7 Tips for Writing Stronger, More Realistic Characters

When writing fiction, creating a character profile can help you nail down backstory and figure out which specific character’s motivations and character traits will be the most important to incorporate for your storylines. Unless things like hair color or eye color are significant to your plot, dig deep into your character’s life and find what makes them worth reading about.

Below are a few writing tips for crafting more realistic characters:

1. 1. Draw from real life. Sometimes, creative writing needs to take inspiration from the real human beings who already exist in our own lives. Using people familiar to you like family members or friends as a foundation to build your fictional character upon is a good way to ensure you’re writing a realistic person and not a caricature.
2. 2. Incorporate flaws. A great character is a flawed character. An invincible main character who can do it all is not as interesting to read about unless there is something else about them that can connect them with your audience. Even the greatest heroes have weaknesses that create conflict when exploited—that’s what makes them more interesting characters.
3. 3. Include mannerisms. Sometimes it’s the little things about a character’s personality traits or body language that makes them feel more grounded in real life. In fiction writing, a good combination of quirks can help create more memorable characters by including small things that make them charming, endearing, weird, or unique. However, overloading your character descriptions with these traits will have the opposite effect, and make them feel ungrounded and unrelatable.
4. 4. Give the character motivation. A character’s goals are integral to figuring out who they are and what drives them. In order for a bad guy to be a good character, they need a legitimate reason to be bad. What does this person want, and why do they want it this way? The best villains aren’t cartoonish caricatures; a good villain is a complex bad guy who readers simultaneously love and hate. Finding a way to present the internal conflict within a character will show the emotional struggle they face along with any physical obstacles or roadblocks. Writing realistic motivations will create believable character arcs for audiences to follow.
5. 5. Write realistic dialogue. The way your character speaks has a big impact on how a reader envisions them through your writing. The more organic their conversations are with other characters, the more lifelike they’ll feel. Dialogue should reflect your character’s background and be true to the period the story exists within. Find our tips for writing realistic dialogue here.
6. 6. Include relationships with supporting characters. When your main characters interact with secondary characters, it gives the reader the idea that these people have existed together long before you tuned in to their story. Having them interact with secondary and more minor characters will make them feel more like real people, like they still exist in the world even when we’re outside the central storyline.
7. 7. Develop your characters. Character development is an important aspect of any fiction writing, even if all that changes is their physical description or point of view. A character should learn and grow, or at least experience or learn something new during their story. For instance, the static character of Sherlock Holmes, who famously did not get along with or like anyone, developed emotionally when he found a perfectly matched colleague and best friend in his sidekick, John Watson. Holmes was more humanized when he showed the audience he wasn’t just a crime-solving savant type of character, but that he was also capable of bonding with and maintaining a relationship with another person.

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