Create a Charismatic, Complex Character Readers Will Worry About

by Jodie Renner, editor & author     

(Excerpted from Captivate Your Readers)

What's the secret to engaging potential readers and compelling them to keep reading? Make them identify with, root for, and worry about your main character!

Your novel can have an intriguing premise and riveting plot, but if your lead character is bland, wimpy, ditzy, arrogant, or lacking in personality or drive, readers won’t warm up to him or care what happens to him, so they’ll put the book down. Conversely, if your protagonist is fascinating, sympathetic, and clever, but complicated, readers will be drawn to him and start worrying about him, which is exactly what you want. A worried reader is an engaged reader.

“Living, vibrating human beings are still the secret and magic formula of great and enduring fiction.” ~ Lajos Egri

Unsuccessful authors very often have written a promising story, but have neglected to develop their characters sufficiently. You should spend as much or more time creating depth for your lead character and learning about her strengths and weaknesses, her fears, secrets, regrets, hopes, motivations, needs, and desires as you do on creating an exciting plot. 

As Elizabeth Lyon points out in A Writer’s Guide to Fiction, “Characterization is the bedrock of fiction and the reason most people read it. What endures in our hearts and minds over time is the heroes, heroines, and villains. Less often do we recall their plots. The fiction writer’s greatest challenge is character development.”

A big mistake newbie fiction writers make is modeling their main character too much after themselves or someone they know. Instead, to hook readers, create a fascinating lead character, one who is larger than life, more charismatic, braver, more determined, and also more troubled, with more secrets and inner conflict than the average person you know. Those attributes will make them appealing and worth following and cheering on for a whole story.

Don’t annoy your readers by making your main character:

~ Flat, superficial – a cardboard character

To avoid a one-dimensional, boring protagonist, you’ll need to create a complicated backstory for him, including his fears, regrets, insecurities, and desires, as well as his hopes, strengths, and talents. Also, give him conflicting desires.

To get to know your character’s deepest secrets, his hopes and fears, his weaknesses and regrets, and his wants versus his needs, try putting him on the psychiatrist’s couch or journaling in his voice. Write in his secret diary every day, in free, stream-of-consciousness form – just let the ideas flow. Let the character vent his frustrations uncensored. What’s his strongest desire right now? Why is he afraid he might not get it? What or who is standing in his way or frustrating him? What is he worried about? Angry about? What secret is he harboring that he hopes no one will discover? Why? Let the character vent here.

Also, in the actual story, a sure-fire way to deepen your character and your readers’ engagement is to have him react more to events. Show how he’s feeling, through his thoughts and his emotional, physical, and sensory reactions, as well as his words and actions. An emotionally flat character will leave readers cold, and they’ll start thinking about what else they should be doing.

~ Nerdy, dull – lacking in charisma or sex appeal

As James Scott Bell says in Revision and Self-Editing, your lead character should have “grit, wit, and it.” Grit is courage, determination, and resourcefulness. Wit, the ability to make the occasional witty or humorous comment, can rescue a character from maudlin self-pity or a moment from being overly sentimental or sappy. Wit also refers to cleverness, the ability to solve problems and think quickly in sticky situations. And “it,” according to Bell, means “personal magnetism – sex appeal as well as a quality that invites admiration (or envy) among others. Someone who walks into a room and draws all the attention has ‘It.’” 

So be sure to make your protagonist charismatic, with lots of personality and sex appeal – and plenty of attitude.

~ Too wimpy, too whiny, too victimized

Don’t have a primary character who’s fearful about everything, who’s always reacting rather than acting, who just takes what’s dished out to her. Or one who’s victimized, who doesn’t rise to the challenge or fight back. A character who’s constantly feeling sorry for herself gets tiresome quickly, and readers will lose patience with her and put the book down.

If you want your protagonist to start as a bit of a wimp, then get stronger as the story progresses, don’t go on like that for too long. Make her gather her courage and wits and search for ways out of her predicament. In other words, she needs to be forced by circumstances to become stronger, more courageous, more resilient. No one wants to read about someone with a million different phobias or who’s wallowing in self-pity or afraid to make a move to improve her life. We need to see some grit, some resourcefulness, some fight!

As Jack M. Bickham says in his little gem, The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them), “Fiction writers too often forget that interesting characters are almost always characters who are active – risk-takers – highly motivated toward a goal. Many a story has been wrecked at the outset because the writer chose to write about the wrong kind of person – a character of the type we sometimes call a wimp.” 

So don’t model your hero or heroine after someone you know. They need to be stronger, braver, more resourceful and more intelligent. As Jessica Page Morrell puts it in Thanks, But This Isn’t For Us, “Fictional characters venture into physical and emotional territory where most of us would fear to tread.” Readers who lead a humdrum life want to escape and vicariously live a more exciting one, through the head and heart of someone who’s not afraid to challenge herself and confront her fears head-on. 

On the other hand, don’t go to the other extreme and make your protagonist:

~ Cold, unfeeling, arrogant

Your main character can and should have a few inner conflicts and character flaws, but overall, she needs to be at least somewhat sympathetic and likeable – not cold or arrogant. Your reader wants to be able to identify immediately with your lead character, to start caring about her and worrying about her. If the readers don’t warm up to your protagonist and care about what happens to her within the first few pages, they’ll very likely put down the book and go on to another one. If you have a tough hero with a gruff exterior, try to show some glimmers of hope, some redeeming qualities early on. Maybe show him to be sensitive or caring in some small ways, like perhaps he rescues a dog or cat in the traffic. Robert Crais does this with his gruff, strong, silent hero, Joe Pike. 

Also, don’t make your character:

~ Too perfect 

A too-perfect character is insufferable. Don’t make your hero or heroine constantly cheery, selfless and giving, stunningly beautiful or handsome, super popular, or perfectly sculpted and toned – in other words, too good to be true. Perfect people are both boring and annoying. They’re boring because nothing really challenges them, so we can’t identify with them; they’re annoying because they don’t have to work for things like the rest of us – everything’s handed to them on a platter. And they’re so unrealistic we think they must be faking it. And let’s face it, we’re probably jealous of them. You want readers to identify with and bond with your protagonist, not envy them.

Nobody likes a “goody-goody two-shoes,” and unless you’re writing a story for very young children, a main character who’s always positive (a “Pollyanna”) is annoying, too. So be sure not to make your protagonist nicer, kinder, or more selfless than your average person. Give them some character flaws, some secrets, regrets, and insecurities, a weakness or two, and maybe even a phobia. 

Along the same lines, don’t make your protagonist:

~ Too smart, too powerful

If your hero is ultra-smart and all-powerful, even big problems and challenges will be minor, a mere bump in the road. If he’s not sweating or stressed or in danger, readers aren’t going to worry about him. And if readers aren’t worrying about the hero or heroine of the book, they aren’t emotionally engaged. Which means they can put down the book at any time and look for one that engages them. So don’t make your character a genius or invincible. Give him some human qualities and foibles. Even Superman could be weakened by kryptonite and was vulnerable and off-guard whenever Lois Lane was threatened.

On the other hand, don’t make your character:

~ Clueless or oblivious

If your protagonist is too dumb to figure out what’s going on, to pick up on all or most of the clues, readers will feel like yelling at him or throwing the book across the room. Readers have no patience with a detective or other hero who’s dumber than they are. They expect to meet a bright, resourceful main character, one who’s worth their investment of time, one who warrants their support. If something obvious is staring your character in the face and he’s not seeing it or getting it, find a way to make that info less evident, so a smart, savvy character could realistically miss it.

Similarly, don’t make your character:

~ Ditzy, silly, or immature

Beware of airheads. They can be great for minor characters, but your hero or heroine needs to be someone readers can admire and identify with, not someone to scoff.

So when inventing your story’s protagonist, be sure to make him likeable, charismatic, and complex enough to be interesting. He should be intelligent, brave, and somewhat strong, but with emotional depth and a few flaws, secrets, and insecurities or vulnerabilities. And he needs to be able to draw on inner strengths and resources to take on adversity and overcome odds. If your main character is flat, boring, perfect, arrogant, dumb, or a wimp, readers won’t want to follow him for a whole story. They’ll lose patience and find another book to read.

And don’t make your villain 100% evil, either! He or she also needs to be multi-faceted – and intelligent, determined, and powerful – a worthy opponent for your protagonist.

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Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor and the award-winning author of three craft-of-writing guides in her series An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: WRITING A KILLER THRILLER, FIRE UP YOUR FICTION, and CAPTIVATE YOUR READERS, as well as two clickable time-saving e-resources, QUICK CLICKS: Spelling List and QUICK CLICKS: Word Usage. She has also organized two anthologies for charity: VOICES FROM THE VALLEYS – Stories and Poems about Life in BC’s Interior, and CHILDHOOD REGAINED – Stories of Hope for Asian Child Workers. You can find Jodie on her Amazon Author Page, at www.JodieRenner.com, and on Facebook. 

Open Your Novel in Your Protagonist's Head

by Jodie Renner, freelance editor

Unlike readers of decades or a century ago, who weren’t bombarded all day long with every kind of distracting media, all competing for their attention, today’s readers are less patient with rambling beginnings. They usually want to open a book and get sucked into the story world quickly. In the past, the more leisurely tradition was to start in omniscient point of view and describe the setting, followed by a kind of authorial overview of the situation and characters, and finally showing us the main character and his current situation. Today’s bestselling authors, for the most part, have gotten away from that type of opening. As literary agent and writing guru Donald Maass says, in rejecting submissions, “Too many manuscripts begin at a distance from their protagonists, as if opening with a long shot like in a movie. That’s a shame. Why keep readers at arm’s length?”

So nowadays, it’s more immediate and effective to start right out in your protagonist’s head and show him or her in motion, with attitude, actions, reactions and feelings. That way your reader, rather than being held at a distance while you introduce the setting or whatever, starts to become emotionally invested right away, and gets hooked in quickly, absorbed in your story, wanting to find out more. If you really want to start with the setting, make it brief, compelling and mood-setting.

Your first paragraph should be dynamic, not a meandering lead-up to something more interesting. Don’t rev your engines by starting your story with your character waking up to a normal day, or on the way to somewhere, with no tension. It’s more intriguing to readers if you open with the protagonist challenged somehow and the plot already moving forward. Also, an interaction with someone else, with some tension involved, is more compelling than internal musings, reflections, or thoughts about the weather or even upcoming events.

And it’s really best to get into the protagonist's POV right away, not some other character’s, and stay there for the first chapter, as readers start to identify with and bond with the first character they read about, and start worrying about them. If that person then gets killed off at the end of the chapter, or turns out to be a minor or even supporting character, many readers will feel cheated.

By starting in your main character’s head, you quickly answer the reader’s first question, “Whose story is this?” Don’t keep them wondering, trying to figure it out—that can be frustrating. They just want to know who to root for right off the bat, so they can relax and start enjoying the story. Similarly, start out each new chapter or scene with the name of the POV character for that scene, so we know right away who we’re concentrating on in this scene, whose head we’re in.

Also, I advise against starting with just “the detective” or “the police officer” or “the private investigator” or “the movie star” or some other anonymous, third-party, distancing description of your main character, without their name attached. That immediately creates an emotional distance from the character that can throw the reader off. Sure, use their title or other descriptor, but start right out in your protagonist’s head, and use his/her name. As Jack M. Bickham says, “Figure out whose story it is. Get inside that character right away—and stay there [for most of the story].”

Here are some examples of first lines / paragraphs of bestselling novels that start right out in the point of view of the protagonist of the novel.

Lee Child, The Hard Way: “Jack Reacher ordered espresso, double, no peel, no cube, foam cup, no china, and before it arrived at his table he saw a man’s life change forever.”

Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead: “Up the stairs they raced, taking them two at a time, trying to be as quiet as possible. Gamache struggled to keep his breathing steady, …”

David Baldacci, Hell’s Corner: “Oliver Stone was counting seconds, an exercise that had always calmed him. And he needed to be calm.”

Lisa Gardner, Love You More: “Sergeant Detective D.D. Warren prided herself on her excellent investigative skills.”

Andrew Gross, The Dark Tide: “As the morning sun canted sharply through the bedroom window, Charles Friedman dropped the baton. He hadn’t had the dream in years, yet there he was, gangly, twelve years old, running…”

Katherine Neville, The Fire: “Solarin gripped his little daughter’s mittened hand firmly in his own. He could hear the snow crunch beneath his boots and see their breath rise in silvery puffs, as together they crossed…”

Steve Berry, The Paris Vendetta: “The bullet tore into Cotton Malone’s left shoulder. He fought to ignore the pain and focused on the plaza. People rushed in all directions. Horns blared. Tires squealed.”

Karin Slaughter, Fallen: “Faith Mitchell dumped the contents of her purse onto the passenger seat of her Mini, trying to find something to eat. [..] The computer seminar she’d attended this morning was supposed to last only three hours, but…”

Lee Child, Tripwire: “Jack Reacher saw the guy step in through the door.”

Of course, we can all think of excellent novels that take several paragraphs or even pages to establish the POV character, but in general, delaying this vital info is on the decline. And aspiring authors who intend to go the agent and publisher route especially need to consider the short attention span of busy, time-pressured literary agents, most of whom won’t read past the first page if it confuses or bores them, many rejecting a manuscript after only a few paragraphs.

What do you think? What are some story openings that have hooked you in right away?

Copyright © Jodie Renner, July 2012

Resources:

Jack M. Bickham, The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes
Donald Maass, The Fire in Fiction

For related articles, see my blog posts “Set up Your Story in the First Paragraphs, “Those Critical First Five Pages,” and "Act First, Explain Later." Also, “POV 101 – Get into Your Protagonist’s Head and Stay There (for most of your story)," and "Psychic Distance.”


Jodie Renner, a freelance fiction editor specializing in thrillers and other fast-paced fiction, has published two books to date in her series, An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: WRITING A KILLER THRILLER and STYLE THAT SIZZLES & PACING FOR POWER (Silver Medalist in the FAPA Book Awards, 2013).
Both titles are available in e-book and paperback. For more info, please visit Jodie’s author website or editor website, or find her on Facebook or Twitter.