How to create unforgettable characters
BY Claire Coughlan
23rd Apr 2026
In this advice blog, Claire Coughlan, author of historical crime novels Where They Lie and Among the Ruins, shares her top tips for creating compelling characters.
Ask 10 different authors about their writing process, and you’ll get 11 different answers. As an unpublished writer, I used to devour interviews, podcasts and posts from authors I admire about the nuts and bolts of their writing process – and what’s more, I still do. How fascinating that, whether a plotter or a ‘pantser’ (someone who doesn’t plot their novels in advance), the steps from initial idea to finished book are so varied, depending on who you’re talking to.
However, the one non-negotiable every author has in common is the unspoken contract with their reader, to bring them to the story and keep them along for the ride; to entertain, and provoke, and keep them guessing until that very last page. And the entire contract rests upon creating compelling characters – without them, your plot will snap like a stretched-out piece of gum.
Here are my top three tips:
1. Compelling is not the same as likeable
If you think of all the most memorable characters in fiction – the unnamed narrator of Rebecca (or Mrs Danvers, who I’ve started rooting for after returning to the book many years after my first read!), Amy in Gone Girl, Hannibal Lecter – likeable is not the first adjective that comes to mind. They are flawed, larger than life, in some cases outrageously bad.
If you’re writing a crime novel, think carefully about the qualities you want – not just for your protagonist, but also for your antagonist. Your antagonist is mostly likely a murderer, but you can still embed them with humanity. Likewise, your protagonist should not be a saint.
2. Embrace dialogue to showcase your characters
Do they speak in full sentences? Are they cryptic? Maybe they’re passive aggressive… Or perhaps they’re full of zinging one-liners to deflect getting ‘real’ about the situation (murder investigation) at hand? In order to avoid ‘flat’ characters – that is, one-dimensional characters who don’t undergo any change throughout the story, think of the qualities – good and bad – that make up any actual person. And in fiction, you can dial these up for dramatic or comic effect.
In my novels, my journalist-as-detective, Nicoletta Sarto, is naïve, impulsive and a bit clueless; but she’s also brave, determined and relentless enough to get to the bottom of the mystery she’s faced with, even if it means exposing shocking truths about herself and those around her, which threaten to derail her whole life. She knocks on doors and boldly asks those uncomfortable questions even though inside she’s quaking.
3. Use backstory sparingly
Although it might be tempting to use a lot of flashbacks, my advice is to use them only when it serves the story. Otherwise, the pace will chug to a halt.
Sometimes you have to write a lot of words – call this exploratory writing – that you won’t use in the finished narrative. It might be frustrating, not to use all those lovely words, but the front story, the force that propels everything forwards, is everything in achieving your goal of getting your reader to the end. Think of that unspoken contract.
Of course, in order to know how and why your characters are damaged, who they are, what they want and what they’re prepared to do to get it, you’ll need to delve into their pasts, their early childhoods, and origin stories to excavate what made them that way. This is the foundation stone of creating rounded characters.
I can be found on Instagram as @claireelizabethco.
Claire Coughlan is a former student of our Writing a Psychological Thriller and Writing TV Drama courses.
Claire's debut crime novel Where They Lie was nominated for Crime Fiction Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards in 2024. Her second novel, Among the Ruins is out now with Simon & Schuster UK.
Photography: Kevin Kheffache
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