Four ways to write believable characters
BY Haleh Agar
2nd Apr 2020
Haleh Agar was born and raised with her two sisters in Canada. She left to teach English Literature at international schools in Bahrain, Singapore and most recently London, where she now lives. Haleh has been published in literary magazines and journals, including Mslexia, Viva Magazine, Fincham Press and Lamplight Magazine. She won the Brighton Prize for a piece of flash fiction, and her narrative essay ‘On Writing Ethnic Stories’ won the London Magazine's inaugural essay competition. Her debut novel Out of Touch is out now from W&N.
Characters are the heart of your story. Readers often connect with your writing through your characters, so it’s important to get them right. How do you create convincing characters that leap off the page – characters that your readers want to spend time with, even if they are deeply flawed? Below I’ve included some tips on how to write believable characters that your readers won’t forget.
Get Specific with Backstory
The more you know about your characters, the better you’ll be able to write them. When you’ve spent time thinking about your character’s history, then her motivations and actions will be convincing to the reader because they’re also convincing to you. Before I begin writing, I often make up character profiles in which I include detailed information about my character’s family, upbringing, their flaws and strengths. Every person seems to have a major problem that follows them through life – though it may show up in a slightly different form. For example, Michael from my novel Out of Touch has always struggled in expressing his emotions. What reoccurring issue does your character face? Depending on the age of your character, what did this problem look like when she was five, ten, twenty or thirty years old?
If you don’t like writing out character profiles, then consider daydreaming. I’m a visual thinker, and often imagine a scene play out like a film. Spend a bit of time every day, daydreaming about your character as she goes about her life, so that when it’s time for her to make an important decision in your story, you’ll be in no doubt of how she’ll react.
Consider Social Context
A character is inseparable from her social context. It’s important to think about how she fits into wider power structures. Gender, social class, race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, ableism will all affect the way your character perceives themselves and others.
Stereotypes often occur when a writer doesn’t take into consideration the intersectional identities of their characters. As a writer, it’s important to acknowledge how your character’s view of the world is filtered through the identities mentioned above. But make sure that your character isn’t reduced to their race, gender or sexual orientation, either. For examples, though Sam from my novel is British-Iranian, his character arc is not tied to his ethnicity. We learn about his interests in board games, the laid-back friends he keeps, his hopes of leaving his sleepy hometown.
Dialogue Matters
The way your character speaks will depend on a number of factors. For instance, if she’s a teenager from Cork, and your story is contemporary, then her age and regionality must be reflected in her speech. It’s certainly easier to write dialogue when you’re already familiar with the demographic of your characters, but you can always do the research and step out of your comfort zone.
Dialogue is the voice of your character – and how she expresses herself will tell the reader who she is. Does she ramble or is she succinct? What isn’t she saying? What topics are off the table? How do other people speak to her? What are they saying? We learn a lot about relationships through dialogue because it gives us a chance, particularly in a first person narrative, to see what other characters think of your protagonist.
The Power of Observation
The more specific you are in what your character is observing, the more believable she feels. In my novel, when Jane visits Ava in hospital, Ava does not listen to what her friend is saying to her, rather her attention is focused on the hairs she sees on Jane’s chin. She wonders if those hairs had always been there. It was something she wondered about even after Jane had left – ‘how you could discover something new about a person when you looked at them from a different angle.’ Such details of observation are especially effective when they serve a purpose – they tell the reader something the character discovers about herself and the world around her.
The combination of your character’s specific life circumstances and observations help you avoid clichés. For instance, Ava’s unique vantage point on the hospital bed allows her to see Jane in a new way. This combined with Ava’s disinterest in the conversation, make for an observation that feels unique to Ava.
There is no set way in writing believable characters. Even from project to project, my approach differs. Sometimes, through the practice of free-flow writing, a character emerges, without any planning. Whatever your method, a sure way to know if you’ve got it right is through your gut feeling. If something about your character feels unconvincing or just off, it’s worth having a closer look. Even after writing several drafts of my novel, I re-wrote characters, re-evaluating their backstories, making big changes. In creative writing, the practice itself brings to light important details about your story. Often it takes a few drafts to get to the heart of your character, and it is so rewarding when you finally see her come to life.