Think about your favourite book. We’d wager that what lingers with you the most from it are the characters. Great characters can make us laugh, frustrate us, or break our hearts, keeping us hooked on the page and reading long into the night. Even the strongest premise in the world can fall flat if the characters at its heart don’t feel authentic.
Many new writers assume that the secret to writing memorable characters stems from pages upon pages of detailed backstory. The reality is that the best characters in fiction aren’t about knowing every part of their childhood or what their favourite food is. They’re defined by what they want, what’s standing in their way, the decisions they make, and how they evolve throughout the story.
Today at What We Writing, we’re sharing how to write great characters from the ground up. We’ll cover everything from creating realistic motivations and meaningful flaws to developing distinct voices, unforgettable relationships, and satisfying character arcs. Whether you’re penning your debut novel or looking to refine an existing cast, these techniques will help you create fictional people your audience won’t forget.
What Makes A Great Character?
Great characters don’t stay with you because they’re perfect – they’re memorable because they feel like real people. Your audience connects with fictional characters who have clear desires, make tough choices, struggle with believable flaws, and grow through the obstacles they encounter. Whatever genre you’re writing, the strongest characters have a number of key qualities.
First, every compelling character needs a clear goal. They want something specific, whether that be solving a murder, protecting a loved one, or proving themselves. This aim lends the story direction and keeps your readers invested.
They also possess believable flaws and internal conflict. Someone who is always confident, kind, and capable will almost never feel authentic. Rather, memorable protagonists wrestle with fear, pride, insecurity, or guilt, causing tension between what they want and what holds them back.
Great characters also have agency. They don’t just react to events going on around them; they make choices that actively shape the story, even when their actions have painful consequences. Throwing in some contradictions – such as a fearless detective who’s terrified of intimacy, or a generous leader harbouring a bitter resentment – makes them feel much more human.
Relationships are equally important here. Friends, rivals, mentors, or family members show different sides of a character, whilst conflict within those relationships typically fuels a character’s emotional development. Over the span of the story, your audience should also be able to see some form of emotional growth, whether the character overcomes a flaw, embraces a hard truth, or tragically fails to change.
Finally, unforgettable characters have a distinctive voice. They think, speak, and react in ways that feel uniquely true to themselves. Think about characters such as Elizabeth Bennett, whose wit and independence define every conversation. It’s this blend of goals, flaws, decisions, relationships, and development that upgrades a fictional character into someone readers will genuinely think they know.
Check Out Our Guide On Why We Love Unlikeable Characters
Start With What Your Character Wants
One of the best ways to write a great character is to begin with what they want. Every memorable protagonist is fuelled by a goal, something that lends a story its purpose throughout. Without it, characters soon begin to feel passive, and your audience will find it tough to stay immersed.
Start off with a character’s external goal. This is the tangible objective they’re looking to achieve, such as solving a crime, winning a competition, finding a missing person, or escaping danger. It’s the goal that drives the plot forward.
Just as important as the external goal for a character is their internal need. This is the emotional lesson they must learn or the personal wound they’re trying to heal. They might believe they need one thing, but the reality might be something else entirely. The tension between these two desires helps cement a richer, more compelling character.
Take Katniss Everdeen: she wants to survive the Hunger Games; this is her external goal. However, her deeper motivation is protecting the people she loves, especially her family. This emotional need influences every difficult decision she makes on her journey.
Finally, consider the stakes and urgency behind your characters. What happens if they fail? Why are they acting now? The greater the consequences and the stronger the time pressure, the more hooked your readers will be. When your character has a clear goal, a meaningful emotional need, and something they stand to lose, they’ll feel far more natural and believable.
Give Your Character Meaningful Flaws
Flaws are what make your characters feel human. However, not all flaws are created equal. A meaningful flaw should create conflict, influence your character’s choices, and shape the story. If a flaw never affects the plot or relationships, it isn’t much of a flaw – it’s a trait someone possesses.
The strongest flaws act as obstacles your character needs to overcome. Pride may stop them from asking for help, fear could halt them before they take a necessary risk, or stubbornness may lead to them isolating themselves from those around them. These flaws lead to mistakes, raise the stakes, and create opportunities for growth throughout the story.
It’s important to avoid confusing flaws with harmless quirks. Never being on time, having a messy room, or not liking vegetables might lend someone a personality, but it doesn’t add much tension. Stack that against a character who can’t trust anyone after being betrayed or someone who constantly needs reassurance about their own happiness. These flaws shape how they respond to challenges and affect every important relationship.
When designing your characters, think about how their flaw might complicate their journey. If removing the flaw wouldn’t change the story, it probably isn’t significant enough. A well-chosen flaw doesn’t just make a character more authentic – it becomes the fuel behind their heaviest struggles, toughest choices, and most satisfying moments of growth.
Check Out Our Guide On How To Write Character Quirks That Feel Real
Build Contradictions Into Their Personality
Real people are brimming with contradictions, which means your characters should be too. Rather than giving them one defining trait, blend together qualities which seem to pull in opposite directions. A character may appear confident at work, but have a home life that is marred by insecurities. They might be generous with their friends, but secretly jealous fo their successes. Or, they may be terrified of intimacy, but fearless in a life-or-death scenario.
Contradictions like these make characters feel less predictable and more natural because they mirror the complexity that comes with real human behaviour. They also create opportunities for internal conflict, forcing characters to grapple with competing emotions and beliefs throughout the narrative.
Instead of asking, “What is my character like?” consider, “What opposite qualities might they possess?” Those unexpected combinations are what make fictional people feel believable, memorable, and impossible for readers to forget.
Develop Their Backstory (Without Letting It Take Over)
A character’s backstory provides context for who they are; however, it should never overshadow the story you’re telling. Your audience doesn’t need to know every finite detail about one of the characters’ past – they just need the snippets that explain their actions, choices, and relationships.
Begin by thinking about the formative experiences that shaped them. These may be a childhood achievement, a painful loss, or an important relationship. From these experiences often come emotional wounds that continue to influence how they view the world. A character who was abandoned might struggle to trust others, whereas someone who has always failed may become desperate to prove themselves.
These experiences also drive a character’s beliefs and values. What do they think is true about themselves and the world? What principles guide their choices? These ideas should naturally affect the decisions they make throughout the course of the story.
The key to keep in mind is that backstory only matters if it has consequences in the present. Rather than pausing the narrative to explain everything upfront, reveal details steadily as they become relevant. When a character’s past actively shapes their current behaviour, conflicts, and growth, their backstory becomes a powerful storytelling technique rather than unnecessary exposition.
Give Every Character A Distinct Voice
A distinctive character voice allows your audience to work out who is speaking without needing dialogue tags each time. It’s built from vocabulary, rhythm, humour, sentence length, and worldview, rather than just accent or dialect.
Start with their vocabulary. Different characters choose different words based on their education, personality, and background. A precise thinker may say “This is unacceptable,” while someone more casual says “This is rubbish.” Word choice immediately signals who they are.
Rhythm and sentence length also matter. Some characters speak in snappy, concise bursts that show either confidence or impatience. Others speak in longer, flowing sentences that can show anxiety, enthusiasm, or a tendency to over-explain.
Humour is another strong differentiator. One character may rely on sarcasm, another on dry understatement, and another on no humour whatsoever. Worldview is equally important: an optimist views events as opportunities, whereas a cynic assumes the worst.
Compare this dialogue:
Before:
“We should leave now,” Michelle said.
“I think that’s a good idea,” Luke replied.
After:
“We leave. Now. This place is a disaster waiting to happen,” Michelle said.
“Agreed. I have no urge to become a part in whatever curse this is,” Luke replied.
Distinct voices make dialogue immediately recognisable and help characters feel like individual, fleshed-out people, rather than variations of the same speaker. When done effectively, your readers can identify who is speaking even without dialogue tags, which strengthens the immersion and pacing.
Finally, consistency is king. A strong voice needs to stay recognisable throughout a story, even when the character is emotional, under pressure, or evolving through the course of the story. You can vary tone depending on context, but core patterns in vocabulary, rhythm, and worldview should stay stable.
This consistency is what allows your audience to “hear” the characters in their heads as they read, and helps each voice stand out even when multiple characters are talking at once during the same scene.
Create Relationships That Reveal Character
Characters don’t just exist in isolation – they reveal who they are through their relationships with others. How a character treats friends, rivals, mentors, family members, and romantic partners often tells the audience more than any internal description ever could.
Every type of relationship has a different role. Rivals expose ambition, insecurity, and competitiveness, pushing a character to confront their limits. Mentors highlight vulnerability and growth, showcasing what a character is lacking and what they are looking to become. Friends reveal loyalty, humour, and shared history, typically coaxing someone’s lighter side.
Romantic partners can highlight emotional needs, fears, and contradictions that may otherwise stay hidden, while family relationships often carry the deepest emotional weight, shaped by long-standing patterns, expectations, and unresolved conflict.
The most effective relationships aren’t just there to serve up some exposition – they actively challenge what a character thinks about themselves and the world. A supportive friend may unintentionally enable a flaw, whereas a rival has the potential to force a character to wrestle with their identity or values.
When designing relationships, think about this: What does this person bring out in my character that no one else does? If the answer is nothing, the relationship probably isn’t doing enough lifting in the story. Strong relationships create tension, reveal hidden layers, and push characters toward change in ways that feel authentic and emotionally resonant.
Ensure Every Character Has Agency
One of the most common weaknesses in beginner fiction is a lack of character agency. If your characters are constantly being hauled from one event to another without ever making any meaningful decisions, the story can feel passive, no matter how exciting the premise is.
At its core, agency is all about your characters making choices that drive the story forward. Rather than things just happening to them, they choose how to respond, even when those choices are tricky or flawed. A strong protagonist isn’t someone who reacts – they act.
These decisions are what mould your plot. Each and every major turning point needs to stem from a choice your character makes, not just external coincidence or convenience. Even when outside forces invite pressure, it should still be the character’s response that determines what happens next.
Importantly, consequences reveal personality. The way a character reacts to failure, success, or moral compromise showcases to the reader more about them than any description ever could. Someone brave might double down under pressure, whereas a fearful one may retreat or make a reckless decision to try and regain control.
When characters lack agency, they become passengers in their own story. But when they consistently make choices – good, bad, or contradictory – they feel real, active, and engaging. Readers don’t just observe what happens to them; they experience the narrative through the weight of their decisions.
Create An Emotional Arc
A solid character is what upgrades a well-written character into an unforgettable one. It’s the emotional journey they embark on over the course of the story, shaped by the events they experience and the decisions they make in response. The most effective arcs connect internal change with external events, so the plot and character development feel inseparable.
There are three main types of character arc: positive, negative, and flat.
A positive arc is when a character grows into a better or more self-aware version of themselves. They start out with a flawed belief about themselves or the world, and gradually learn a deeper truth. External events force them to confront this belief. As an example, a character who believes they must rely only on themselves may, through repeated failures and loss, learn that trust and connection are strengths rather than weaknesses. Every external challenge hauls them closer to emotional growth.
A negative arc works in the opposite way. Rather than learning or healing, the character gradually becomes worse over time, usually because they cling to a destructive belief. External events reinforce their fears or ambitions, leading them to make increasingly harmful choices. This type of arc is common in tragedies, where a character’s inability to change leads to their downfall.
A flat arc is more subtle but just as powerful. Here, the character does not dramatically change their core belief, but instead changes the world around them. They hold a truth that others resist, and the external events of the story test and reinforce that truth. Their emotional journey comes from applying their belief under pressure and influencing others through consistency and conviction.
What makes all three arcs effective is how tightly they connect internal and external progress. Plot events are not random obstacles – they are pressure points that force emotional confrontations. A betrayal might trigger doubt, a victory could reinforce arrogance, a loss may expose denial. Every external event becomes meaningful because it forces the character to either evolve, deteriorate, or stand firm.
When done well, the arc lends shape to the whole story. It guarantees that every scene isn’t just about what happens, but about what happens to the person experiencing it.
Show Character Through Actions, Not Descriptions
One of the most important rules in writing strong characters is to show who they are through what they do, not what you tell the reader they are. Descriptions such as “brave,” “kind,” or “evil” are abstract labels. They don’t create a mental image or garner any emotional impact. Actions, on the other hand, allow the audience to experience the character in real time.
Rather than saying that a character is brave, show them making a difficult choice in the face of danger. For example:
Instead of:
“Tony was brave.”
Show:
Tony steps between the infant and the fire, coughing as the heat pushes him back, yet he refuses to budge.
The second version doesn’t explain bravery – it shows it.
The same applies to other traits. Rather than telling the audience that someone is generous, show them quietly giving something up that someone else needs. Rather than saying someone is resentful, show them tensing when someone else walks in the room.
When you replace labels with behaviour, readers draw their own conclusions. This makes characters feel more authentic because real people aren’t defined by adjectives – they’re defined by what they decide to do under pressure.
Check Out Our Guide On How To Write Believable Character Descriptions
Common Character Writing Mistakes
Even the strongest story ideas can fail to stick the landing if they aren’t handled well. One of the most common mistakes I see around is writing perfect protagonists. Characters who are always the moral centre and likeable feel unrealistic and unrelatable because they lack internal tension and any room for growth.
Another issue is inconsistent motivations. If a character’s goals shift without clear reason, or they act against what they supposedly want, readers soon lose trust in the story. Motivations need to evolve naturally from events, not dramatically change in an instant.
A lot of writers also fall into the trap of making everyone sound the same. When all the characters share similar dialogue patterns and vocabulary, they soon blur together. Distinct voices are vital for clarity and personality.
Overusing backstory dumps is another common issue. Long explanations about a character’s past, particularly early in the story, can stall momentum. Backstory should be revealed steadily and only when relevant.
Similarly, passive main characters weaken the narrative. If the protagonist is constantly reacting rather than making choices, the story loses its drive and urgency.
Finally, giving characters no meaningful flaws removes conflict and emotional depth. Flaws should actively influence decisions and create obstacles, not just serve as superficial traits.
Character Development Checklist
Use this checklist to ensure your character feels complete, consistent, and emotionally engaging. Each point should tie directly to the story, not just sit in the background.
- What does your character want externally (goal)?
- What do they need internally (growth)?
- What are they afraid of losing or facing?
- What “lie” do they believe about themselves or the world?
- What is their biggest flaw, and how does it influence their choices?
- What contradictions exist in their personality?
- How do they speak (voice, rhythm, vocabulary)?
- What relationships reveal or challenge who they are?
- How do they change over the span of the story (arc)?
- What decision would define them at a turning point?
If you’re able to answer all of these questions concisely, your character is already more layered and authentic. If you can’t, that’s typically a sign that your character still needs a bit of fine-tuning.
Wrap Up
Great characters aren’t built from long biographies or clever traits – they’re constructed from clear desires, meaningful flaws, and the decisions they make under pressure. When you blend strong motivation, emotional conflict, distinct voice, and relationships that challenge who you are, your characters begin to feel real to your readers.
Just as importantly, every action they take should showcase something new about who they are and what they believe. If you can connect internal change to external events, your story becomes more than just a sequence of plot points – it becomes a lived experience. Focus on decisions, consequences, and growth, and your characters will linger with readers long after the final page.
James has been passionate about storytelling ever since he could hold a pen. Inspired by the epic fantasy and historical dramas he devoured in his youth, his work now centers on dark, psychological tales featuring intense, introspective characters and atmospheric, gothic undertones. In 2025, he founded What We Writing to share his creative journey and the lessons he’s learned along the way with fellow writers and passionate storytellers.
