl's dress.

3. Give your characters some motivations

Why did your characters jump into action if they could stay in their comfortable bed? Why would they want to suffer in the story?

It's because of their motivation.

Motivation in stories is when a dissatisfying condition meets an opportunity. Dissatisfying condition is your character's belief about what would make him happy if something was fulfilled. An opportunity in stories is your plot.

In an anime series Monster, a genius brain surgeon Dr. Tenma met a manipulative serial killer at an abandoned building. The sociopath killed Tenma's patient in front of his eyes. Turned out, the killer was Johan, his old patient from ten years ago whom he saved his life because as a doctor, he believed everyone's lives are equals.

Dr. Tenma

This condition of course was a challenge to Tenma's belief. First, Johan killed his beloved patient in front of him; and second, the killer himself was Tenma's patient. He felt guilty, he shouldn't have saved Johan's life back then since he also had the choice not to save him. Imagine how many lives would be saved if Johan didn't make it ten years ago.

Then, the story started. Tenma jumped into the journey to kill Johan.

See, his dissatisfaction was the missed opportunity not to save Johan, that because of his belief, he'd saved him without knowing what Johan would've become. After his belief was challenged, he now believed that he had to kill Johan. He tried to believe that all lives were not equals.

This became his motivation to start his journey.

You don't need to write this complex motivation if you just start writing your first novel, though. Let's take a look at a simpler example.

Mexican Gothic's Noemi Taboada was sent by her father to her newlywed cousin's creepy house. Her cousin said her husband's family was trying to poison her, and that she saw ghosts everywhere in the house. At first, Noemi didn't want to go, but it was about her cousin, and she loved her cousin. She believed it would make her life happier if her cousin was okay. So, she went to that creepy house and started her journey.

Her dissatisfaction was her cousin's concerning condition. What she believed to satisfy her life was to make sure if her cousin was okay. That was her motivation to go to the creepy house.

Now ask yourself: a. what's your character dissatisfaction? b. what does he believe will make him happy?

4. Your characters' WANTS vs NEEDS

After your characters jumped into a journey, it wouldn't be an easy task for them. Remember about your characters' beliefs? Well, it's a belief, it can be your story truth, or it can be a lie, but it's not a lie for your characters. It's the truth for them. The journey is a challenge for your characters' beliefs like it was for Dr. Tenma.

A character will or will not change to a different person with a new belief or with the same belief.

But what's the connection with your character's wants and needs? Well, what they believe is what they WANT. But they can't get it, because it's not what they NEED.

Let's take a look at Tenma's belief again. At the beginning of his journey hunting for Johan, he forced himself to believe that not all lives are equals, that if kill Johan, he would be happy again - or at least, not feel guilty anymore. This was what he WANTED.

What he NEEDED was to stay believing that all lives are equals and that he wouldn't be happy even if he succeeded to kill Johan. That's why throughout the story, he struggled to kill Johan even though there were some opportunities to kill him. He lost himself again and again when he tried to kill Johan.

See the difference?

What a character wants is what makes him jump into a story. What he needs is what changes him to be a better person, the worse version of himself, or to prevent him from becoming a bad person.

5. Rationalizations

Rationalization is a process to give reasons for every action. In real life, sometimes we act without reason. That's because we're not a hundred percent rational all the time. But in fiction, you want your characters' actions to be reasonable.

But wait, didn't I say realistic characters?

Yes, but in fiction, for your characters to feel realistic, you have to make their actions make sense. You want your readers to understand the characters to sympathize with them.

How do you do that?

Well, take a look back at their basic motivations, beliefs, wants, needs, and personalities. One of these elements or the combinations of them gives a foundation to your characters' actions and decisions. That way, you can write believable characters.

Bonus Tip:

Give your characters strengths and weaknesses. Perfect characters who can conquer all are boring and unrelatable. On the contrary, making your characters suck all the time is unrealistic.