That is, they need to be relatable in some way that a human can understand and sympathize with. Your character may be an animal, a robot or an alien, but if your reader is a human (and I’m willing to bet that they are), your character need to share some human trait. That way, you can craft a character arc that makes sense. Or, in their own minds, they may be righting a wrong done to them or their loved ones.Įven if you don’t write from the villain’s perspective, make sure that you know it. They may be victims of misfortune who lash out in rage. Instead of depicting absolutely dark villains with no redeemable qualities, consider life from the villain’s perspective. That’s where the most interesting characterization is, too. No one, not even a fictional character, is all good or all bad. So… on the flip side, there’s a completely evil, horrible, despicable character with absolutely no redeemable qualities.Īnd, it’s most definitely flat and cartoonish. It may be something that only you know, tucked within that writer’s brain of yours, and that you’ll use as a silent motivation for the character’s behavior. It doesn’t have to be a flaw that you discuss in detail with the reader. Explore the character from that angle.įind flaws for every character that you give a name to. Even someone who seemingly is perfect may be harboring feelings of resent, or over-compensating for a time when they felt inferior in some way.
There’s something about the character that’s damaged, vulnerable, grim, ugly or all of the above.Ī character who never does anything wrong will start to grate on your reader. Readers demand that the characters have faults. There’s something in our human brain that rejects the idea of absolute perfection.Īnd, nowhere is that more true than in the pages of a novel.
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